USGS Lithium Summaries: Production and Reserves by Country

Reviewed August 2026 against USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2024, USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2025, and the USGS National Minerals Information Center’s lithium data releases.

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USGS put world lithium mine production, excluding the United States, at about 180,000 tonnes in 2023 and 240,000 tonnes in 2024 — an 18% rise on a restated 2023 figure of 204,000 tonnes (the 2023 figure first reported was about 180,000). Australia and Chile still supply most of it: Australia mined 88,000 tonnes in 2024 against reserves of 7.0 million tonnes, while Chile mined 49,000 tonnes against 9.3 million tonnes of reserves. Both editions are free PDFs from USGS, filed as mcs2024-lithium.pdf and mcs2025-lithium.pdf; the tables below pull the exact production and reserve figures out of each one so you don’t have to open either file to get the numbers.

Where to Get the PDF, and How USGS Names the Files

USGS releases Mineral Commodity Summaries once a year, in January or February, and the lithium chapter is always a standalone PDF inside that year’s edition, named mcsYYYY-lithium.pdf — mcs2024-lithium.pdf for the January 2024 edition (reporting on calendar-year 2023) and mcs2025-lithium.pdf for the January 2025 edition (reporting on calendar-year 2024). The verified path to both is the USGS lithium data release listing on Data.gov, which links out to the current PDF and the underlying dataset behind it: the 2024 lithium data release and the 2025 lithium data release.

This is the durable part: the naming convention doesn’t change. Whatever year you land on this page, the file you want follows the same pattern, and USGS has already moved on — a 2026 edition is posted using the identical filename scheme. If a number below looks out of date, that’s the tell to go pull the newer file rather than trust a static page.

The direct links are the 2024 edition, the 2025 edition and the 2026 edition lithium chapters. The 2026 edition is dated February 2026 and gives 2025 as an estimate. The Data.gov releases hold the US salient statistics and the world production table from each sheet, not the full text (see the 2025 data release record).

: Australia and Chile Production and Reserves

The 2024 edition of the Mineral Commodity Summaries — the one behind the “lithium australia chile reserves production 2023” searches — reported world mine production, excluding the US, at approximately 180,000 tonnes for 2023, up 23% from 146,000 tonnes in 2022. Seven mineral operations in Australia and two brine operations each in Chile and Argentina accounted for most of that total. Australia alone produced 86,000 tonnes, just under half of world output; Chile produced 44,000 tonnes; China’s combined mineral-and-brine operations produced 33,000 tonnes; Argentina’s two brine projects produced 9,600 tonnes.

On reserves — the in-ground, economically extractable portion, not total resources — Chile held 9.3 million tonnes as of year-end 2023, the largest of any country USGS tracks, with Australia at 6.2 million tonnes and Argentina at 3.6 million tonnes. The table below lines up both years side by side, since the 2025 edition revised several of these figures.

Two things to flag before you quote either column. First, USGS’s own world total (about 180,000 t for 2023) is a rounded figure; summing the individual country lines from the 2024 edition actually lands at 184,680 t, because each country figure is itself independently rounded. Second, “reserves” and “resources” are not the same measurement — Bolivia and Argentina both carry much larger resource estimates than reserve estimates, because resource figures include material that isn’t yet confirmed as economically minable at current prices. If you see a much bigger number for Argentina or Bolivia elsewhere, it’s almost certainly a resource figure, not a USGS reserve figure.

Update: World Production Climbs to 240,000 Tonnes

The 2025 edition — the source for “usgs mineral commodity summaries 2025 lithium production 2024” — put world mine production, excluding the US, at 240,000 tonnes for 2024, an 18% increase over the revised 2023 figure of 204,000 tonnes. Note that revision: the 2024 edition’s preliminary 2023 estimate (about 180,000 t) got revised upward by roughly 24,000 t once final data came in a year later. That’s routine for USGS commodity summaries, not an error in either document.

