It Is Easy To Find Lithium; Turning a Profit Is Hard

Abstract

Finding lithium in the water from oil and gas wells is easy. Finding enough to make money is hard. In the US and Canada there has been growing interest in directly extracting lithium from the water coming out of the oil/water separator, which is competing with more established techniques such as mining and evaporating lithium-rich fluids. The race to find lithium is driven by expectations that fast-rising electric car sales will make the lithium required for batteries in those vehicles a valuable commodity. Those chasing direct extraction are also betting that their innovations can do what they say. Direct extraction from water started looking like a real possibility earlier this year when ExxonMobil paid $100 million to buy a company holding 120,000 gross acres of leases in south Arkansas. The price reflected the location in the heart of the direct lithium extraction industry of the future. The area offers a unique combination of lithium-rich water plus the infrastructure and expertise needed to transport, process, and dispose of the billions of gallons of water needed for industrial-scale mineral extraction. Commercial production of battery-quality lithium carbonate in Arkansas is years off. But the sprawling network of water-producing wells, pipelines, and processing that have made the state one of the world’s leading bromine producers, lowers the risk and cost of commercial lithium production. The source of the lithium-rich water is the Smackover—an oil formation discovered near El Dorado, Arkansas, back in 1921 when a gusher blew in. A year after that discovery, there were 608 producing wells nearby, according to the El Dorado News-Times. Now with lithium looking like battery gold, investors are rushing in. In this emotional market, lithium carbonate prices have swung like cryptocurrency. As of mid-October, a ton of it was selling for about $25,000. Over the past quarter it averaged $32,000/ton. Late last year it stood at $85,000. And in 2021 it was going for $10,000, said Graham Bain, vice president for subsurface opportunities at Enverus. He offered $25,000/ton as a “go forward price.” As with oil and gas, hopes of high prices have a way of rapidly increasing supplies, resulting in price-crashing gluts. So far, most oil companies sound curious but far from committed to lithium. “There’s a big rush. I have received several requests from companies in the Permian Basin to discuss lithium in the water,” said Jean-Philippe Nicot, senior research scientist at the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG) at The University of Texas at Austin. He is the lead author on recent paper that offered a primer on what’s known about lithium brines from oil wells in states from Texas to Mississippi. It is based on nearly 1,802 water analyses from the US Geological Survey (USGS)—some dating back to the 1960s—plus a recent 576-well survey by the BEG. The geologists, whose work ranged from hard-rock mining to water research, said this is an early effort to begin figuring out how to find the lithium in subsurface water.