(Bloomberg) — Exxon Mobil Corp. plans to become one of the biggest suppliers of lithium for electric vehicles, marking the oil giant’s first major foray outside of fossil fuels in decades.
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Exxon will extract the metal from underground saltwater reservoirs in the Smackover Formation in southern Arkansas, employing a novel method called Direct Lithium Extraction not currently deployed at scale. Exxon aims to produce its first lithium by 2027 and ramp up output to the equivalent of 1 million electric vehicles annually by 2030.
That level of production would amount to about 100,000 tons a year, Dan Ammann, president of Exxon’s Low Carbon Solutions business, said during an interview Monday. It would also make Exxon one of the top ten producers globally.
“We’re producing lithium here domestically instead of importing it from China and elsewhere,” Ammann…
