This edition of Core Elements continues the topic of lithium extraction from brines we covered a few weeks ago. We will look at new studies of the Smackover brine in U.S. basins and in Devonian formations in Canada’s Saskatchewan Basin.
Rasoul Sorkhabi
Editor, Core Elements
Lithium Recovery from Smackover Formation Brines
Map of the Smackover Formation/Wikimedia Commons
The Smackover Formation spreads widely across Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida, and is a major oil-producing formation. Smackover Formation waters contain the richest lithium concentrations in U.S. basins.
Lithium production more than doubled between 2021 and 2024.
Currently, 60 percent of lithium is mined from hard rocks, mainly in Australia and China.
Hard-rock mining results in open pits, water use, toxic mining tailings, carbon emissions, and environmental pollution.
The remaining 40 percent of lithium production comes from salty waters, mostly through evaporative technologies in the Lithium Triangle of Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia.
Evaporative technologies are time-consuming and result in water depletion, land use, and conflicts with indigenous populations.
Direct lithium extraction (DLE) from oilfield and geothermal field brines does not have any of the environmental and resource issues mentioned above.
DLE extracts lithium from brine resources, which can then be reinjected into subsurface reservoirs or treated for reuse.
The Smackover Formation:
Age: Late Jurassic (Oxfordian)
Lithology: Mainly limestone, both silty limestone and oolitic limestone
Oil discovery: The 1922 discovery of the Smackover Field in southern Arkansas resulted in an oil boom and gave the formation its name.
Depth and porosity: The Upper Smackover sediments at depths of 7,600–9,100 feet and porosities of 10–30 percent have favorable reservoir properties for lithium extraction.
Lithium resources:
Aaron Malone and coauthors report lithium concentrations mainly in the range from 227 to 531 parts per million (ppm) in Smackover brines.
Xiang Huang and coauthors report lithium concentrations of 1 to 1,700 ppm with an average of 74 ppm in Smackover brines.
Using a combination of water testing and machine learning, the U.S. Geological Survey in 2024 estimated between 5 and 19 million tons of lithium reserves in the Smackover Formation beneath southwestern Arkansas.
If commercially recoverable, this amount of lithium would meet the projected 2030 world demand for lithium in car batteries nine times over.
Smackover lithium brine production ventures:
In 2023, ExxonMobil drilled the first lithium well in Arkansas.
In 2024, Equinor entered a strategic partnership with Standard Lithium, acquiring a 45 percent share in two lithium companies in Southwest Arkansas and East Texas.
In 2025, Chevron announced its purchase of lithium-rich acreage from two companies: TerraVolta and East Texas Natural Resources. Chevron acquired leases totaling 125,000 acres across Texas and southern Arkansas.
Water consumption: According to Aaron Malone and coauthors, freshwater consumption in lithium extraction is a considerable issue.
Coproduction ventures: Xiang Huang and coauthors note that the coproduction of geothermal power and brine lithium in Smackover oil fields can be a major industrial development.
Smackover reservoir temperatures are about 165 degrees Celsius at depths of about 5,500 meters.
Go deeper: Read this article on the history of Smackover brine lithium.
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Sediment Contribution to Brine Lithium Enrichment in the Saskatchewan Basin
Wikimedia Commons
An experimental study published in the Journal of Geochemical Exploration shows how diagenesis processes in sedimentary rocks can influence lithium enrichment in oilfield brines.
Let’s take a look.
What they did:
Thomas Avram and colleagues collected samples from the Devonian-age Birdbear, Duperow, and Souris River formations in the southeastern Saskatchewan Basin.
The samples came from depths of 1,642 to 2,367 meters with lithium concentrations of 152 to 334 ppm.
They measured bulk geochemistry and mineralogy of samples by ICP-MS and XRD methods to obtain data on elemental and mineralogical compositions.
They conducted leaching experiments to quantify the amount of lithium released from the sediment samples.
Solutions of calcium, magnesium, and potassium ions were prepared and used for the leaching experiments.
Monte Carlo simulations:
The researchers also ran Monte Carlo simulations to estimate lithium concentrations in brines that could be attributed to leaching from sediments.
Monte Carlo simulations were run 100,000 times with input variables randomly sampled from the defined ranges.
The modeled system consisted of carbonate-hosted fluid (with lithium) leached from an adjacent shale unit.
Equations used for the simulations:
Shale mass x shale lithium concentration x proportion of lithium leached = mass lithium liberated
What they found: The study showed that elevated temperatures and concentrations of calcium and magnesium enhanced the release of lithium from sediments to brine.
Why it matters:
The results indicate that diagenetic processes such as illitization and dolomitization in sedimentary rocks influence lithium enrichment in formation waters.
This study contributes toward the development of a mineral-system approach to brine lithium exploration.
Go deeper: Read a similar experimental work reported in Fuel.
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