EnergyX Expands Acreage in Smackover Lithium Region

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EnergyX Expands Acreage in Smackover Lithium Region

General Motors-backed Energy Exploration Technologies Inc. (EnergyX) has signed a binding conditional agreement to acquire Daytona Lithium Pty. Ltd. from Pantera Lithium Ltd. for AUD 40 million. Daytona Lithium owns 35,000 gross acres on Arkansas’ side of the Smackover formation, which EnergyX sees as “North America’s most promising lithium region”. San Juan, Puerto Rico-based EnergyX […]

General Motors-backed Energy Exploration Technologies Inc. (EnergyX) has signed a binding conditional agreement to acquire Daytona Lithium Pty. Ltd. from Pantera Lithium Ltd. for AUD 40 million.

Daytona Lithium owns 35,000 gross acres on Arkansas’ side of the Smackover formation, which EnergyX sees as “North America’s most promising lithium region”.

San Juan, Puerto Rico-based EnergyX already holds 12,500 acres on the Texas side. Last year the company announced Project Lonestar, to rise in the “Ark-La-Tex” region. The project aims to produce 50,000 metric tons per annum (MMtpa) of lithium hydroxide by 2030, with a first phase of 12,500 MMtpa to be put into operation by 2028.

“The company has already had samples of lithium from its pilot plant in Austin, TX qualified by cathode customers”, EnergyX said.

“Now with a solid resource footprint for Project Lonestar™, EnergyX will vertically integrate its proprietary LiTAS® Direct Lithium Extraction technology platform to produce low-cost lithium for its growing customer base. EnergyX can unlock unprecedented efficiencies in lithium production, leveraging its patented technology portfolio to achieve faster extraction, higher recovery rates, and reduced environmental impact”.

The parties expect to complete the stock and cash transaction in the third quarter, subject to approval by shareholders of West Perth, Australia-based Pantera. EnergyX will issue over 2.34 million shares priced US$9.5 per unit or AUD 34 million in total and pay AUD 6 million in cash in three installments.

“This deal allows Pantera to retain strong exposure to the Smackover Play – now the most sought-after lithium province in the United States – while also gaining exposure to EnergyX’s large-scale Black Giant Project in Chile, which is well advanced and targeting production in 2027”, said Pantera executive chair Barnaby Egerton-Warburton.

The project in Chile, where Energyx owns about 100,000 acres acquired 2023, targets to produce 7,500 MMtpa LCE in phase 1 and add 52,500 MMtpa LCE in the second phase.

“Overall, by aligning Pantera’s Smackover Project with this powerhouse, we’ve created a synergistic platform that connects one of North America’s most prospective lithium brine basins with EnergyX’s advanced extraction tech and downstream ambitions”, Egerton-Warburton added.

“The transaction delivers immediate capital, operational momentum, and a long-term strategic relationship that could see Pantera own a cornerstone of the North American lithium supply chain”.

EnergyX chief executive Teague Egan said, “EnergyX is now poised to deliver a scalable, sustainable lithium supply to major EV makers, battery cell manufacturers, and cathode makers from our production facilities in the Americas”.

“With 50,000 acres positioned adjacent to Exxon, Chevron, and Standard Lithium in the Smackover, the race is on to see who will be the first to produce commercial battery-grade lithium”.

Last month Chevron said it had acquired two Smackover leaseholds spanning about 125,00 net acres, saying the purchases mark the first step in its establishment of a commercial-scale lithium business in the U.S.

The acreage positions, from East Texas Natural Resources LLC and The Energy & Minerals Group’s TerraVolta Resources, straddle Northeast Texas and Southwest Arkansas, Chevron said.

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Enterprises will strengthen networks to take on AI, survey finds

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CoreWeave acquires Core Scientific for $9B to power AI infrastructure push

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CoreWeave achieves a first with Nvidia GB300 NVL72 deployment

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“For CIOs, this shift means more competition for AI infrastructure. Over the next 12–24 months, securing capacity for AI workloads will likely get harder, not easier. Though cost is coming down but demand is increasing as well, due to which CIOs must plan earlier and build stronger partnerships to ensure availability,” said Pareekh Jain, CEO at EIIRTrend & Pareekh Consulting. He added that CIOs should expect longer wait times for AI infrastructure. To mitigate this, they should lock in capacity through reserved instances, diversify across regions and cloud providers, and work with vendors to align on long-term demand forecasts. “Enterprises stand to benefit from more efficient and cost-effective AI infrastructure tailored to specialized AI workloads, significantly lower their overall future AI-related investments and expenses. Consequently, CIOs face a critical task: to analyze and predict the diverse AI workloads that will prevail across their organizations, business units, functions, and employee personas in the future. This foresight will be crucial in prioritizing and optimizing AI workloads for either in-house deployment or outsourced infrastructure, ensuring strategic and efficient resource allocation,” said Neil Shah, vice president at Counterpoint Research. Strategic pivot toward AI data centers The OpenAI-Oracle deal comes in stark contrast to developments earlier this year. In April, AWS was reported to be scaling back its plans for leasing new colocation capacity — a move that AWS Vice President for global data centers Kevin Miller described as routine capacity management, not a shift in long-term expansion plans. Still, these announcements raised questions around whether the hyperscale data center boom was beginning to plateau. “This isn’t a slowdown, it’s a strategic pivot. The era of building generic data center capacity is over. The new global imperative is a race for specialized, high-density, AI-ready compute. Hyperscalers are not slowing down; they are reallocating their capital to

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Data center capacity continues to shift to hyperscalers

However, even though colocation and on-premises data centers will continue to lose share, they will still continue to grow. They just won’t be growing as fast as hyperscalers. So, it creates the illusion of shrinkage when it’s actually just slower growth. In fact, after a sustained period of essentially no growth, on-premises data center capacity is receiving a boost thanks to genAI applications and GPU infrastructure. “While most enterprise workloads are gravitating towards cloud providers or to off-premise colo facilities, a substantial subset are staying on-premise, driving a substantial increase in enterprise GPU servers,” said John Dinsdale, a chief analyst at Synergy Research Group.

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