IBAT CEO: Lithium Extraction in Smackover ‘Almost Child's Play’

IBAT CEO: Lithium Extraction in Smackover ‘Almost Child's Play’ 
 
Iris Jancik, the CEO of International Battery Metals, said the company is working with large E&Ps and majors, including Exxon Mobil and Occidental Petroleum, to explore lithium extraction projects.
 
Jordan Blum, editorial director, Hart Energy: We are here at CERAWeek 2025. I'm joined by Iris Jancik, the CEO of International Battery Metals. Thank you so much for joining us. So obviously here we're talking a lot about oil and gas, but also energy transition, critical minerals, and in this case we're talking about building up the domestic lithium supply chain. Can you tell me about what you all are working on and just the technology with direct lithium extraction?
 
Iris Jancik: Of course. And thank you so much for having us here. So IBAT, International Battery Metals, is a DLE technology company. So direct lithium extraction has been getting more and more attention as the new way to extract lithium, the new way to add untapped lithium to the supply chain locally, domestically in the U.S. And so this is something that has been on people's minds and people are trying to develop this technology for quite a long time. Our founder, the company, has been founded in 2018. Our founder is Dr. John Burba, who is considered the father of lithium. He is one of the two scientists who's behind the original FMC plant, recently Rio Tinto, which is the only DLE operational plant in the world. And so that the work that he did there was the base for our technology today, and it is fully patented. It is based on an absorbent and a process.
And so this whole process of direct lithium extraction goes really from the wellhead to producing lithium chloride and could be processed further of course to lithium carbonate to supply battery manufacturers. So about three years ago, we built our first plant. It was actually meant for a project in South America that did not materialize, and so it was put in storage until last January. During that time, however, when it was in storage, we fired up part of the plant and used it as a sampling facility and we sampled over 80 brines, mostly Smackover, but also from South America, to provide validation both for the technology and for resources. One of the famous or more talked about resource was the galvanic, where Exxon then acquired the land based on the sampling that was done in our facility. And as I mentioned last January, we were contacted by US Magnesium to come and support them on their site as they extract lithium from their synthetic brine.
So it's actually their byproduct of the magnesium process. We worked there for several months. It was a very challenging work environment, again, due to the fact that it was a unique brine. Nothing like what we would expect in the Smackover or in other natural resources, but it was a very successful project. We produced over 25 tons of lithium carbonate. We ran over 8,000 cycles. So just for reference, when other companies represent some of their work and their successes and talk about successful pilots, usually they're talking about 3-inch beaker in labs, and they are successful. But the challenge comes, and this is for every technology, probably in every industry, is when you try to scale up. And so for us being able to present in our case study that we've ran over 8,000 cycles on 3-foot diameter columns is very, very meaningful. Obviously there is no scaling up dilemma anymore when it comes to the technology. And in order to increase capacity, you simply add on columns.
 
JB: Yeah, so you're touching on it. Can you kind of elaborate on taking that modular facility approach and being more economically competitive that way?
 
IJ: Yes, very well. So the plant is fully modular, meaning it's all skid based, that's one thing. So very easy to transport and very easy to set up within the limitations of whatever the resource is in terms of space. The fact that it's modular allows for potential customers to de-risk their projects because they can start at lower capacities, demonstrate the technology, validate the resource as well, and then grow with adding on modules. Since each column is independent of the other, then basically to increase capacity, you just increase the number of columns so the technology can be proven and demonstrated with one single column, and the production capacity can be determined by the number of columns the client wants to put on the land.
 
JB: Great. So you have the first plant in Utah, but you're obviously looking to do more in the Smackover Formation. Can you discuss kind of what you all have in mind in this area that oil and gas companies are investing in too, such as Exxon Mobil, Occidental Petroleum?
 
