Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on October 2, 2024 at 12:26

Prehearing regarding lithium royalties application set for Oct. 11

An Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission spokesperson confirmed Wednesday the prehearing for the lithium royalties application, where applicants and objectors to the application will make their arguments before an administrative law judge, will take place at 9 a.m. Oct. 11.

The meeting will be at the Department of Energy and Environment headquarters in North Little Rock, and will be streamed online via the department's YouTube channel.

The prehearing will be held "like any other hearing," spokesperson Carol Booth said in an email.

Administrative Law Judge Charles Moulton will then make a recommendation on a course of action to the Oil and Gas Commission, which will consider it at the two-day hearing scheduled for Nov. 4 and 5 in El Dorado.

At least 74 mineral rights owners are formally opposed to the royalties application submitted by the five companies, with one of the common arguments being the 1.82% royalty is too low compared to the potential profits the companies stand to make.

On the flip side, applicants say the royalty meets the "fair and equitable" standard enshrined in state law, saying in the application that the companies will have to take on significant risk and capital expenditures to make a lithium extraction industry in Arkansas a reality.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on October 9, 2024 at 1:55

Production Services will drill Pantera Minerals' first lithium brine well

Pantera Minerals Limited, an Australian-listed mineral exploration company, has signed a Master Services Agreement with Production Services Inc. of Magnolia.

Production Services, an oil and gas services led by President Therral Story, will undertake the re-entry of Pantera Minerals’ first well at its the Smackover Lithium Brine Project in Lafayette County.

Pantera said in a statement that the agreement marks a significant step in Pantera’s plan to advance its lithium brine exploration efforts in the highly prospective Smackover Formation.

In May, Perth-based Pantera said it had increased its lithium brine leases to more than 18,570 acres located west of ExxonMobil’s leases in southern Lafayette County.

The rig agreement between Pantera and Production Services will result in re-entry and testing at a well that is expected to commence in mid-October.

The re-entry test will focus on sampling brine from the upper Smackover Formation to evaluate lithium concentrations. The lithium grade obtained from these samples will provide the most accurate data to date, supporting the company's resource modelling efforts and guiding the location of a second well.

The first re-entry well is strategically positioned to allow for both production and disposal, creating an opportunity for Pantera to operate a pilot plant in 2025, the company said.

Barnaby Egerton-Warburton, executive chairman of Pantera Minerals, said, “The company is extremely excited with the imminent testing of lithium brine grade at its Arkansas Smackover Lithium Brine Project. With the contracting of a work-over rig we are now in the final stages of preparation for our first well. The company believes the Australian market place is not correctly valuing the potential upside of the company’s project, but is aware of many corporate eyes on the company, its project and its progress.

“The company continues to see aggressive leasing surrounding its exclusive abstract area and now sees its position surrounded by both large listed and privately funded groups,” he said.

Pantera will continue to collaborate with SLB on the design of the testing procedure, with the well re-entry scheduled to start later this month. The brine samples obtained will be tested by multiple Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) technology providers, with a focus on identifying the most efficient method for processing the lithium-rich brine. The results of these tests will inform future exploration and resource definition activities, including the planning of a second well and potential pilot plant operations in 2025.

 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Rock Man on October 9, 2024 at 3:51

Great to see. I wonder if the re-entry well is already cased? That makes things easier.

Perforate and extensive flow test to get good take on formation water characteristics.

Wonder if it has associated H2S?

Side note - drove through Luling (Tx) last night / the H2S rotten egg odor pervasive through the entire town and surrounding area around the old shallow oil field (which produces with about a 99% water cut)

I point this out since this is a concern of mine for any water "mining" operations in this area

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant 22 hours ago

U.S. Geological Survey report on Arkansas Lithium

Excerpt.  Link to full article follows.

https://www.usgs.gov/news/national-news-release/unlocking-arkansas-...

Using a combination of water testing and machine learning, a U.S. Geological Survey-led study estimated between 5 and 19 million tons of lithium reserves are located beneath southwestern Arkansas. If commercially recoverable, the amount of lithium present would meet projected 2030 world demand for lithium in car batteries nine times over. 

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Sam Goodman 21 hours ago

USGS says Southwest Arkansas has enough lithium "to replace U.S. imports and more"

https://www.magnoliareporter.com/news_and_business/local_business/a...

Using a combination of water testing and machine learning, a U.S. Geological Survey-led study estimated between 5 and 19 million tons of lithium reserves are located beneath southwestern Arkansas.

The USGS said in a statement issued Monday, October 21, 2024 that if commercially recoverable, the amount of lithium present would meet projected 2030 world demand for lithium in car batteries nine times over.

The study’s novel methodology, carried out collaboratively by the USGS and the Arkansas Department of Energy and Environment’s Office of the State Geologist, made it possible to quantify the amount of lithium present in brines located in a geological unit known as the Smackover Formation.

Extracting lithium from brines co-produced during oil and gas operations provides an opportunity to extract a valuable commodity from what would otherwise be considered a waste stream, the statement said.

Several companies, including Standard Lithium, Albemarle Corporation, ExxonMobil, Tetra Technologies. Pantera Minerals and TerraNova are in various stages of lithium brine leasing, exploration, financing and pilot plant refinements and construction for potential lithium production in Southwest Arkansas.

Albemarle and Lanxess, or their predecessors, have had brine wells in Union and Columbia counties since the 1960s, using the salt water for the production of the chemical element bromine, which is used in a wide variety of applications.

Standard Lithium, working with Lanxess in El Dorado, has pioneered the use of Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) to strip lithium from brine after Lanxess has processed the brine for bromine. The brine is then pumped back into the Smackover Formation to maintain pressure.

