From Oil to Lithium: Texas's Next Energy Revolution

Major oil companies are drilling in East Texas again, but not for oil. This time, they're after lithium for batteries and other rare elements. Chevron and Halliburton announced East Texas projects this summer. Exxon has acreage across the border in Arkansas. Smackover Lithium, a joint venture of a Norwegian oil giant and a Canadian miner, announced in late September the discovery of the most lithium-rich fluids ever reported in North America, measured deep beneath its Texas claims in a massive brine deposit called the Smackover Formation. "It's…