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Permalink Reply by Lisa on May 7, 2025 at 4:57

We have not signed a lease— yet. We will.

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Permalink Reply by Sam Goodman on Sunday

I don't have access to the Financial Times, but this sounds like a good article if anyone has a subscription: https://www.ft.com/content/ab1f74c5-4b07-465f-aa1f-3bf89418ba87
How the US plans to break China’s stranglehold on lithium

New technology that extracts the metal from underground brines has been compared to the shale revolution

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on Sunday

When it comes to lithium and rare earth minerals, one thing is clear.  The supply is currently limited and some countries have an advantage until the increasing demand and price reaches the point where investment dollars flow into efforts to produce more.  Then, in relatively short order, they are no longer scarce or as valuable. China has prioritized and subsidized lithium to support their EV auto companies.  China doesn't have a "stranglehold on lithium".  That's click bait.  All first world countries that want to support EVs will have their own supplies in the near future.  Start an internet alert with the keyword lithium and get numerous articles a day that illustrate this.

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on Tuesday

Arkansas Advocate: Who are the players in this lithium stuff?

• Arkansas Advocate

Standard Lithium: The Vancouver, B.C.-based company was one of the first movers on the lithium scene in Arkansas. It established a test plant in El Dorado in 2018 to test DLE processes using debrominated brine from the Lanxess South plant, which already draws up brine to extract bromine. The so-called Lanxess project hasn’t seen much movement, but Standard Lithium’s joint venture with Equinor, known as SWA Lithium or Smackover Lithium, is at the center of this third royalty application. Standard Lithium is also set to receive $225 million in federal funding from the U.S. Department of Energy to help fund the first phase of the SWA Project.

Equinor: A Norwegian energy company, already known in the U.S. for its Empire Wind project off the coast of New York. It bought a stake in the SWA Project last year.

Albemarle Corporation: A Fortune 500 chemical company that is already a major world player in the global lithium production industry. Its lithium evaporation ponds in Chile have garnered criticism for alleged impacts to water quality and the environment in the area. Currently, Albemarle operates bromine extraction plants in South Arkansas, around Magnolia. Last year the company sought and received permission from the AOGC to operate its own DLE test facility in South Arkansas. Albemarle was also a party to the royalty application that was heard in November.

Lanxess: Formerly known as Great Lakes Chemical Company, and Chemtura before that, Lanxess operates three bromine production facilities in Union County. Standard Lithium’s test facility is located at the Lanxess South plant. Lanxess was party to both the 2023 and 2024 lithium royalty applications.

Tetra Technologies: A Texas-based company in the energy, chemical and critical minerals sectors. It has operated a plant in West Memphis to create bromine fluids for oil and gas wells since the 1990s. Tetra possesses the Evergreen Unit in South Arkansas, which it plans to develop for lithium extraction with Saltwerx.

Saltwerx: A subsidiary of oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, Saltwerx was party to the November application, and recently received AOGC approval for its Pine Unit, a crucial step to get a future royalty determination of its own after the commission ruled last year that having an established brine unit was a prerequisite for establishing a royalty.

South Arkansas Minerals Association: Headed by Robert Reynolds — a former member of the state Pollution Control and Ecology Commission and one of the masterminds behind the initiative to replenish the Sparta Aquifer in Union County — the association represents the interests of South Arkansas mineral rights owners. SAMA objected to both previous royalty applications on a number of grounds, but has not formally objected to the Standard Lithium-Equinor royalty application.

Mineral Rights Owners: These people and companies own tracts of mineral rights — and no, that doesn’t mean that they own the land itself. Due to court rulings and property law, oftentimes the person or group that owns the mineral rights in a particular area is entirely different from the owner of the land. Under state law, if a substance, like lithium, is profitably extracted from the brine they own, then they are entitled to a royalty.

Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission: Both a regulatory agency and an adjudicatory body, the AOGC is charged with overseeing Arkansas’ oil and gas industry, along with certain other extractive industries that draw from underground resources. That includes lithium extraction from brine.

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Permalink Reply by Rock Man on Tuesday

Question everyone wants to know - how many of these groups will stay the course and survive over the next few years.

And which ones will actually start extracting lithium from Smackover water?

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on Tuesday

XOM will buy them all out except for Equinor/Standard Lithium.  But then again XOM can afford to pull up stakes, write off their AR investment and move to Texas where they can write their own brine legislation.  I suspect that may already be happening.

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Permalink Reply by Rock Man on Tuesday

Consolidation of all these efforts makes sense for a group like XOM. Some groups will take any money offered to walk away.

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Permalink Reply by Skip Peel - Mineral Consultant on Tuesday

If the predictions of higher lithium prices in the near future pan out, consolidation would be a good strategy for the larger, better funded players.

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Permalink Reply by Sam Goodman yesterday

Standard Lithium wins battle over lithium extraction royalty after Oil & Gas Commission unanimously approves proposal

by Brett Barrouquere | Updated May 28, 2025

https://www.arkansasonline.com/news/2025/may/28/standard-lithium-wi...

