My Investing Muse

  Reuters reported the  following  news on 17 Feb 2023: China's oil refining capacity overtook the United States as the world's largest in 2022 , an industry official said on Thursday, though its production of fuel products lagged the United States due to low utilisation rates. Total refining capacity in China expanded to 920 million tonnes per year, or 18.4 million barrels per day (bpd), in 2022 Fu Xiangsheng, vice president of the China Petroleum and Chemical Industry Association, told reporters. That compares with U.S. refining capacity as of December at 17.6 million bpd, according to the International Energy Agency's latest oil market report. China's total refined products output last year was less than 700 million tonnes (5.1 billion barrels), at an average plant utilisation rate of around 70%, the association said, compared with more than 800 million tonnes in the United States, where average utilisation exceeded 90%. China has 32 refineries with at least 200,000 ...

  Lithium prices rose from $4,450 per ton in 2012 to $78,032 per ton in 2022. Price of Lithium since 2012 and Elon Musk "getting" into mining? Elon Musk advised that the mineral is available in abundance but the refining process is expensive. Does this mean that  Tesla $TSLA or his "The Boring Company" will be entering the fray of mining and refinery solutions? This will get really interesting as Elon Musk has revolutionised every business he entered. If Elon gets into this, Tesla stands to enjoy a greater costs advantage and control of his production than the competitors.   BYD looks to be getting into this space too as per the news below. Extract from Pandaily.com news on 23 Mar 2022: Shenzhen Chengxin Lithium Group Co., Ltd., a Chinese developer of lithium materials, announced on Tuesday that it plans to raise up to 3 billion yuan ($471 million) by introducing BYD as a strategic investor through a targeted stock issue. Upon this issuance, it is expected ...