El Nino cut daily transits from 36 to 18 and sent slot auctions to records. The rains came back, revenue hit $5.7 billion, and the canal is buying itself a second watershed. What the 2023-24 drought proved about infrastructure that drinks.
Aug 15, 2026 · 8 min read
The Salar de Atacama holds 9.2 million tonnes of lithium in brine, the biggest such reserve on earth. In December 2025, a Codelco-SQM joint venture handed the Chilean state majority control of it through 2060, in the middle of the worst lithium price crash on record. Most resource nationalism is announced at the top of the cycle; this deal was signed at the bottom.
Aug 15, 2026 · 8 min read