<br>State offers incentives, infrastructure for minerals industry growth
China dominates critical minerals and has banned some exports
State's challenges include education system, lack of mineral deposits
By Ernest Scheyder
LAWTON, Oklahoma, June 18 (Reuters) - Nestled beneath Oklahoma's Wichita Mountains sits a two-story warehouse containing the only machine in the United States capable of refining nickel, a crucial energy transition metal now dominated by China.
The facility, owned by startup Westwin Elements, aims to help Oklahoma become the epicenter for U.S. critical minerals processing, a sector the country largely abandoned decades ago.
The state will have to overcome several obstacles to get there, including a lack of major critical mineral deposits, a weak education system and its location at the center of the United States - far from international shipping lanes. Yet Oklahoma's push into minerals processing marks an unexpected twist in the country's efforts to wean itself off Chinese rivals who have blocked exports. President Donald Trump has said he wants to boost U.S. production of minerals used across the economy. In Oklahoma, the country's only nickel refinery, its largest lithium refinery, two lithium-ion battery recycling plants, a rare earths magnet facility, and several electronic waste collection facilities are under construction or in operation - more than in any other state.
They join a Umicore site that produces germanium crystals for solar panels. An aluminum smelter - the country's first since 1980 - is set to break ground next year at a site bordering an Arkansas River tributary.
"I've strategically made a conscious effort to go after some of these new industries that I think are going to be critical," Governor Kevin Stitt, a Republican, told Reuters. "There's money flying into critical minerals from the investment side, so it might as well be located in Oklahoma."
Investors and corporate executives say the state's location, lack of mineral deposits, and other detracting factors are outweighed by a string of positives: Oklahoma has railways and highways bisecting the state en route to the three U.S. coasts, a workforce with deep energy experience, state rebates and other financial incentives, a large inland port with access to the Mississippi River watershed, and accommodating regulators.
Officials boast on social media that Oklahoma is a "one phone call state," a description meant to evoke what they see as a streamlined regulatory process.
Australia-based MLB Industrial, a startup that supplies lithium-ion batteries to the locomotive industry, expanded its business to Oklahoma earlier this year for that very reason.
"Other states were looking for a large, established company to invest, rather than a company with a growth profile," said Nathan Leech, MLB's CEO, who moved his family to Oklahoma. "We intend to grow in Oklahoma." A nickel refinery, in particular, has been sought by Washington for years but Chinese market dumping had scared away would-be entrants, said a source familiar with the Trump administration's minerals policy. KaLeigh? Long founded Westwin and named it after her desire for the U.S. to shake off Chinese minerals dependence - as she puts it, "The West will win." The firm has built a demonstration facility 85 miles (137 km) south of the state capital that it says can refine 200 metric tons of nickel annually and will expand to produce 34,000 metric tons per year by 2030. If successful, the Westwin facility would refine 10% of America's annual nickel needs, demand projections from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence show, drawing on rock taken from Turkish and Indonesian mines, as well as recycled U.S. batteries. Even as Oklahoma promises state tax rebates and other incentives, Westwin is lobbying Washington not to eliminate a federal production tax credit heavily opposed by Republicans along with other green energy subsidies enacted by former President Joe Biden, as Reuters reported earlier this month.
Westwin is in negotiations with the Pentagon for a nickel supply deal that would keep metal inside the United States to make batteries for military drones and other equipment, according to a source familiar with the deliberations.
SUSTAINABLE POWER Roughly 220 miles (354 km) northeast, a lithium refinery under construction from Stardust Power aims to produce 50,000 metric tons of the battery metal per year, about a fifth of what the U.S. is expected to need by 2030. Japan's Sumitomo signed a preliminary agreement in February to buy up to half of the facility's output. Stardust aims for the plant to filter lithium from brines - something that has yet to happen at commercial scale - and will have roughly the same capacity as Tesla's refinery under construction in Texas. It will be powered in part by renewable energy
