Lithium mineral rights: who owns the lithium, what leases pay, and how to value yours

What are lithium mineral rights?

Much of the lithium now being developed in the United States is not in rock. It is dissolved in salty water deep underground. Developers reach it two ways. They drill wells into a brine formation such as the Smackover, pull the brine up, strip out the lithium with direct lithium extraction (DLE), and inject the brine back. Or they take the water that already comes up with oil and gas, called produced water, and process it before it goes to a disposal well.

Either way, somebody owns that lithium before it leaves the ground, and a developer needs a lease from them. That lease usually pays a signing bonus up front and a royalty once lithium is sold. The right to grant that lease and collect that royalty is what people mean by lithium mineral rights.

Who owns the lithium under my land?

There are four common situations, and they do not share an answer.

Texas produced water: the Cactus Water decision

In Cactus Water Services v. COG Operating, No. 23-0676, the Texas Supreme Court ruled that produced water is oil and gas waste, and that it belongs to the mineral lessee who has the duty to handle it. A surface owner or mineral owner who wants to keep rights in produced water has to reserve them in express words. A concurring opinion pointed out what the Court left open, including whether a lessee might owe royalties on what it produces from that water. For an operator, the ruling means the lithium in your produced water is probably yours until a disposal contract moves it. For a mineral owner with a standard lease, it means it is probably not yours.

Texas deep brine: still open

The Railroad Commission began regulating brine production wells under Rule 3.82 on February 18, 2025, but the rule covers permits and operations, not ownership. Published legal commentary expects lithium to be treated as a mineral, which would put it with the mineral estate. Because the point is not settled, some developers in East Texas lease surface owners as well as mineral owners. If the surface and minerals on your land were ever separated, have an attorney check title before you sign.

What do lithium leases pay?

Arkansas

Arkansas is the only state with a public number. On May 28, 2025, the Oil and Gas Commission unanimously approved a 2.5% royalty on lithium for the Reynolds Brine Unit, a 20,854-acre unit in Columbia and Lafayette counties operated by SWA Lithium, the joint venture of Standard Lithium and Equinor. Owners also receive an annual brine fee of $65.05 an acre. The developer's 2024 application asked for 1.82% and was rejected. Mineral owners asked for 12.5%. The same 2.5% rate has since been applied to the Pine Brine Unit, operated by ExxonMobil's Saltwerx, and to Tetra Technologies' Evergreen unit.

At the unit's planned 22,500 tonnes of lithium carbonate a year, the 2.5% royalty works out to about $270 per net mineral acre per year at $10,000 a tonne, $405 at $15,000 and $540 at $20,000. First production is targeted for 2028.

Texas

Texas sets no royalty for lithium. Terms are whatever the two sides sign, and they are not public. One produced-water deal shows the shape: in February 2026, Select Water Solutions agreed to supply gathered and treated Permian water to LibertyStream's planned lithium carbonate plants in exchange for a royalty on production. The rate was not disclosed.

Signing bonuses

There is no reliable public benchmark for lithium lease bonuses. Treat any figure you hear secondhand with care. The bonus is the only payment that does not depend on a plant being built, which makes it the part of an offer worth pressing on.

How much lithium is in the brine?

Concentration is measured in milligrams of lithium per liter of water (mg/L). It decides how much lithium there is to sell and whether a plant is worth building. Studies built on U.S. Geological Survey data use about 65 mg/L as the lower limit for potentially economic production, and some sources use 100 mg/L.

Two cautions. Public samples for most oilfields are few and decades old, so a basin median says little about one lease. And low grade does not end the conversation where the water is already gathered and treated at scale, which is the bet behind the first commercial plants announced on Permian water.

How do I value my lithium rights?

Three things set the value: how much lithium your acres or your water account for, what share of the revenue the lease pays you, and how likely and how soon a plant is. The lithium lease calculator puts those together. Enter net mineral acres if you are in a brine play, or barrels a day and concentration if the lithium is in produced water, and it returns the yearly royalty, a low-to-high range and a value today.

The estimate will be a range, and the range will be wide. That is the honest state of a market where one state has set a rate, prices roughly doubled between 2025 and 2026, and the first approved Arkansas unit is not due to produce until 2028.

How do I find out what is in my water?

A lab measures lithium from a water sample, most often by ICP-OES, and reports it in mg/L along with sodium, calcium, magnesium and potassium. Developers sample before they make offers. Owners and operators usually have no number of their own.

The Brine Prospect Oilfield Assessment Kit is a mail-in kit built for that gap: sample bottles, preservative, instructions, a prepaid mailer and a lab panel. It is currently out of stock, and there is a waitlist. A kit result is a screening number from a sample you collected. It tells you whether the water deserves a closer look. A developer will still resample before signing.

What should I check before signing a lithium lease?

1. What the royalty is a percentage of. Gross sales of lithium products, the value of raw brine, or net proceeds after costs. The same percentage can differ several times over.
2. Which substances the lease covers. Lithium only, all brine minerals, or everything dissolved in the water.
3. The clock. How long the developer can hold the lease without producing, and whether the rights come back to you if a deadline is missed.
4. When the royalty term starts. From first production is better for you than from signing.
5. How your acres are pooled. In a unit, royalties are shared by acreage, so the unit's size and planned output matter more than well locations.
6. Surface use. Wells, pipelines and roads on your land should be paid for separately.
7. Your existing oil and gas lease. Whether it already grants or reserves brine, produced water or other minerals.

This is general information to help you ask better questions. A lease is a contract with long consequences. Have an oil and gas attorney read it before you sign.

Questions about lithium mineral rights

Glossary

Brine

Salty water held in deep rock formations. Lithium brine carries dissolved lithium.

Produced water

Water that comes up with oil and gas. Texas law treats it as oil and gas waste.

mg/L

Milligrams per liter, the unit for lithium concentration. Close to parts per million (ppm) in practice.

LCE

Lithium carbonate equivalent, the unit lithium is priced and sold in. One tonne of lithium equals 5.323 tonnes of LCE.

DLE

Direct lithium extraction. Processes that pull lithium out of brine without evaporation ponds.

Net mineral acre

Your acreage multiplied by your share of the minerals. 80 acres at a half interest is 40 net mineral acres.

Brine unit

An area pooled by a regulator so one operator can produce brine and every owner inside shares the royalty by acreage.

SWD

Saltwater disposal well, where produced water is injected underground.

ICP-OES

Inductively coupled plasma optical emission spectroscopy, a standard lab method for measuring metals such as lithium in water.

bbl

An oilfield barrel: 42 U.S. gallons, or 158.987 liters.

Sources

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