Mineral rights and landowners in southern Arkansas will receive a 2.5% royalty for lithium extracted from brine on their property after the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission voted 9-0 on Wednesday to approve the payment rate.

The vote came after a four-plus hour meeting at Southern Arkansas University in Magnolia during which commissioners heard from Standard Lithium, the company planning to do the extraction, landowners hoping for a different royalty structure and a variety of business and public officials in the area.

The decision ends a multi-year dispute between the company and landowners in Columbia and Lafayette counties in what’s known as the Smackover Formation, an area stretching from east Texas through Arkansas and into the western Panhandle of Florida.

Commissioner Charles Wohlford, backed by Commissioner Jim Phillips, moved to approve the 2.5% royalty, saying tying the payment to an indexed, marketable product makes sense.

“For me personally this royalty is fair, it’s consistent and it’s competitive,” Wohlford said.

The approved rate was the third one by pitched Standard Lithium and a hike from the 1.82% payment rejected by the state last year as not meeting the law’s requirement that royalty payments be “fair and equitable.”

Landowners in southern Arkansas, led by the South Arkansas Minerals Association, sought a sliding scale royalty payment, with a floor of about 4% and rising depending upon how much the extracted lithium sells for.

Much of the hearing focused on the profitability of lithium extraction and what royalty rate would allow the company to make money on the process.

Jesse Edmonson, director of government relations for Standard Lithium, said the company is spending $1.5 billion on the project, which will create 300 construction jobs as the plant is built and another 100 permanent jobs once it opens in 2028. Edmonson said 65% of the mineral rights owners live outside Arkansas, with only 17% being in-state residents.

“No one has better royalty rates than the royalty rates in Arkansas,” Edmonson said.

Later in the hearing, Jackson Braswell, the public affairs manager with Weyerhaeuser, a timber giant that owns 1.2 million acres in Arkansas, said the company has gotten better offers to mine timberland in the state.

“This proposal would not be line with the dynamics of the market,” Braswell said.

The hearing at times got testy, with Eamon Mahoney, vice president of the South Arkansas Minerals Association, saying Standard Lithium was dragging its feet in hopes that the commission would get frustrated and approve a low royalty payment.

“If we’re dependent on Standard Lithium … to do the right thing and propose a fair and equitable rate, we’re going to be here a long time,” Mahoney said. “We are giving up something. We’re giving up a little piece of Arkansas and we’re sending it all over the place in the form of this lithium.”

Phillips replied that the commission was considering the third pitch from Standard Lithium after the two sides couldn’t reach a compromise.

“That’s what this commission wanted, for y’all to work it out. Y’all couldn’t do it,” Phillips said “I don’t want you to get the impression that we’re just going to get tired and make a decision.”

Phillips told Mahoney and representatives from Standard Lithium that more than just the desires of the mineral rights owners at the hearing and the company are taken into consideration. There are other landowners who could be impacted by the vote, he said.

“We also have to consider the people who can’t afford to be here. There’s a whole bigger picture,” Phillips said.

One landowner, speaking during the public comment part of the hearing, described Standard Lithium’s proposal as “corporate greed.”

Joshua Gaines, who said he owns 45 acres with mineral rights in southern Arkansas, said Standard Lithium wants to make a show of funding educational and training efforts in the area, but use the money made by not paying the landowners to do it.

“They want it for free. They just want to take it,” Gaines said. “The decision you all make about this lithium royalty thing will affect people like me, who wear overalls to work everyday.”

Gaines suggested commissioners reject Standard Lithium’s proposal and look to oil royalties, which have been set for decades

“So 2.5% is laughable,” Gaines said. “I’d laugh you off my property with that offer.”

Bob Honea, an attorney representing Standard Lithium at the hearing, said the company has more than 1,000 mineral rights deals in Texas with better royalty rates. Arkansas has a chance to get in early on lithium extraction, but if royalty payments are too high, it could bring a quick end to the industry, he said.

“You don’t want to kill the goose that laid the golden egg,” Honea said. “That head start is going to evaporate if we don’t move fast.”

James Rankin, the attorney for South Arkansas Minerals Association, a group of landowners in the area, noted that the two prior royalty proposals from Standard Lithium were rejected because there wasn’t enough information to justify the payment scale.

The company failed again to provide enough information, Rankin said, and it threatened to leave the state if it didn’t get approval.

“Standard Lithium is sitting before you saying give us what we want or we’ll take our toys and go to Texas,” Rankin told commissioners. “That’s not going to happen.”

Standard Lithium, working with Equinor, a Norwegian energy company, is hoping to use a process called direct lithium extraction to create lithium carbonate from the salty brine in the Smackover Formation.

The administrations of both President Donald Trump and former President Joe Biden supported Standard Lithium’s work in Arkansas, with Biden’s team giving the company a $225 million Department of Energy development grant. The Trump administration gave the work project priority development in one of his initial executive orders.

Both administrations considered lithium a “critical mineral.”

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