The U.S. Geological survey has confirmed the vast size of a lithium deposit in what has become known as the Smackover Formation in southern Arkansas. As Little Rock Public Radio reports, in an interview with Arkansas PBS on Friday, October 25, Hugh McDonald, Secretary of Commerce, said working with an industry with environmental challenges is not new.“We’ve had oil and gas business for a hundred years down there. The communities and the state is well-versed and organized and supports the industry. Doing it responsibly as well, from an environmental perspective, as well as, you know, common sense regulation to support the industry, as well.”
Unlike typical lithium mining, there's a new process called Direct Lithium Extraction or DLE for short, which will be used in the Smackover play, as Secretary McDonald explained. He added that the company Standard Lithium built a demonstration plant and has worked a number of years perfecting their DLE process.
That process involves supply wells that bring the brine to the surface, a plant where the lithium is extracted and injection wells that send the brine back to subsurface depths.
On its website, Standard Lithium states that they operate North America's only large-scale, continuously operating Direct Lithium Extraction demonstration plant. "Commissioned in May 2020, this pioneering facility has successfully processed over 16.4 million gallons (62 million liters) of Smackover brine as of March 31, 2024."
A 2022 report concluded the Smackover formation has “sufficient lithium to produce enough batteries for 50 million electric vehicles." The federal and state researchers who confirmed the enormous size of the lithium deposit with their announcement last week [Monday, October 21], also revealed that the formation may hold five to 19 million tons of lithium. That is about nine times the annual worldwide demand for electric vehicles projected for 2030."
Exxon Mobile announced in November 2023 that work had begun for the company’s first phase of North America lithium production in southwest Arkansas. The Smackover is described by the USGS as “a relic of an ancient sea that left an extensive, porous, and permeable limestone formation that extends under parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida.”
The area in northern Union County is no stranger to drilling operations. As a historical article released by the Arkansas Department of Parks and Tourism spelled out, the discovery of oil in 1922 turned the quiet town of Smackover, with its "100 residents into a boisterous boomtown of 20,000. For five months in 1925, Smackover's oil wells led the nation in production." New wealth soon created a construction boom in nearby El Dorado and Smackover, with well preserved structures still visible today.
Next up is a hearing on Monday, November 4 by the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission which will adress setting the royalty rate.
