This course is designed to arm the geoscientist with entry to intermediate level oil and gas experience with enhanced geological/geophysical knowledge for lithium exploration and development within a given area.
While many people think of lithium only in the context of batteries, it is a critical material supporting development of diverse new technologies in the 21st century. Global supply chains of past years must be rapidly expanded to meet new demands. Traditionally, lithium has been produced from both hard-rock mines and from highly saline brines brought to the surface and concentrated through evaporation. New mines can be developed, but surface concentration of lithium brines is limited to specific areas and is coming under increased environmental scrutiny. To address the demand, exploration companies have identified brines in deep saline aquifers as huge potential new lithium resources, but there are many challenges to finding, appraising and developing them. This course is aimed at helping the student understand and address these challenges and develop a plan to extract these resources.
Duration
8 hours
Intended Audience
The course is designed for levels from entry to intermediate.
Prerequisites (Knowledge/Experience/Education Required)
This course is designed to arm the geoscientist with entry to intermediate level oil and gas experience with enhanced geological/geophysical knowledge for lithium exploration and development within a given area.
Course Outline
In this course we will examine lithium exploration and development in saline aquifers. Sedimentary basins that have been explored for oil and gas are most prospective, leveraging extensive geological and geophysical subsurface datasets. However, lithium exploration, extraction and production brings many new challenges that must be addressed. Explorers can map prospective aquifer fairways, but fluid chemistry data are often lacking, and identifying optimal concentrations is a new science – because we’re not prospecting for traditional oil and gas traps.
The course will begin by providing a historical view of lithium production, present day uses of this element and current/future markets for this resource. The course will go on to identify the key geologic elements of a basin in terms of stratigraphy, structural elements and fluid chemistry in order to high grade an area for lithium brine exploration or development as well as the possible geologic sources of lithium. This will include geophysical methods used to explore for and delineate lithium resources within an area of interest. Descriptions of the geophysical methodologies will be outlined as well as practical examples of how to apply these techniques and where best to use them to optimize the resource.
Learner Outcomes
The learner will gain an understanding of the global market and demand for lithium globally to set the stage for technical evaluation of lithium resources. They will learn to identify key reservoir/geochemistry indicators in order to plan for the exploration and/or development of a lithium brine resource. The student will be able to integrate the importance of other elements in a basin such as source of lithium and reservoir quality and continuity to determine if the prospective resource will be adequate for development purposes. They will also be able to identify and choose which geophysical techniques to best apply to image the subsurface to enable resource delineation.