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Arkansas looks to be home to enough lithium — the raw material used to make electric batteries — to meet the entire world’s demand. Now, energy companies are swooping in.
Why It Hits: Lithium is a super in-demand material as the world hopes to switch to electric and reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. Establishing lithium mining as a major US industry could remake the industry.
Behind The Curtain: According to researchers at the United States Geological Survey and the government of Arkansas, “There be lithium in them hills!”
- Anywhere between five million and 19 tons of lithium are located in an underground brine reservoir in the Smackover Formation area, where a lot of oil and gas are already mined.
- Companies like Exxon Mobil are now preparing to produce lithium, which needs to be extracted from the brine (groundwater with high concentrations of salt and metals). It could even be extracted from the waste of previous mining projects.
- Exxon hopes to start lithium production by 2027 and produce enough of the metal to power a million electric cars by 2030.
The Future: According to NYT, most lithium is produced in Australia and South America and then processed in China, with the latter becoming a headache for the increasingly frosty relations that Washington has with Beijing. By producing lithium in the US (in Arkansas, as well as the Salton Sea in California) that sustains American and worldwide demand, the balance of power in electrification could shift… and generate thousands of jobs.
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