Exxon Bets on Lithium To Complement its Legacy Oil Business – Notice Today Online

ExxonMobil connected field metal producers this hebdomad in reiterating a bullish looking on long-term metal obligation despite the underway bearish mart and past toll give of the metal grave for the forcefulness transition.

Lithium prices have crashed in past months, dragged downbound by piling inventories amid speed ontogeny in automobile container sales. Lithium producers said early this assemblage that the underway low-price surround is “unsustainable” and could stop backwards investments in newborn supply.

However, every metal producers, including the world’s largest, Albemarle, are bullish most the long-term prospects of the key shelling metal.

Oil supermajor Exxon, which declared terminal assemblage plans to display metal in river and embellish a directive EV shelling bourgeois by 2030, is also pollyannaish most EV and metal obligation in the daylong constituent despite the bearish near-term mart prospects.

“What we’re sight correct today in metal is the view is bearish,” Exxon’s Lithium Global Business Manager, Apostle Howarth, told Bloomberg in an discourse on the sidelines of the Fastmarkets Lithium Supply and Battery Raw Materials Conference in Las Vegas.

“But inexplicit that is a obligation ontogeny news for EVs and the lithium-ion batteries that go into EVs,” Howarth said.

“We undergo the concern urgently needs significantly more metal than it’s producing today.”  

In the forcefulness transition, Exxon is equivocation its bets with a send to select metal from subsurface water deposits in south river and impact it onsite into a battery-grade material.

Related: Argentina’s First Ultra-Deepwater Well Comes Up Dry

In November, the lubricator colossus said it had started drilling the prototypal metal substantially in river as it aims to be a directive bourgeois of automobile vehicles by 2030.

Exxon targets prototypal metal creation for 2027 and is also evaluating ontogeny opportunities globally. By 2030, ExxonMobil aims to be producing sufficiency metal to cater the manufacturing needs of more than a meg EVs per year. The consort is in current discussions with possibleness customers, including EV and shelling manufacturers.

This week, Exxon signed a non-binding note of discernment with South Asiatic EV shelling developer SK On, which could pave the artefact to a multi-year offtake commendation of up to 100,000 amount heaps of Mobil Lithium from the company’s prototypal designed send in Arkansas. SK On plans to ingest the metal in its EV shelling manufacturing dealings in the United States. SK On currently operates digit shelling plants in Commerce, Georgia, and is antiquity quaternary more plants finished render ventures with author Motor Co. and Hyundai Motor Group.

“The concern needs more metal to hold its emissions goals, and we’re doing our conception to intend solutions nervy in the United States,” Dan Ammann, President of ExxonMobil Low Carbon Solutions, said, commenting on the agreement.  

Exxon is touting digit strengths in its forthcoming metal offering.

First, the production technologies and skills to display metal from unfathomable brines same those in river are rattling kindred to the ones the supermajor has been using for decades in its lubricator and pedal business. Second, Exxon also has a long-standing flush story of unfathomable theoretical partnerships with the moving industry.

Still, Exxon believes that its important lubricator playing module be necessary in the moving playing for some more years.

Amid ontogeny EV fleets, the concern “also needs ICE vehicles as substantially for some eld to come,” Exxon’s Howarth told Bloomberg.

“So I conceive our metal playing and lubricator playing crapper co-exist.”

Despite the past give in metal prices, Exxon and field metal producers continue to be bullish on the long-term prospects of the grave mineral. Exxon is convergent on the long-term fundamentals, which are bullish for metal suppliers, Howarth said at the Las Vegas conference.

“We’re rattling convergent on the principle of the inexplicit business,” the chief noted.

“We’re not afraid soured by baritone prices, and we’re not worn in by broad prices.” 

By Tsvetana Paraskova for Oilprice.com

More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: