Oil majors have lots of drilling, seismic, geophysical, petrological, geological info from oil and gas sedimentary basins around the world where they have already explored or produced hydrocarbons. If there is lithium in those basins I would think they will target those areas first for possible lithium extraction, huge initial cost savings, this is their IP and aligns most closely with their technical strength. Exactly what Exxon has done. But from what I have read extracting lithium from a former hydrocarbon source adds all sorts of additional and novel contaminants that have to be removed, whether that is practical is yet to be known, I guess Exxon will give us the answer over the coming years.
