South America
Chile
What comes out of the ground here, what is still in it, and who operates the assets.
What it produces
Maps →USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 · 2025 (estimated) · each row keeps the unit the source uses for that commodity · source ↗
Scroll the table sideways for the remaining columns.
| Material | Series | Production | Unit | Share of world |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lithium | Mine production | 56,000 | metric tons | 19.3% |
| Molybdenum | Mine production | 42,000 | metric tons | 16.2% |
| Rhenium | Mine production | 30,000 | kilograms | 37.0% |
| Iodine | Mine production | 23,000 | metric tons | 67.6% |
| Salt | Mine production | 9,000 | thousand metric tons | 3.3% |
| Copper | Mine production | 5,300 | thousand metric tons | 23.0% |
| Sulfur | Production, all forms | 1,400 | thousand metric tons | 1.7% |
| Silver | Mine production | 1,400 | metric tons | 5.4% |
| Potash | Mine production | 600.0 | thousand metric tons | 1.2% |
| Pumice & Pumicite | Mine production | 530.0 | thousand metric tons | 2.6% |
| Zeolites (Natural) | Mine production | 240.0 | metric tons | 0.0% |
What it holds in reserve
USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 · reserves as most recently published
| Material | Series | Reserves | Unit | Share of world |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lithium | Reserves | 9,200,000 | metric tons | 24.9% |
| Rhenium | Reserves | 1,300,000 | kilograms | — |
| Iodine | Reserves | 750,000 | metric tons | 11.9% |
| Copper | Reserves | 180,000 | thousand metric tons | 18.4% |
| Silver | Reserves | 33,000 | metric tons | 5.4% |
| Molybdenum | Reserves (thousand metric tons) | 2,600 | thousand metric tons | 15.3% |
| Potash | Reserves, Recoverable ore | Not applicable | thousand metric tons | — |
Mines in the atlas
All →
Chuquicamata
Historically the largest open-pit copper mine in the world by excavated volume.
Collahuasi
Among the largest copper mines by output.
El Teniente
The largest underground copper mine in the world by excavated extent.
Escondida
Consistently the largest copper mine in the world by output.
Salar de Atacama
The highest-grade and most productive lithium brine operation in the world.
Journeys that pass through Chile
All journeys →Material that is dug up here, refined here, or simply crosses the border on its way somewhere else.
Chilean brine to a battery in a car starts here The ore is water. The first year and a half of processing is done by the sun, for free. Chilean sulfide concentrate to Chinese cathode to a wire starts here Chile mines the most copper in the world. China refines the most. Those are not the same sentence.A leading U.S. import source for
USGS Mineral Commodity Summaries 2026 · major U.S. import sources, 2021–2024