Oil and gas majors are stepping up efforts to break into lithium to diversify beyond fossil fuels as hopes rise over a technological breakthrough to produce the metal critical for electric car batteries.
ExxonMobil, Schlumberger, Occidental Petroleum and Equinor are exploring whether their core skills of pumping, processing and reinjecting underground fluids such as oil and water could be deployed to process lithium from unconventional brine resources, helping to ease forecast shortages of a material expected to be vital for the energy transition.
“There are a number of oil and gas majors putting a lot of time and attention into how they can become big in lithium,” said Brian Menell, chief executive of TechMet, a mining investment fund backed by the US government. TechMet has a stake in EnergySource Minerals (ESM), a lithium developer backed by oilfield services giant Schlumberger.