Chart

Lithium mine production by country, 2025 estimate

Tonnes of lithium content; world total excluding the US about 290,000 t; US withheld

Beyond Australia, Chile and China, USGS also listed Zimbabwe at 22,000 tonnes, Argentina at 18,000 tonnes, Brazil at 10,000 tonnes, Canada at 4,300 tonnes, and Portugal at 380 tonnes for 2024. US production itself is listed as “Withheld” in both editions — USGS’s standard practice when disclosing a number would reveal a single company’s output, which is the case here since the 2025 and 2026 editions name one commercial-scale lithium operation in the US, a continental brine operation in Nevada.

The 2026 edition reports world mine production, excluding the US, at about 290,000 tonnes for 2025 (estimate). It restates 2024 at 222,000 tonnes, not 240,000, so the rise it reports is 31%. Australia is listed at 92,000 tonnes, China at 62,000 tonnes and Chile at 56,000 tonnes, which puts China ahead of Chile. USGS cut Argentina’s 2024 figure from 18,000 to 13,800 tonnes using company reports, and added Mali at 9,400 tonnes for 2025 after two new operations started in 2024 (USGS, 2026).

Chart

2024 production, as first reported and as restated

Tonnes of lithium content; the 2026 edition restates 2024

Reserves Across Two Editions, and Why the Numbers Move

Reserves are the figure people quote as if they were fixed geology, but USGS revises them every year along with production. Between the year-end-2023 reserves reported in the 2024 edition and the year-end-2024 reserves reported in the 2025 edition, Australia’s reserve figure rose from 6.2 million tonnes to 7.0 million tonnes — a 0.8-million-tonne upward revision, not new lithium appearing in the ground. Chile’s held flat at 9.3 million tonnes across both editions. Argentina’s moved from 3.6 million tonnes to 4.0 million tonnes.

USGS says it revised these reserves based on company and government reports. Production works the same way: the 2023 estimate moved from about 180,000 t to 204,000 t between editions, when a fuller figure replaced the first estimate. Read any single year’s PDF in isolation and you’ll take a snapshot as gospel; read two editions side by side and the revision pattern becomes the more useful thing to track.

World reserves rose from 28 million tonnes in the 2024 edition to 30 million in the 2025 edition and 37 million in the 2026 edition. Measured and indicated world resources went from about 105 million to 115 million to 150 million tonnes over the same three editions (USGS, 2024 to 2026).

Check which basis a reserve number uses. USGS footnotes give a JORC-compliant or equivalent figure for Australia of 4.8 million tonnes in the 2024 and 2025 editions and 5.1 million tonnes in the 2026 edition, against headline reserves of 6.2, 7.0 and 8.4 million tonnes. The 2026 appendix says the Australian figure in that edition is Geoscience Australia’s Accessible Economic Demonstrated Resources. Geoscience Australia reports its own lithium series: economic demonstrated resources of 8,440 kt Li at December 2023 and production of 95 kt Li for 2023, against USGS’s 86,000 tonnes. Its critical minerals table lists 8,799 kt and 108 kt for 2024. Surveys count differently, so do not mix their figures in one table.

Chart

Reserves by country in three USGS editions

Million tonnes of lithium content

Reserve Life: Who Has the Deepest Runway

Plotting 2024 reserves against 2024 production shows why “biggest producer” and “biggest reserve base” are different questions. Australia mines the most lithium of any country. Its reserves of 7.0 million tonnes against 2024 production of 88,000 tonnes (USGS, 2025 edition) give a ratio of about 80 years. Chile, at 9.3 million tonnes and 49,000 tonnes, has a ratio of about 190 years. The ratio is a simple division, not a forecast.

Use the calculator below to turn any of these pairs into a years-remaining estimate, or plug in your own reserve and production figures for a country not listed here.

With 2026 edition numbers (reserves divided by 2025 estimated production), the ratio is about 190 years for Argentina, 160 for Chile, 90 for Australia, 74 for China, 45 for Brazil, 39 for Mali and 18 for Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe’s short ratio comes from small reserves of 500,000 tonnes against output of 28,000 tonnes. These ratios will move, because both reserves and output have been revised in every edition (calculated here from USGS, 2026).

