The oil & gas and bromine industries have paved the way for white-hot pursuit of the white metal.
Could Smackover become a name as affiliated with the Arkansas lithium boom as it was with the Arkansas oil boom when prospectors struck oil in 1921 in El Dorado?
Companies such as ExxonMobil, Albemarle, Equinor and Standard Lithium are counting on it.
According to calculations from Argonne National Laboratory cited in Ernest Scheyder’s 2024 National Book Award nominee “The War Below: Lithium, Copper and the Global Battle to Power Our Lives,” a standard 55.4-kilowatt-hour battery in the popular Tesla Model 3 electric vehicle requires 13.2 pounds of lithium.
That’s a lot of the white metal. But there is a lot of demand. Why? A memo on the material from the U.S. Geological Survey puts it plainly: “Lithium supply security has become a top priority for technology companies in Asia, Europe and North America. Strategic alliances and joint ventures among technology companies and exploration companies continued to be established to ensure a reliable, diversified supply of lithium for battery suppliers and vehicle manufacturers.”
Of the 105 million tons of measured and indicated lithium resources in the world, the USGS says, the United States has around 14 million tons, with actual production climbing to 180,000 tons in 2023. There is more for the taking, and a rich vein runs through southwest Arkansas.
Among the projects looking to access the lithium deposits found in the Smackover Formation in southern Arkansas are Vancouver, B.C.-based Standard Lithium with more than $1.6 billion of plans in Lewisville and El Dorado (in addition to East Texas); ExxonMobil’s big plans for Walker Creek; and Albemarle’s opportunity to layer lithium processing on top of the $540 million it’s investing at its two bromine facilities in Magnolia, where the company has operated for over 50 years and employs more than 400 people.
“Standard Lithium’s focus is to build a U.S. lithium supply chain,” said Robert Mintak, Standard Lithium’s former CEO who recently retired to an advisory post for the company. “We’ve targeted the Smackover location in Arkansas because not only is it the highest grade, but it’s in a region where you can actually build a project.”
Translation: You can do Smackover business in Arkansas without getting smacked around by regulatory and permitting red tape.
Albemarle
Corporation
Invests Up To $540
Million in Arkansas
Facility Expansion
Sixty years of the bromine business, after all, mean a regulatory and permitting framework for extraction, reinjection and other related processes has gradually taken shape. Bromine’s uses range from oil & gas exploration to fire safety to paper manufacturing and poultry processing. Arkansas is the world’s second largest producer of bromine, derived from the same brine that has lithium concentrations, too.
“We have a long, rich history of operations in Columbia County with a strong commitment to both the community and the economy in the region,” said Netha Johnson, Albemarle’s president of Bromine. “The facility investments, along with the jobs and the economic stability they bring, reaffirm our dedication to the area and to meeting our customers’ needs as we work together to build the technologies of the future for a safer, greener world.”
“Arkansas is poised to become a major domestic supplier of lithium, and we’re excited to be at the forefront of creating new jobs and attracting more investments for this great state,” said Patrick Howarth, Lithium Global Business Manager for ExxonMobil.
“There’s not a better place to build a lithium business than in south Arkansas,” said retired Standard Lithium CEO Robert Mintak.
Two miles south of Smackover you can find this replica of an oil derrick from the 1920s oil boom at the Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources. Now the area is welcoming a lithium boom.
Photo courtesy of Arkansas Museum of Natural Resources
Standard Lithium’s Arkansas plan includes the $1.3 billion, greenfield South West Arkansas (SWA) Project for lithium brine in Columbia and Lafayette Counties and a partnership with Lanxess to process tail brine from the existing bromine operations at the Lanxess South Plant in Union County that will feature a $365 million commercial-scale Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) and lithium carbonate conversion facility.
In April the company announced it had successfully commissioned and validated the performance of the largest continuously operating DLE equipment in North America at its demonstration plant in El Dorado, which is currently extracting brine at an input flow rate of 90 gallons per minute. Moreover, the DLE method doesn’t scar the landscape the way open-pit mines do.
The company in spring 2024 said over the last four years it’s processed more than 17 million gallons of Smackover brine and produced approximately 330,000 gallons of concentrated and/or purified lithium chloride solution for further process testing or for conversion into battery-quality lithium carbonate or hydroxide. The SWA Project is said to have some of the highest reported lithium brine concentrations in North America.
Industry news site NS Energy reports that Lanxess owns around 10,000 brine leases in the 150,000-acre Smackover lithium project area, with 65 bromine operations wells and three bromine production plants. Standard Lithium’s exploration, production and lithium extraction rights on 27,262 acres of brine leases are about 25 miles west of the Lanxess project site.
“One hundred years of resource development, 60+ years of commercial brine operations for bromine production, and the highest reported lithium in brine values in North America make the Smackover Formation a promising lithium production powerhouse with room to scale,” Standard Lithium states.
