# Sell Smackover Mineral Rights & Lithium Brine Royalties | Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana | Berlin Royalties > Smackover Formation minerals and lithium brine royalties in south Arkansas, northeast Texas, and north Louisiana. The 2.5 percent Arkansas royalty ruling, unsettled Texas ownership law, and how to value an interest that has oil, bromine, and lithium under it. Source: https://www.berlinroyalties.com/basins/smackover-lithium/ Publisher: Berlin Royalties, a veteran-owned oil and gas mineral and royalty buyer in Tulsa, Oklahoma, buying for its own account since 2014. Call or text 918-984-1645. License: free to quote and cite with attribution to Berlin Royalties and a link to the source URL. Basins ยท Smackover & Lithium Brine ## Smackover minerals and lithium brine royalties. The Smackover is the only place in the country where a hundred year old oil formation turned into a critical minerals play. If you own minerals in south Arkansas, northeast Texas, or north Louisiana, you may own something with two separate values, and almost every offer you receive prices only one of them. [Get a Free Valuation](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/free-valuation/) or call or text [918-984-1645](tel:9189841645) The Smackover is the strangest asset in American mineral ownership right now. It is an Upper Jurassic carbonate that has produced oil since a 1922 discovery near the town of Smackover, Arkansas. It has been drilled, depleted, waterflooded, and largely written off for two generations. And in the last three years it has become the most important domestic lithium prospect in the country, because the brine that oil operators spent a century treating as a nuisance turns out to carry some of the highest lithium concentrations reported anywhere in North America. Berlin buys Smackover minerals and royalties across [Arkansas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/arkansas/), [Texas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/), [Louisiana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/louisiana/), [Mississippi](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mississippi/), and [Alabama](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/alabama/), including the small legacy oil interests nobody else will look at. ## Why the standard valuation method breaks here Almost every mineral offer in the country is built the same way: take the last twelve months of royalty income, apply a multiple, adjust for decline. That method is defensible in a mature single product field. It is close to useless on a Smackover tract. A south Arkansas mineral owner may be receiving forty dollars a month from a stripper oil well drilled in 1961. Under the standard method, that interest is worth a few thousand dollars. But the same acreage may sit inside a brine production unit, or adjacent to one, or inside acreage a major has been quietly leasing for brine rights. None of that shows up in the check. The gap between those two numbers is not a rounding error. It is the entire transaction. And it is invisible to an owner who only has a check stub, which is precisely the information asymmetry that makes mailer offers profitable in this trend. ## The Arkansas royalty ruling, and why it matters beyond Arkansas Arkansas is unusual: it has had a brine statute for decades, built for the bromine industry, and it gives the Oil and Gas Commission the power to establish brine production units and set the royalty rate when the operator and the owners cannot agree. That machinery, built for bromine, is what the lithium industry inherited. On **May 29, 2025**, the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission unanimously approved a **2.5 percent** royalty on lithium for the **Reynolds Unit** in Columbia and Lafayette Counties, the first lithium royalty rate ever set in the state. The applicant was SWA Lithium, the joint venture between Standard Lithium and Equinor. The path there is the useful part: - In **November 2024** the joint venture applied for **1.82 percent**. The Commission did not approve it. - The applicant returned with **2.5 percent**. - Mineral owners, organized through the **South Arkansas Minerals Association**, opposed 2.5 percent as too low. Their vice president, Emon Mahony, put the pressure plainly on the record: the longer it drags on, the more pressure there is to take the easy number. - The Commission approved 2.5 percent. If you own in the trend, that sequence is your single most useful piece of leverage, because it establishes three things. There is a floor. It was set through an adversarial process rather than agreed to quietly. And organized owners moved it. The project itself has continued to advance: a definitive feasibility study filed in October 2025, a first binding offtake agreement, well field engineering contracts awarded in 2026 ahead of a final investment decision, and roughly **225 million dollars** in U.S. Department of Energy funding against a project estimated near a billion. The initial phase targets **22,500 tonnes per year** of battery quality lithium carbonate from a field of four pads, twelve supply wells, and ten injection wells. Separately, **ExxonMobil** has assembled a large south Arkansas brine position and drilled its first lithium well there in late 2023, operating under its low carbon business rather than its upstream one. Two very different companies committing real capital to the same formation is the strongest signal available that this is not a promotion. ## Northeast Texas is the newer story, and the messier one The same joint venture's **Franklin project** covers western Titus, Franklin, and eastern Hopkins Counties in northeast Texas. Public resource work reports roughly **2.16 million tonnes** of lithium carbonate equivalent at an average **668 mg/L**, with the Pine Forest 1 well measuring **806 mg/L**, described as the strongest concentration reported in North America to date. The position covers about **46,000 acres** of brine rights inside a project area near 80,000 acres, assembled from more than 600 separate leases. More than 600 leases is the detail worth sitting with. It tells you the acreage was gathered tract by tract from individual owners, most of whom were approached before any of this was public. Texas law has moved unevenly: | Question | Status | | Who regulates brine mining | Settled. SB 1186 confirmed Railroad Commission jurisdiction; 16 Tex. Admin. Code section 3.82 effective February 18, 2025 || Whether produced water passes with the mineral estate | Settled. *Cactus Water Services, LLC v. COG Operating, LLC*, No. 23-0676 (Tex. June 27, 2025), absent express reservation || Who owns the lithium dissolved in the brine | **Not settled.