Fluor Corporation

That's five weeks after the phase two final investment decision.

Two more trains expanding from 14 million tons production to 28 and JGC Fluor building it.

Smart money doesn't buy half a holding company in a dead end asset.

It buys when the next phase is sanctioned and the work is real.

The teams that did the work, they were ephemeral.

There's all these joint ventures, and they would bring a big firm like Bechtel or Fluor in to do the engineering.

They called them EPCs, Engineer, Procure, Construct.

And they would basically build the whole thing and then hand it over to the owner-operators.

At the same time, the scramble to secure strategic mineral supply chains outside traditional spheres of influence is escalating in East Africa.

In Kenya, engineering multinational Fluor Corporation has entered a shortlisted group of Western and Australian consortia bidding to develop the Mrimahil critical minerals deposit.

The coastal prospect holds tens of billions of dollars worth of rare earth elements and niobium, an essential metal for high-performance aerospace manufacturing.

Two Chinese state-backed exploration entities unexpectedly withdrew from the tender, paving the way for five international groups including Meridian Mineral Holdings, Frontier Minerals and an Australian tie-up between Rarex and Iluca Resources.

We don't do, you know, build, own, operate, transfer projects, boot projects.

We don't do, what do we have, Bechtel and maybe Fluor and a couple of others that do kinds of infrastructure projects.

We don't compete in that space.

So the first thing is you have to compete.

The Zhuhai Yard built 157 outside battery, uh, limits, modules weighing about 108,000 tons in total.

At the time, Zhuhai Yard was a joint venture between COIEC and Fluor.

That's interesting, isn't it? So the same joint venture, JGC Fluor, that was actually deciding on where the steel modules should be, uh, produced, was also in a joint venture with another Chinese yard that was building the same things.

That's fascinating, folks.

Now, obviously those batteries aren't going to be, you know, all of that 108,000 tons of steel, but let's just, for the sake of argument, combine these two numbers together.

So everything is owned by the People's Republic of China.

So that's interesting.

Um, just to note, remember that joint venture that Fluor and COIEC was in? So Fluor was essentially in a joint venture with the People's Republic of China-owned company.

It is a dis- it is a, um, uh, removal or, or deactivation of state police power in favoral, in favor of federal power.

And the court in cases like Virgin- Virginia Uranium versus Warren or Hensley versus Fluor last term has made very clear that that requires Congress to speak.

It requires Congress to be explicit.

And not only was Congress not explicit in the Clean Air Act, uh, the Clean Air Act actually has multiple savings claus- clauses that are at least as broad as those under the Clean Water Act.

Now, I, I certainly agree that Justice Kavanaugh, of all the justices, seemed the most hostile to, uh, the plaintiffs in this case and most, uh, uh, supportive of the preemption arguments.

That's no surprise.

Uh, he dissented in the Hensley versus Fluor case that I noted, um, from this past term.

He, in general, has been, uh, one of the more, uh, pro-preemption, uh, justices in recent years, his vote in Vir- Virginia Uranium being, um, an outlier there.