Rare earth metals and oil production are not equivalents. Lithium is not the only metal for batteries, but it's necessary for lithium ion batteries which is where rising demand for batteries is coming from. The fact that multiple metals are needed for battery production only supports the fact that forming a global cartel to coordinate the production of each is impractical. OPEC can influence oil prices because it can manage production of a single resource it holds in large quantities. How would abattery metal OPEC equivalent coordinate that? It's a safe intuition to rest on that forming global cartels is the exception not the rule when they are relatively rare in mineral exports. The only similarities between oil and battery metal production seems to be that both come from the ground. I would think it's safe to assume that the economic and political wrangling of enough countries that produce meaningful proportions of battery metals is not something that is likely to succeed. After all, the belief that "all it takes is a significant portion of the market" ignores that global cartels actually aren't very common.

The United States is the largest producer but not the largest exporter because oil is produced primarily for domestic refinement and consumption. The same thing is not true for lithium unless Australia and Chile are also the largest producers of lithium ion batteries, which they are not. Forming a cartel does require at least a significant portion of market control, you're right, but in a practical sense it's more complicated to make that a political reality. It doesn't matter if a cartel does control 58% of exports if a country that controls 42% of exports can undercut them, it's a waste of time when buyers can take their money elsewhere. OPEC is the exception not the rule and it doesn't seem obvious that the economic or political conditions that made forming OPEC are even possible in the lithium market.

That's true, but the largest producers include Canada and Australia. I know China holds the bulk of production but rare earth metal mining isn't something that can only be done in certain places. Even getting a major portion of the market share seems unlikely when the top 10 producers are scattered on every continent. Half of the worlds lithium is from Australia and the other half is from South America. Forming a cartel on lithium without either is a waste of time

https://www.mining.com/web/ranked-top-25-nations-producing-battery-metals-for-the-ev-supply-chain/

This is from 2020 so I'm not sure how much the market has changed from this diagram.

Is production of battery metals region specific enough for this to make sense? With the exception of Venezuela, OPEC's biggest players are all Middle Eastern countries with otherwise similar political interests, that's why it works so well as a block. But from what I can see, production of the metals used in batteries is done all over the place, including countries like Canada and Australia.