IJ: Right. So yes, all the big players are involved and they have long-term strategies and long-term goals to achieve. And that's very important, especially since lithium prices aren't where we all want them to be. So it's these very pivotal players that are going to continue to develop the technology and then to develop the resources so that when the prices are where they need to be and the economics are all mature, then they'll be ready at the starting line. So we are looking for such players that again, have the resources both on the land and on the cash side and on the engineering capabilities to demonstrate our technology on their land at scale, commercial scale level with this specific plan that we have since taken out of the Utah site. And in addition, we are also looking at developing greenfield projects with new resources on the Smackover. We feel that after our challenging operations, again successful but challenging operations at US Mag, the Smackover will be almost child's play in terms of its consistency and knowing what hasn't changed in millions of years isn't going to change throughout the production. So that's going to be very good.
 
JB: Very good. So the Smackover might be the biggest growth area for you, but you can also extract lithium from produced water in some cases, produced water being a big issue in the Permian Basin out in West Texas. And I wanted to get your thoughts on what opportunities might be out there as well.
 
IJ: So one of the things that we've learned from our both testing and from the last plant operation is that our media is not just brine agnostic, but it's a concentration of lithium agnostic, meaning whatever lithium concentration is in the brine, get it out regardless if it's 50 ppm or 500 ppm, which means that even on produced water or resources that have lower concentrations of lithium, the technology is very efficient. Of course on the produced water, if lower concentrations are expected, then obviously there's a much larger cost of pumping the water and a lot more water that you actually need to move. And so produced water, which is all those parts of the operations are already sunken costs, can actually, you come from a negative revenue stream, so to speak, or a cost model where produce water costs minus a hundred dollars to now adding in a new revenue and making that minus 100 into a plus 50, for instance. So it's actually taking a cost center or a cost module for the operations and turning it over into a revenue stream.
 
JB: Might as well do something with it.
 
IJ: Absolutely. You're already pumping it, you're already spending the money to pre-treat it then. So, absolutely, why not add on the DLE? And that's how these companies are seeing it kind of as an add-on to their already existing facilities and being able to deploy such a plant in such a short time. For us then it's absolute an advantage that we can come and cooperate with these companies pretty quickly.
 
JB: So it's obviously early days there, but a lot of optimism.
 
IJ: A lot of optimism. These companies are obviously big and there's a long decision-making processes, but we're there and we're having these discussions and they have to do their proper due diligence and that is absolutely expected and how they should be working. And so we support them along the way of doing the testing, the sampling and really teaching them everything there's to know about the technology so that they can make the right decision and hopefully bring us on as partners.
 
JB: Very good. Well thank you so much for joining us here at CERAWeek. Really appreciate it. To read and watch more, please visit online at HartEnergy.com

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Permalink Reply by Sam Goodman on March 29, 2025 at 6:13

Here is another Hart Energy Q&A session from CERAWeek with IBAT CEO Iris Jancik.

International Battery Metals CEO Talks Direct Lithium Extraction

Velda Addison
March 18, 2025
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/international-battery-metals-ceo-tal...

As China continues to dominate global lithium processing and consumption, companies like International Battery Metals Ltd. (IBAT) are looking to boost lithium supplies and reshape mining in the U.S. by using direct lithium extraction.

The process, known as DLE, is considered cleaner, faster and more efficient than lithium processes that involve open pit mining or large evaporation ponds. By using adsorption, resin or membranes, lithium can be extracted directly from brines, including oilfield brines.

DLE is seen as a potential pathway to increase domestic production of the critical ingredient needed for electric vehicle (EV) batteries and systems that back up intermittent renewables on large-scale power grids and electronic devices.

But companies with DLE on their agendas face challenges that include proving and scaling the technology, a need for specific DLE regulations and weathering changing market conditions, which currently include a global lithium oversupply and depressed prices. Factors have included a slower-than-expected EV adoption and higher production from China.

IBAT brought its commercial-scale DLE facility online last year at a co-located site with US Magnesium (US Mag) near Salt Lake City, Utah. Operations at the plant, which used a proprietary absorbent to filter lithium from brine, have been put on hold and equipment moved.

