Exxon to focus on lithium from brines, not hard rock mining, executive says

Exxon Mobil has no plans to expand into hard rock lithium mining and will stay focused on ways to extract the electric vehicle battery metal from salty brines found throughout the world, an executive said on Monday.

“We are focused on our core competencies, which is subsurface fluids,” Patrick Howarth, head of Exxon’s lithium business, told the Fastmarkets Lithium Supply and Battery Raw Materials Conference in Las Vegas.

The company is deciding which direct lithium extraction (DLE) technology it will license to produce lithium in Arkansas and does not plan to create its own. “We don’t believe it’s expeditious for us to develop our own DLE technology,” he said.

(By Ernest Scheyder; Editing by Chris Reese)

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