On Thursday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Exxon Mobil is planning to build one of the biggest lithium processing facilities in the world in Arkansas. The planned facility would have the capacity to produce 75K-100K metric tons/year of lithium, according to the report.

Once the plant is operating at full capacity, it would be producing an amount roughly equal to 15% of all of the finished lithium produced in the entire world last year.

According to the report, it is expected the project will be built in stages, with modular trains constructed either together or in separate locations which would be close to the future lithium production sites in south Arkansas.

The report noted that Standard Lithium (SLI) and Tetra Technologies (TTI) are among other companies which are considering building capacity in the area.

The rush of companies flooding into the sector are looking at what is called the Smackover formation. It is a geological feature which runs from Texas to Florida. It contains a copious vein of saltwater brine which has small amounts of lithium in it. These companies believe they can build and scale infrastructure technologies capable of extracting the lithium and processing it.

Lithium is increasingly in demand due to the flood of enthusiasm for electric vehicles, which will often be powered by batteries which use lithium. Numerous electric vehicle manufacturers are scrambling to secure their sources of lithium as demand for the rare earth metal skyrockets.