Well , well , well — look who ’s decided electric cars are n’t such a regretful idea after all . Oil heavyweight ExxonMobil is enthrone in the future tense by buy drilling rights for lithium in Arkansas , the Wall Street JournalreportedSunday .
There ’s a lot of profit to be made in finding and harvesting new atomic number 3 reserves justly now . As the world pivots off from Exxon ’s main product , experts project that need for lithium could surge up to 40 times by 2040 , thanks to the large - scale shift to galvanizing vehicles . The Biden administration is actively encouraging the development of domestic Li reserves as carmakers expressmounting concernsover a potential famine . ( We maynot actually need all that atomic number 3 , specially if we choose to prioritize things like public passage and makingsmaller vehiclesrather than gigantic SUVs — but I digress . )
Exxon paid more than $ 100 million for 120,000 Akka in Arkansas , which it project to drill in the upcoming month , according to the Wall Street Journal . That sounds like a mass , but it ’s chump change when you consider that last month Exxon posted a record - breaking $ 11.43 billionfirst - quarter profit . It ’s not on the nose the target of a serious pin to clean push — especially when Exxon has read it has no plans to cut oil production or endow well in renewables . Still , Exxon buying into Li is a sign of the speedy world-wide shift toward sportsmanlike energy ; insiders intimate with the quite a little reportedly severalize the Journal that the company would look at expanding its operations if the region in Arkansas , which could hold enough lithium to juice 50 million EVs , proves profitable .
Photo: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images)
Exxon ’s investment is “ a authoritative hedgerow against the aspect of eventually declining oil colour demand , ” Pavel Molchanov , an analyst at investment cant Raymond James , tell apart the Journal .
Weirdly , Exxon actually has a historical foothold in the lithium manufacture . Some of the earliest foundations in lithium enquiry were made at the oil giant , when British chemist Stanley Whittingham madekey discoveriesin assault and battery engineering while work at Exxon . Exxon make up an early prototype of the lithium battery to apply in vehicle but stopped that effort due to lack of requirement . Whittingham and two other scientists bring home the bacon a Nobel Prize in 2019 for their work on the batteries . Exxon , for its part , has continued to make smallinvestmentsandinnovationsin lithium ion applied science throughout the geezerhood .
Even though the modern EV battery was born in an Exxon lab , and even though Exxon has had a foothold in the diligence for decades , the company has n’t always been so keen on seeing lithium battery succeed — or , at least , replace its main product . In 2016,documents obtainedby Unearthed , Greenpeace ’s investigative arm , show how the company lobby the UK government and governance in the EU against the espousal of electric vehicles . In 2019 , CEO Darren Woods secern a crew at an oil and gas diligence get together devoted to mood targets ( lol ) that hedoesn’t empathise the percentage point of electric vehicle .
The society has seemingly since change its tune on eV : Last twelvemonth , Woods told CNBC that hethinkselectric cars could become the entirety of the newfangled car market by 2040 . The CEO was astonishingly rosy about what that might mean for his company , projecting that that major shift key would only deoxidize demand for oil down to 2013 - 2014 levels — a time when the ship’s company was still making a net profit .
Like all climate moves Exxon make , let ’s not forget that the company bear on to exert substantialpressures behind - the - scenes in Washingtonto piece of work against climate legal action . Making a fiddling cash from electric vehicles is n’t going to change decades of ruining the major planet .
Correction 5/24/23 11:04 AM ET : A late version of this tale referred to ExxonMobil investing in lithium “ mining ” ; really , the company would be drilling for the mineral .
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