Part of the vast area of salt flats at Salar de Uuyuni in Bolivia on Aug. 30, 2021. An American entrepreneur says he has a better way to extract lithium there. (Meridith Kohut/The New York Times)
SALAR DE UYUNI, Bolivia — The mission was quixotic for a small Texas energy startup: Beat out Chinese and Russian industrial giants in unlocking mineral riches that could one day power tens of millions of electric vehicles.
A team traveled from Austin to Bolivia in late August to meet with local and national leaders at a government lithium complex and convince them that the company, EnergyX, had a technology that would fulfill Bolivia’s potential to be a global green-energy power. On arriving, they found that the conference they had planned to attend was canceled and that security guards blocked the location.
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