for Texas The Smackover Formation has been a prolific source of petroleum since the 1920s and, since the 2000s, brine has been refined to extract bromine. In the 2020s, feasibility studies to extract commercial quantities of
lithium are underway. The 1922 discovery of the
Smackover oil field, after which the Smackover Formation is named, resulted in a sizeable
oil boom in southern Arkansas. In addition to being a petroleum reservoir, as of 2015, the brine from the Smackover Formation is the only source of commercial
bromine in the United States. A 2022 report estimated that the lithium brine in the formation has "sufficient lithium to produce enough
batteries for 50 million
electric vehicles." In October 2024, federal and state researchers announced the formation may hold five to 19 million tons of lithium, which is about nine times the annual worldwide demand for electric vehicles projected for 2030. Results from multiple exploration wells in
Lafayette County, Arkansas had found an average lithium concentration of in the subsurface brine of the upper Smackover Formation including one exploration well with the highest lithium concentration yet reported in the Southwest Arkansas Smackover formation, . ==See also==