Oil and gas companies are looking to turn their wastewater into gold — or something almost as prized: lithium.
Lithium is a key ingredient of many electric vehicle batteries. It’s traditionally mined from deep underground. But the highly sought-after mineral is also found in the salty wastewater produced through oil and natural gas drilling, write Hannah Northey and Shelby Webb.
Major oil companies say they are on the verge of commercializing technologies that can extract lithium from the brine in producing wells. That could supercharge the domestic supply of lithium for electric car batteries, boosting the Biden administration’s electric vehicle goals.
And it could mean that the oil companies, which have produced so much of the fossil fuel driving the climate crisis, could get yet another new revenue stream based on the transition to cleaner energy. (See also: carbon storage, geothermal and wind.)
A salty solution?
Demand for lithium — and other minerals such as nickel, cobalt and graphite — is skyrocketing as automakers around the world ramp up production of electric cars and trucks to meet carbon emission reduction goals. In the U.S., greenhouse gases from the transportation sector are the largest contributor to global warming.
Companies usually mine hardrock and clay for lithium or access the silvery-white metal through evaporation using massive ponds. China processes up to 70 percent of the world’s lithium supply, a continued sore spot for the Biden administration, which has sought to boost domestic production.
The U.S. is poised to increase lithium production through traditional mining projects like Nevada’s Thacker Pass mine, which is currently under construction.
But domestic and global supply will need to ramp up much more to meet the demand, and the oil industry is looking to close that gap by directly removing lithium from brine in salt flats and bodies of water.
A single week’s worth of wastewater from hydraulic fracturing could conceivably produce enough lithium for 300 electric vehicle batteries. For context, the industry produces billions of barrels of briny wastewater every year.
Exxon Mobil is already looking to build one of the world’s largest lithium processing plants in a producing region in Arkansas known as the Smackover, which is rich with saltwater brine after decades of oil and gas extraction.
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