Water, Imports, and Price: The Rest of the Chain

The USGS lithium chapter does not report water use. Farmonaut has covered the water side of extraction in more depth, including recycling and closed-loop tailings approaches relevant to brine and hard-rock operations alike, in Water Mining: 7 Powerful Ways to Sustainable Operations.

Chart

Annual average lithium carbonate price

US dollars per tonne, battery grade, real dollars

On price: USGS publishes an annual average price for battery-grade lithium carbonate inside the same PDF’s salient-statistics table (the price assessments come from Benchmark Mineral Intelligence), but spot lithium carbonate and hydroxide prices move week to week so treat the dated annual averages below as history, not as today’s price. If you need a current price, go to the “Prices” line of whichever year’s lithium PDF you’re reading, or a live commodity-price service — don’t rely on a figure quoted secondhand.

On US import dependence: USGS tracks US net import reliance for lithium as a percentage in the same salient-statistics box, separate from the withheld US production tonnage. The 2026 edition gives it as greater than 50% for 2023, 2024 and 2025 (estimate). USGS prints a range, not an exact value.

The 2026 edition gives the annual average price of battery-grade lithium carbonate under fixed contracts as $63,700 per tonne in 2022, $39,000 in 2023, $11,800 in 2024 and $9,000 in 2025 (estimate), in real dollars. Spot lithium carbonate in China (c.i.f.) moved from about $9,300 per tonne in January 2025 to about $10,300 in November 2025. For US imports in 2021 to 2024, Chile supplied 54% and Argentina 43%. Prices are quoted per tonne of lithium carbonate. To compare with lithium content, California’s tax rules convert lithium to carbonate equivalent with a factor of 5.323 (CDTFA conversion table).

Farmonaut: Satellite-Based Mineral Exploration

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where can I find the USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries lithium PDF?

It’s a standalone file, mcs2024-lithium.pdf, inside the January 2024 Mineral Commodity Summaries. The verified route to it is the USGS 2024 lithium data release page on Data.gov, which links to the current PDF and its dataset.

What did USGS report for Australia’s and Chile’s lithium production and reserves?

Australia produced 86,000 tonnes against 6.2 million tonnes of reserves (year-end 2023); Chile produced 44,000 tonnes against 9.3 million tonnes of reserves. Full country breakdown and shares are in the table above.

How much lithium did the world produce, per the Summary?

240,000 tonnes, excluding the US, up 18% from a revised 2023 figure of 204,000 tonnes. Australia (88,000 t), Chile (49,000 t), and China (41,000 t) accounted for roughly three-quarters of it.

Why do lithium figures for the same year differ between USGS editions?

Because the earlier edition’s number is preliminary. USGS revises the prior year’s production and reserve estimates as fuller company and survey data arrives, then publishes the revision alongside the new year’s preliminary figure in the next edition. Always treat the most recent edition’s figure for a given year as the more accurate one.

Is a lithium “reserve” the same as total lithium in the ground?

No. Reserves are the portion of a resource that’s confirmed as economically extractable under current prices and technology. Resources include everything identified, whether or not it clears that economic bar at the prices of the day — which is why countries like Bolivia and Argentina show far larger resource totals than reserve totals in most public comparisons.

Does USGS report how much lithium the United States produces?

Not as a tonnage. US production is listed as “Withheld” in both the 2024 and 2025 editions, USGS’s standard practice to avoid disclosing a single company’s output — the 2026 edition names one commercial-scale operation in the US, a continental brine operation in Nevada. USGS does publish a separate US net import reliance percentage in the same salient-statistics table.

Conclusion: Keep the Method, Not the Number

The specific tonnages in this page — 180,000 t for 2023, 240,000 t for 2024, Chile’s 9.3 million tonnes of reserves — are correct as of the editions cited above, and they will be revised again. What doesn’t expire is the method: check the filename pattern (mcsYYYY-lithium.pdf), compare the current edition against the prior one to see what got revised, and separate reserve figures from resource figures before you compare countries. Apply that method to whichever edition USGS has posted when you’re reading this, and you’ll get a more current answer than any static page — including this one — can give you.