Crain Communications’ Hart Energy spoke with Iris Jancik, CEO of IBAT, during CERAWeek by S&P Global. Jancik, who has served as CEO for the company since August, spoke about the plant, market conditions and lessons learned.

(Editor’s note: This interview has been edited for clarity, length and style.)

Velda Addison (VA): You are in your first year in the CEO role for IBAT. How is it going? What are some of the strategic priorities that you’ve set and what progress has been made?

Iris Jancik, CEO of IBAT. (Source: International Battery Metals)

Iris Jancik (IJ): I came in at a time that’s super critical for the market, and IBAT needs to be well positioned to be part of the growth of the lithium market. I think that we have achieved in doing that. In the past six months, the biggest milestones or strategic activities that we’ve done was first of all to build on our U.S. Magnesium project that we completed this summer. We’ve put out a case study, which is something that I worked on to be able to not just say, ‘Hey, we’ve done it,’ but to also show and actually present the compiled data, the numbers, the hard facts on how the technology works and that it does work in a very tough environment, which we managed there. That was a big milestone for us as well as using everything that we've learned. We’ve put together a very detailed lessons learned process.

VA: Can you tell me about some of those lessons learned?

IJ: Yes, a lot of the challenges that we faced in the project had to do with the quality of the brine and with contaminants, so implementing better engineering to deal with that is even better. We have learned that our media is very, very, very resilient and that our process is very open to fine tuning and that we can continue to produce even in very tough conditions. We don’t expect those type of conditions on the Smackover brines, for instance. We’re able to design the system in a much more efficient manner. So that’s one example.

Another one of the biggest lessons learned is that since we have that field experience, we were able to go back into the lab from the field and test the same brine and results, and basically be able to correlate what our process and media do in the lab compared to what they do in the field. Everybody here in the conference is talking about scale and scaling up and economics of scale. It’s one thing to be successful in the lab; it’s very different to be able to show scaling up and being successful in the field. Since we’ve done it, we’re now able to kind of reverse engineer the results and show that the results in the lab will work in the field and will be very, very similar. So that’s a big confidence boost to our potential customers and partners.

VA: Lithium prices continue to be depressed. What do you think is needed to help bring the supply and demand dynamics more into balance?

IJ: The prices today nobody really thinks that’s where they’re going to settle. I think there is—you’ve been hearing in this conference—some careful optimism that the prices will probably settle somewhere around $15,000 to $16,000. Going back to one of our lessons learned, our opex, our operational cost, is something that we were able to really work through during that operational period and the fact that we have operated the plant and can now guarantee the opex, which is very, very low, less than $1,000 per ton. So even at the $10,000 or $11,000 lithium market price, our technology is still very much economical, very much profitable and we’re working to even improve that more. So, I think the fact that the falling prices—and again we’re all hoping that they do go up a little bit—will motivate everybody to be more efficient, to lower capex, lower opex, and we have that motivation as well.

VA: IBAT is focused on lithium. But can your technology be used to extract other critical minerals?

IJ: The answer is yes. We’re just not focusing on that right now, but the potential is there.

VA: How are the operations going at the site with US Mag? I realize operations were suspended there back in September.

IJ: US Mag put operations on hold because they were responsible, like all resource owners will be responsible, for the pretreatment. And their pretreatment was very, very costly. And so, they wanted to put the project on hold so that they can continue to experiment and find better solutions for their pretreatment. Keep in mind that this is not normal brine; this is not natural brine right; this is a synthetic material that they accumulated over three decades and so it was very inconsistent. It had very, very high concentrations of other impurities and so they needed a more robust way to treat it that made economic sense. So, they had asked us to put the operation on hold.

