Privately-held Energy Exploration Technologies (EnergyX) says it’s planning to build a processing plant, for its Chilean lithium with General Motors as an off-taker, in the “Ark-La-Tex” region where Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas join.
This Lonestar Lithium project targets production of about 4,500 tonnes a year in its first stage, and about 23,000 tonnes a year in stage two, the company said on Thursday. A timeline for the stages wasn’t immediately clear.
“Project Lonestar Lithium will take us one step closer to securing the United States battery supply chain,” EnergyX CEO Teague Egan, who started the company in 2018 after stints in venture capital and entertainment, said in a news release. “We still have a long way to go, but it is crucial that U.S.-based companies really focus on developing domestic resources to reduce our reliance on external, offshore suppliers.”
Last year, GM led a US$50 million financing round that included South Korean metals company POSCO as another off-taker.
Direct extraction
Puerto-Rico based EnergyX is developing its version of direct lithium extraction from several exisiting methods and is advancing its own solid state lithium ion battery. It also acquired a lithium resource in Chile last year and received a US$5 million U.S. government grant to help build a demonstration precursor to Lonestar Lithium.
The Chile holding is about 365 sq. km of mining concessions. The total potential inferred resource is in the range of 2.6 million to 5.5 million tonnes supporting a 40,0000-tonne-per-annum lithium plant, the company said. Multiple surface samples collected indicate good lithium concentration topping over 400 milligtrams per litre, it added.
The company has partnered with builder Kiewet to undertake the initial front-end engineering plans of project Lonestar, and to help enhance the scalability and efficiency of EnergyX’s suite of LiTAS direct lithium extraction.
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