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Smackover Formation
Geological formation in southeastern U.S. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Smackover Formation is a geologic formation that extends under parts of Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, and Florida.[1] It preserves fossils dating back to the Jurassic period. The formation is a relic of an ancient sea that left an extensive, porous, and permeable limestone geologic unit.
The Smackover Formation consists of oolitic limestones and silty limestones.[2][3]
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Mineral resources
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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.[citation needed]
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.[4]
A 2022 report estimated that the lithium brine in the formation has "sufficient lithium to produce enough batteries for 50 million electric vehicles."[5] 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.[6] Results from multiple exploration wells in Lafayette County, Arkansas had found an average lithium concentration of 582 mg/L (4,860 lb/million US gal) 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, 616 mg/L (5,140 lb/million US gal).[7]
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