Exxon is going to drill for lithium
Integrated petroleum company, ExxonMobil, announced plans to drill into the Smackover Formation in Arkansas for brine in hopes of extracting lithium.
Catching you up. In May 2023, Exxon bought the mineral rights to 120,000 acres in Arkansas, all of which sit above one of the world’s most sought-after subsurface brines. That brine has been exploited for decades, primarily for its high bromine concentration (mostly used to make fire retardants). Now that the demand for lithium has skyrocketed, it has become increasingly difficult to ignore the lithium that is also present in the brine.
What happens next? While much of the world’s lithium does come from brine, that lithium is typically concentrated via open-air evaporation (i.e., pumping the brine to the surface and letting it evaporate in shallow ponds). That might work in the Atacama Desert, but it will not work as well when exposed to Arkansas weather. Therefore, it’s likely that Exxon will deploy a direct lithium extraction technology to process the precipitated lithium into battery-grade lithium (either lithium carbonate or lithium hydroxide) on-site.
Bigger picture. The investment needed to enter the lithium market is just a tiny fraction of Exxon’s available capital, and since extraction costs are a function of...
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