Arkansas’ Lithium Revolution One Step Closer to Reality

Arkansas’ vast lithium reserves have led hundreds of bankers, corporate executives, and industry insiders to gather for the first ever Lithium Innovation Summit. Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Commerce Secretary Hugh McDonald delivered opening remarks this past week [Thursday, February 15], with a focus on the need to bring new energy infrastructure into Arkansas from overseas.
Arkansas Public Radio was there in Little Rock as Sanders said her administration would be a friend to the nascent lithium industry. “Arkansas has one of the lowest costs of living in the country, with friendly people and [an] easy regulatory environment and outstanding natural beauty,” Governor Sanders began. “My administration is working to make it even more appealing. As Hugh said, we’ve cut taxes not once but twice and to the tune of $300 million.”
As KUAR Radio reports, keynote speaker Andy Miller of Benchmark Mineral Intelligence said that no matter how the global energy market shifts, energy storage within batteries is a common denominator. He said sourcing raw materials like lithium can be a challenge. “And that’s the issue facing the U.S. market today. And as you can see, as we’ll hear throughout the day, Arkansas has a massive opportunity to play a very strategic role to serve the battery industry, but also build out its own links in the battery supply chain.”
Miller said that without new products in the lithium industry, global markets will effectively be in a deficit each year going forward until changes are made. ExxonMobil announced late last year it plans to drill the first lithium wells in Southern Arkansas by 2027.
Direct lithium extraction (DLE) technologies could very well allow Arkansas to become the center of the lithium industry in the United States. This process filters lithium from what’s known as the underground Smackover brine formation. By some estimates, the Smackover formation may hold over four million metric tons of lithium. Analysts say this could translate into the production of millions of electric vehicles which utilize lithium ion batteries, along with other electronic products.
Yet, overproduction of lithium carbonate on the global market has led to precipitous drops in prices, leading to greater uncertainty of the industry in the immediate future.
Despite such concerns, according to a recent corporate news release, “in early 2023, ExxonMobil acquired the rights to 120,000 gross acres of the Smackover formation in southern Arkansas.” And by 2030, “ExxonMobil expects to produce enough lithium to supply the manufacturing needs of well over a million EVs per year.”