NBC News Spotlights Arkansas as Front Line in America’s Lithium Race
National attention is increasingly turning to South Arkansas, where one of the country’s most ambitious lithium projects is positioning the state as a potential cornerstone of domestic critical minerals strategy.
NBC News recently traveled to El Dorado for a segment on “Hallie Jackson Now,” highlighting Standard Lithium Ltd.’s efforts to extract lithium from the Smackover Formation using direct lithium extraction technology.
The report framed Arkansas as a key player in the nation’s effort to reduce reliance on foreign sources of lithium, a mineral essential for electric vehicles, consumer electronics, energy storage systems and military technologies.
At Standard Lithium’s demonstration facility at Lanxess in El Dorado, NBC showed how lithium-rich brine is pumped from deep underground and processed using DLE technology, which company officials describe as a cleaner and more efficient alternative to traditional mining methods.
Standard Lithium is in a joint venture with Norwegian energy giant Equinor called Smackover Lithium, which is building a $1.45 billion direct lithium extraction plant in Lafayette County. That plant, the South West Arkansas Project, recently received a favorable environmental review from the U.S. Department of Energy, which previously awarded the project a $225 million grant to support the plant’s development.
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In all, Standard Lithium aims to produce more than 20,000 tons of lithium annually beginning in 2029 — a figure NBC reported would be roughly four times current U.S. production.
The report also highlighted U.S. Geological Survey estimates suggesting Arkansas’ lithium resources could be among the largest in the world if proven commercially recoverable.