** *Cactus Water* addressed the water, not the dissolved constituents || Whether brine minerals are part of the mineral estate by statute | Not settled. SB 1763 would have said so and died in committee in 2025 | If you are being offered a brine lease in Texas, the ownership law behind it is unresolved. That is not a reason to refuse. It is a reason to read the instrument carefully and to be skeptical of anyone who presents the question as closed. North Louisiana sits in the same trend and has neither Arkansas's brine unit machinery nor a definitive answer of its own, so the documents matter even more there. ## What we actually do with a Smackover interest - **Read the chain, not the check.** We pull the recorded instruments and determine what your lease or leases actually grant. Broad "oil, gas and other minerals" language, a narrow oil and gas grant, and a separate recorded brine lease from the bromine era are three very different positions. - **Locate you against the units.** Inside an established brine production unit, adjacent to one, or inside an area under active brine leasing are three different values. - **Value the oil on its own terms.** The legacy production is real, it is long lived, and it gets valued as what it is: a slow decline stripper tail, not a growth asset. See [how mineral rights are valued](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mineral-rights-value/). - **Price the brine exposure explicitly and separately.** With the probability we assigned and the reason, as a visible line rather than folded into one number. A buyer who will not break that out is either not doing the work or does not want you to see it. - **Tell you when to keep it.** On acreage inside an advancing unit, holding is frequently the better answer, and we say so. See [when not to sell](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/when-not-to-sell/). ## The interests nobody will touch The Smackover oil trend left behind exactly the kind of interests the industry has abandoned: forty dollar a month royalties in Union County, an eighth of a fourth of a quarter section that passed through three unprobated estates, bromine era brine royalties nobody in the family understood. Every large buyer ignores these, because the cost of running title and recording a deed is the same whether the interest is worth two thousand dollars or two hundred thousand. Owners read that silence as proof of no value. In this particular formation, at this particular moment, that inference is wrong more often than it is right. We run our own title, we have no minimum, and we pay all closing costs. If money is sitting in operator suspense or with a state unclaimed property division, we will tell you how to claim it and **you** keep it, whether or not you sell anything to us. See [small mineral interests](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/small-mineral-interests/) and [unclaimed royalties](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/unclaimed-royalties/). ## Where to go next - [Arkansas mineral rights](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/arkansas/): the Fayetteville, the Smackover, and the brine statutes - [Texas mineral rights](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/): *Cactus Water*, brine regulation, and the ownership question - [Louisiana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/louisiana/), [Mississippi](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mississippi/), and [Alabama](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/alabama/) Smackover interests - [Compare your options before selling](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/compare-selling-options/) and [when not to sell](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/when-not-to-sell/) - [Free letter templates](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/letter-templates/) and the [royalty statement decoder](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/royalty-statement-decoder/) - [Taxes when you sell mineral rights](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mineral-rights-capital-gains-tax/) Last reviewed August 2026. This is a fast moving trend and rates, units, and pending legislation change. Berlin Royalties is a mineral buyer and a landman shop in Tulsa, not a law firm or a tax advisor, and this page is general information rather than advice about your interest. If you have been offered a brine lease, have a lawyer look at it. Formations & Plays ## What is actually under a Smackover tract ### Smackover oil, the original asset Upper Jurassic carbonate, discovered in 1922 near Smackover, Arkansas, and produced continuously since. Legacy oil and gas royalties across south Arkansas, north Louisiana, southwest Alabama, and south Mississippi, most of them small, old, and split several times by inheritance. ### Bromine brine South Arkansas has commercially produced bromine from Smackover brine in Union and Columbia Counties for decades. If you own there, a brine royalty may already be part of your income and you may not have recognized it as separate from oil. ### Lithium in the same brine The reason the formation is back in the news. Direct lithium extraction pulls lithium from the same produced brine, then reinjects the water. It is a new revenue stream from rock that has been drilled for a century. ### Potash and other constituents The northeast Texas resource work reports meaningful potash and bromide alongside the lithium. Whether your lease reaches those constituents is a document question, not a geology question. Counties ## Where the Smackover trend runs [Arkansas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/arkansas/) [Texas](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/texas/) [Louisiana](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/louisiana/) [Mississippi](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/mississippi/) [Alabama](https://www.berlinroyalties.com/alabama/) Columbia Lafayette Union Miller Franklin Titus Hopkins The lithium activity is concentrated in Columbia, Lafayette, and Union Counties in south Arkansas and in Franklin, Titus, and Hopkins Counties in northeast Texas. The oil trend is much broader, running from east Texas across to the Florida panhandle. Questions ## Straight answers for Smackover & Lithium Brine owners Arkansas set a 2.5 percent lithium royalty. Does that apply to me? Directly, only if your minerals sit in a brine production unit the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission has established with that rate. The first one was the Reynolds Unit in Columbia and Lafayette Counties, approved May 29, 2025 for SWA Lithium, the Standard Lithium and Equinor joint venture. Indirectly it matters everywhere in the trend, because it is the first lithium royalty rate ever set in Arkansas and every subsequent negotiation now starts from it. Worth knowing: the operator first applied for 1.82 percent in November 2024 and the Commission would not approve it. Mineral owners, organized through the South Arkansas Minerals Association, argued 2.5 percent was still too low. The number that finally passed sits between what the company wanted and what owners wanted, which is what a benchmark usually looks like. Does my old oil and gas lease already cover the lithium? That is the whole question, and it is a document question rather than a geology question. Some Smackover leases grant oil, gas, and other minerals broadly enough to reach brine constituents. Others are drafted narrowly, and some south Arkansas tracts have a separate brine lease from the bromine era already recorded against them. We read the actual instruments in your chain rather than guessing from the formation name. If you send us what you have, we will tell you what we think your documents cover, free, whether or not you ever sell anything to us. Who owns the lithium in Texas brine? It is not settled, and any buyer who tells you otherwise is overstating. Texas has settled the regulatory side: SB 1186 confirmed Railroad Commission jurisdiction over brine mining and the Commission adopted 16 Tex. Admin. Code section 3.82, effective February 18, 2025, which expressly excludes oil, gas, products of oil or gas, and produced water from its scope. Ownership is a different matter. Cactus Water Services, LLC v. COG Operating, LLC, No. 23-0676 (Tex. June 27, 2025) held that produced water is oil and gas waste and passes with the mineral estate absent an express reservation, but the Court addressed the water and not the valuable substances dissolved in it. SB 1763 in the 2025 session would have declared brine minerals part of the mineral estate and it died in committee. So in Texas, the honest answer today is unresolved. Should I sign a brine lease I have been offered? Not without reading it against what you already have recorded. The two most common problems we see are a brine lease that overlaps an existing oil and gas lease in a way that creates a conflict, and a brine lease with no meaningful development obligation, so the company can hold your acreage cheaply for years while the technology matures. Royalty rate matters, but so do the term, the continuous operations clause, whether the royalty is on gross or net proceeds, and whether reinjection of the spent brine is addressed. We are not lawyers and we will tell you when you need one. We will read it with you at no charge either way. Can I sell just the lithium rights and keep my oil and gas? In principle you can convey a defined slice of what you own, and we do structure partial purchases. In practice it is harder here than it sounds, because whether the lithium is a severable thing from the mineral estate is exactly the question Texas has not answered and Arkansas answers through its brine unit statutes rather than through ordinary severance. A cleaner and more common structure is selling a fraction of the whole interest and keeping the rest, so you retain proportional exposure to whatever the lithium turns into. We buy partial interests routinely and there is no penalty for selling less than everything. My Smackover oil royalty is tiny. Is it even worth talking about? Yes, and this is the most common thing we get wrong when we hear it from owners. A small legacy Smackover oil royalty in Columbia or Union County may sit on top of acreage that is inside or adjacent to a brine unit. The oil check is worth very little and the position may be worth a good deal more. We have no minimum interest size and we pay all closing costs. If your interest is genuinely small and genuinely outside the activity, we will tell you that too. Free Valuation ## Find out what your Smackover & Lithium Brine minerals are worth. Free, no obligation, and no pressure. We reply within one business day, usually faster. Prefer the phone? Call or text [918-984-1645](tel:9189841645) and you will get Stephen, the owner, not a call center. If we miss you, we text back the same day. Your Name Phone Number Email Address Where are your minerals located? OklahomaTexasNew MexicoLouisiana ArkansasKansasNorth DakotaMontana WyomingColoradoUtahCalifornia West VirginiaOhioPennsylvaniaKentucky MichiganMississippiAlabamaAlaska Sand/Gravel/AggregateOther / Not sure County (if known) Interest type Select an option Minerals and Royalties Working Interest Overriding Royalty Interest An Entity (LLC, Partnership, Trust) Not Sure Are you currently receiving royalty checks? Select an option Yes No I Used To But They Stopped Not Sure Have you received offers for your minerals before? Select an option Yes No What best describes your situation? Select an option I'm ready to sell now I'm exploring my options I'm just curious what they're worth Anything else? (optional) Get My Free Valuation No cost, no obligation, and we never share your information.