Not heard any announcements, so maybe what I heard was a little premature? But I heard the same story again that the area has been sold.  Seller retains an option on wells drilled, buyer commits to drilling 3 wells per year for the next 4 years. No idea who the buyer may be.

I beg pardon from everyone if my observations related to this discussions are off base or otherwise nonsense.

I and my sister own 126 acres in northern Union Parish within the Ora Field.  We were offered and accepted a "top lease" last summer that took effect this March. The leaseholder is Southwest, but was executed through "Dudley Land Company".  It actually surprised me that Southwest was interested in renewing the lease at all.  I and my sister didn't quibble over the lease as it was pretty close to the terms of the previous one and we had an understanding that the Brown Dense was pretty inactive anyway.

I periodically check activity on "gohanyesvilleshale.com" and noticed this discussion. Still, didn't see anything to get my hopes up over in this thread.  Then I saw an advertisement yesterday on Fox Business for a lithium extraction company with the entire ad highlighting their focus on the "smackover" region for lithium extraction. Further google searches on lithium and the interest of the industry in the Smackover region indicates the extraction process has similarities to drilling for oil and gas only pumping up lithium bearing "brine". It also indicates that lithium prices are high and has a very high return on investment.

I guess all this makes me wonder if southwest renewed all these leases with the intent of selling to lithium companies such as Standard Lithium. I believe it was an ad from that company with its CEO Robert Mintak highlighting "smackover" as a major area of interest for their company.

This is a link to an article discussing this companies leasing 33,000 acres in "the smackover" for brine wells and lithium extraction.

http://www.magnoliareporter.com/news_and_business/local_business/ar...

http://standardlithium.com/2018/01/08/standard-lithium-acquires-lit...

Any thoughts on this possibility?