[koverstreet]

Are you forgetting the nitrogen? :)

[fullstop]

The US produces most of their own nitrogen, but the same is not true of potash.

[mythrwy]

The US does have potash mines for example around Carlsbad New Mexico. But these cover only a percentage of domestic need. Perhaps they could be scaled up not sure.

[jandrewrogers]

Also famously near Moab, Utah.

[AnimalMuppet]

Isn't the stuff west of Green River, Wyoming also potash?

[bluGill]

The US provides a lot of its own supply there.

[colechristensen]

Nitrogen is pulled out of the air which is free but the process requires hydrogen which is acquired from disassembled methane, the price of which is a significant contributor.

[8note]

US shale oil notably has a lot of natural gas - methane.

the methane isnt the issue, building and operating the processing plants is

[colechristensen]

Hard to find exact data but 60-80% of the cost to manufacture ammonia comes from the cost of natural gas. Feel free to look a price charts for both to see the correlation.

[bluGill]

Long term yes, however the building in such a plant is very expensive in the short term. As such, no one is going to build a plant unless they actually think it will have reasonably high utilization.