We were producing lithium even with those conditions, but they wanted to make their end of the process cheaper.  So, they asked us to put it on hold and that’s when we made the strategic decision to leave the site so that we can use this plant and all the lessons learned that we’ve accumulated for other demonstration purposes. We’re not there anymore. We took the plant out. It’s currently in a temporary storage location where we are kind of touching it up, doing some of the modifications, some of the efficiencies that we’ve learned to do, changing out pumps, whatever it is, to again make it a more efficient process and working on finding its new home, basically.

VA: What would be a good new home for it?

IJ: So, good question. Now this plant is a demonstration plant. So, it’s not an operation plant. It was built originally as an operational plant or a production plant, but it’s a demonstration plant. The difference being it doesn’t have the redundancy and the support, auxiliary equipment to work 24-7, 365. So, it’s a commercial-scale demonstration plant. Who would be the right customers for such a plant? Landowners or resource owners that want to validate their resource. As you know, there’s currently no regulations for producing lithium commercially. And so, it would be for those players that have the funds, have made the strategic decision to be a player in lithium, whether it’s resource owners, developers, oil and gas, and so forth, but companies that want to be a big player in the lithium market and are now looking to really validate their resource and choose their technology. So that would be ideal for this plant because it can demonstrate the technology at scale.

VA: You mentioned regulations. What would you like to see policy-wise?

IJ: I think it depends. I know that Arkansas, Texas and Nevada are all in different places on the regulatory time schedule. There’s a lot of references made to the oil and gas industry which works on some parts, not necessarily on others, but we do know that the produced water avenue or option is a lot more viable at this point and that is something that can move forward. So, we would like, obviously, to see progress made on greenfield projects and on commercial extraction and selling of lithium.

VA: So, we have a new administration in the U.S. with an energy dominance agenda. What opportunities do you think that presents for the lithium sector?

IJ: Maybe the biggest thing that has happened so far are the tariffs and export limitations on China that have to do with resins. Certain resins and materials that come from China that are now limited is great for IBAT. Our media, everything in our equipment is 100% U.S. made, and so that definitely gives us an advantage. And then we know that China is responsible for over 60% of the processing of lithium in the world. We will definitely need to bring that home. Hopefully, it seems that this administration is leaning in that direction.

Permalink Reply by James Barbu on April 1, 2025 at 4:35

I am following IBAT closely.   You don’t hear alot about them…very low key,but may have the most robust proof to date.   I have a sense within next 6-12 months they could upend  the status quo.

Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on April 1, 2025 at 4:45

We have been following IBAT and Dr. Burba for a number of years.  One of our members knew he lived in Atlanta, Tx. and pointed him out early on.  The question has been, who does IBAT see as their target customers?  All the plants planned in SW AR are much different in scale and design than IBAT's  modular, transportable system.  There are numerous other DLE technologies and no company has to use Dr. Burba's so where does IBAT fit in here in the emerging Ark-La-Tex lithium play?  One of the local news reporters who works with us has an interview set up with Iris Jancik and plans to ask that question.  Stay tuned.

Permalink Reply by Sam Goodman on April 1, 2025 at 8:47

Welcome aboard James!

I've posted some news and articles about IBAT on other threads, hopefully you can find them.  IBAT does have an interesting, low key modular setup, which would be perfect on small plots of land but can be expanded.

Have you seen this video of their CEO with Hart Energy?  https://www.hartenergy.com/exclusives/ibat-ceo-lithium-extraction-s...

also the second half of this audio:  https://open.spotify.com/episode/56UaF1vDxgryBL37jC5ufS

Once again welcome!

Permalink Reply by Sam Goodman yesterday

INTERNATIONAL BATTERY METALS LTD. ANNOUNCES JOSEPH A. MILLS AS CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER AND DIRECTOR OF THE COMPANY

News provided by

International Battery Metals Ltd. 

Apr 07, 2025, 19:04 ET

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/international-battery-meta...

VANCOUVER, BC and HOUSTON, April 7, 2025 /PRNewswire/ - International Battery Metals Ltd. ("IBAT" or the "Company") (TSXV: IBAT) is pleased to announce the appointment of Joseph A. Mills to serve as Chief Executive Officer and a member of the board of directors of the Company (the "Board"), effective April 7, 2025.