“Lithium is a critical mineral for the energy transition, and the potential for increased U.S. production to replace imports has implications for employment, manufacturing and supply-chain resilience. This study illustrates the value of science in addressing economically important issues,” said David Applegate, USGS director.

The Smackover Formation is a relic of an ancient sea that left an extensive, porous, and permeable limestone geologic unit that extends under parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida. It dates to the Jurassic geological time period and is known for its rich deposits of oil and bromine. In recent years, the Smackover Formation has also gained attention for potential lithium in brines—high-salinity waters associated with deep salt deposits.

“Our research was able to estimate total lithium present in the southwestern portion of the Smackover in Arkansas for the first time. We estimate there is enough dissolved lithium present in that region to replace U.S. imports of lithium and more. It is important to caution that these estimates are an in-place assessment. We have not estimated what is technically recoverable based on newer methods to extract lithium from brines,” said Katherine Knierim, a hydrologist and the study’s principal researcher.

Global demand for lithium, a critical mineral essential for battery production, has increased substantially in recent years. This trend is projected to persist as the transition from fossil fuels to electric and hybrid vehicles intensifies, underscoring the mineral's growing significance in energy technology advancements.

The U.S. relies on imports for more than 25% of its lithium. The USGS estimates there is enough lithium brought to the surface in the oil and brine waste streams in southern Arkansas to cover current estimated U.S. lithium consumption. The low-end estimate of 5 million tons of lithium present in Smackover brines is also equivalent to more than nine times the International Energy Agency’s projection of global lithium demand for electric vehicles in 2030.

The USGS predictive model provides the first estimate of total lithium present in Smackover Formation brines in southern Arkansas, using machine learning, which is a type of artificial intelligence. Samples from Arkansas were analyzed by the USGS Brine Research Instrumentation and Experimental lab in Reston, VA, and then compared with data from historic samples within the USGS Produced Waters Database of water from hydrocarbon production. The machine learning model was then used to combine lithium concentrations in brines with geological data to create maps that predict total lithium concentrations across the region, even in areas lacking lithium samples.

"The USGS – and science as well-- works best as a partnership, and this important research was possible because of our strong partnership with the Office of the Arkansas State Geologist,” said Dr. Knierim.

Since 1879, the USGS has been the nation’s primary source of impartial scientific information on geologic, energy and mineral resources. The USGS also tracks lithium production, demand and imports in the U.S. as part of its role mandated by the Energy Act of 2020 to maintain the whole of government List of Critical Minerals.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Rock Man 19 hours ago

More ammo for mineral owners to lobby for higher royalties

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Sam Goodman 11 minutes ago

The New York Times - Arkansas May Have Vast Lithium Reserves, Researchers Say

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/21/business/energy-environment/arka...

Researchers at the United States Geological Survey and the Arkansas government announced on Monday that they had found a trove of lithium, a critical raw material for electric vehicle batteries, in an underground brine reservoir in Arkansas.

With the help of water testing and machine learning, the researchers determined that there might be five million to 19 million tons of lithium — more than enough to meet all of the world’s demand for the metal — in a geological area known as the Smackover Formation. Several companies, including Exxon Mobil, are developing projects in Arkansas to produce lithium, which is dissolved in underground brine.

Whether lithium harvesting takes hold in the region will depend on the ability of those companies to scale up new methods of extracting the valuable battery ingredient from salty water. The processing technique that Exxon and others are pursuing in Arkansas, known as direct lithium extraction, generally costs more than more conventional methods do, according to the consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.

Energy and mining companies have long produced oil, gas and other natural resources in the Smackover, which extends from Texas to Florida. And the federal and state researchers said lithium could be extracted from the waste stream of the brines from which companies extracted other forms of energy and elements.

The energy industry, with the Biden administration’s encouragement, has been increasingly working to produce the raw materials needed for the lithium-ion batteries in the United States. A few projects have started recently, and many more are in various stages of study and development across the country.

Most of the world’s lithium is produced in Australia and South America. A large majority of it is then processed in China, which also dominates the manufacturing of electric vehicle batteries.

“The potential for increased U.S. production to replace imports has implications for employment, manufacturing and supply chain resilience,” David Applegate, the director of the United States Geological Survey, said in a statement announcing the study. “This study illustrates the value of science in addressing economically important issues.”

Federal researchers also have identified other potential resources that could produce large quantities of lithium, including the Salton Sea in Southern California, where Berkshire Hathaway Energy and other companies are working to extract lithium from hot liquid pumped up from an aquifer more than 4,000 feet below the ground by geothermal power plants.

Exxon Mobil recently drilled exploratory wells in Arkansas and was evaluating whether it could extract lithium in a cost-competitive way, Dan Ammann, the president of the company’s Low Carbon Solutions business, said in an interview last month.

“We know we have an attractive resource. We’re working on understanding that cost equation, understanding the supply-and-demand picture,” Mr. Ammann said at the time.

Exxon said last year that it aimed to enter production in 2027 and to be churning out enough lithium by 2030 to supply more than a million electric vehicles per year.

Lithium is already extracted from brine in Chile, one of the world’s largest producers of the metal. Companies operating there typically place brine in large ponds until the liquid has evaporated, leaving behind various minerals. That process is relatively cheap, but it takes time and may affect freshwater supplies.

Several companies are hoping that direct lithium extraction will allow them to more efficiently remove lithium from brine with the help of filters and other tools. Such an approach would use less land and could have a smaller environmental impact than evaporation ponds have. But it could take mining and energy companies years to perfect the technology and apply it at a large scale.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Ben Barnhill 8 hours ago

Skip, is the Smackover Lithium plan likely to extend into northeast Louisiana, specifically Union Parish et al?

• ▶ Reply

• ‹ Previous
• 1
• …
• 6
• 7
• 8
• Next ›
• Page