Just one week after word that Chevron has entered the Smackover lithium play/fray in southwest Arkansas comes news that Occidental is also expanding holdings there. The company reportedly started acquiring leases in late 2024.
Occidental is late to the show and has entered a field that is already populated by ExxonMobil/Saltwerx LLC, Standard Lithium-Equinor, Lanxess, Albemarle Corp. and Tetra Technologies Inc. Hart Energy reports that Occidental CEO Vicki Hollub told a London energy conference that Occidental has "picked up leases in Arkansas but has yet to act on them."
Lithium in general is not new to Occidental.
Occidental's TerraLithium subsidiary is working with Berkshire Hathaway Energy Renewables in southern California's Salton Sea region.
That project, called Hell's Kitchen, is one of largest lithium mines in the world and takes advantage of the geothermal-rich area. Hot, high-pressure brine filled with minerals and lithium is already being pulled to surface to generate electricity. The Department of Energy has estimated there is enough lithium in the liquid to produce 375 million electric vehicle batteries.
A USGS map showing testing levels of lithium in the Smackover geologic formation.
Onward to Arkansas
Meanwhile, the U.S. Geological Surveys believes Arkansas brine holds 5 million to 19 million tons of lithium. At current use, that amount would meet nine times the 2030 world demand for lithium. What USGS does not say is whether the extraction and production is economically feasible.
It seems companies are betting that it will be.
ExxonMobil, with 120,000 acres under lease, has plans for a commercial production facility in Arkansas by 2027.
Standard Lithium-Equinor won $225 million in Department of Energy funding to build a processing facility in Lafayette County, also expected to be online by 2027.
Albemarle has been working on DLE production technology at its existing plant in Magnolia.
The Albemarle lithium plant near Magnolia, Arkansas.
According to oilgasleads.com, approximately $200 million has already been invested in Arkansas DLE. This does not include several hundreds of millions invested by the companies for the lithium leases.
What say Louisiana?
The Smackover is a huge geologic formation that stretches from Texas to Florida and includes much of north Louisiana.
Lithium has already been discovered in commercially feasible quantity in East Texas, but not in Louisiana.
Ipsita Gupta, a Ph.D. and associate professor at the LSU Craft & Hawkins Department of Petroleum Engineering, has received a grant to test produced waters from oil and gas fields in north Louisiana. That testing will begin this summer.
A public domain USGS map showing lithium concentrations in Southwestern Arkansas.
She says the process for owner/operators of existing wells will be easy.
"They don't have to do anything for except to allow us to meet with them and collect the water," Gupta said.
The water will be returned to LSU for analysis, which she says will take several months but will identify 22 different elements and ions.