Mr. Mills has extensive experience in the oil & gas upstream, midstream and mineral businesses. Over his 40+ plus year career, Mr. Mills has closed numerous M&A transactions and has served as CEO of three public companies and two private exploration & production companies. He has held various leadership and board positions in private and public companies, including CEO, president, chairman of the board and audit committee chair. Mr. Mills is a graduate of the University of Houston with an MBA in Finance and the University of Texas with a BBA in Petroleum Land Management.

Mr. Mills commented; "I am pleased and honored to join International Battery Metals Ltd. and work with the Board and its employees to further develop and enhance the Company's business strategy and execution at such a pivotal time in the Company's history. This is a company with incredible potential, a strong foundation, and a very talented team. I look forward to working closely with the Board, our employees, and partners to drive our vision forward and create meaningful shareholder value for all of our stakeholders."

"The Board is pleased to welcome Joseph Mills as the next Chief Executive Officer of International Battery Metals, Ltd. He brings a wealth of experience, strategic vision, and a proven track record of leadership that we believe will be instrumental in guiding the Company into its next chapter of growth and innovation. We are confident that under his leadership, the Company will continue to execute on its mission and deliver long-term value for our shareholders, customers, and employees" said John Burba, Chairman of the Board.

Mr. Mills succeeds Iris Jancik, who was named CEO of IBAT in August 2024. The Company wishes to thank Ms. Jancik for her contributions.

About International Battery Metals Ltd.

The Company's direct lithium extraction technology is based on proprietary lithium extraction media housed in patented extraction towers that are enclosed in a modular, transportable platform that is able to be loaded and brought into production within a condensed time frame after arrival on a customer site.

Utilizing the patented technology, the Company's focus has been on advanced extraction of lithium chloride from ground water salt brine deposits and returning the same water to the subsurface aquifer. The Company's unique patented technology ensures faster delivery of lithium chloride while ensuring minimal environmental impact.

"John Burba"

John Burba, Director and Chairman of the Board

Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant yesterday

Well that's not a good look.  Although Jancik was hired in August of 2024, in the job for only eight months, she was basically AWOL for the first two months. 

Permalink Reply by Sam Goodman yesterday

Not sure what happened after she was just interviewed supporting the company at the CERA event.  The new CEO Joseph Mills does seem to be more integrated in O&G, minerals, along with M&A.  They could be on the cusp of seeing some sort of transition with the company, be it a merge, new contract, buyout, or sale.  Mr. Mills seems to have a long history of working through transactions.

A little history about him I was able to find: https://www.smartbusinessdealmakers.com/articles/topic/when-integra...

https://www.uh.edu/uh-energy-innovation/uh-energy/about-uh-energy/a...

Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant yesterday

Jancik was schedule for an interview today with Liz Swaine our local business reporter.  She was contacted by IBAT this morning to cancel the interview.  That puts a big question mark on why and how this happened.

Permalink Reply by Sam Goodman yesterday

This article was released today but it's behind a paywall..

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston/news/2025/04/08/joseph-mills-in...

Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant yesterday

I look forward to knowing more about Mr. Mills.  From what I can gather, he seems an odd choice.  Talos is a deep water oil E&P.   Jancik was hired to raise money.  So that was her supposed expertise.

Permalink Reply by Sam Goodman 19 hours ago

Hopefully Liz Swaine can land an interview with Joseph Mills, so we can get a better feel of his ideas and projections for the future of the company.

I never read Jancik was hired to raise money, it was my understanding she was hired to clean things up and move the company to the TSX, which she did.  That being said, a new interview and article would help everyone to better understand where the company is now headed!

Permalink Reply by James Barbu 19 hours ago

Seems Mills is there to strike a deal/merge/sale of biz to oil and gas.   Opening line in the ibat PR is about his M&A experience.

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