What Is the Arkansas Lithium Royalty Actually Worth?

By Stephen Clayman · October 1, 2026

If you own minerals in south Arkansas, somebody has probably told you by now that you are sitting on a lithium fortune. Somebody else has probably mailed you an offer that values your interest like it is still 1985. The truth has a number attached to it, and for once the number is public.

The terms Arkansas actually approved

On May 29, 2025, the Arkansas Oil and Gas Commission approved the first lithium royalty in state history for the Reynolds Unit in Columbia and Lafayette Counties, the first phase of the South West Arkansas project run by SWA Lithium, the Standard Lithium and Equinor joint venture. Two parts:

• A 2.5 percent quarterly gross royalty on lithium, shared by the unit's brine owners.
• A brine fee of $65.05 per acre per year, paid whether or not a tonne ever ships.

The parties put the combined package at roughly 3 percent at the lithium prices of the day. It did not come easily. The company first asked for 1.82 percent and the Commission would not approve it. Organized mineral owners argued 2.5 was still too low. The number that passed is a negotiated floor, and every Smackover lithium conversation in Arkansas now starts from it.

How do you turn 2.5 percent into dollars per acre?

Carefully, and with your assumptions showing. Here is the arithmetic.

The per-acre fee is the easy part. Own 40 acres inside the unit and the $65.05 fee is about $2,600 a year, rain or shine.

The royalty is the part that depends on the future. Phase 1 targets 22,500 tonnes a year of battery quality lithium carbonate, with full commercial production expected in 2028. At an illustrative $10,000 a tonne, that is $225 million a year in gross revenue, and the 2.5 percent royalty pool is about $5.6 million a year spread across the unit's brine owners by acreage. Your share is your fraction of the unit's acres.

Now the three caveats that turn a headline into a real valuation:

1. Lithium prices swing hard. The same arithmetic at $20,000 a tonne doubles the pool. At $5,000 it cuts it in half. Anyone quoting you one number without a price assumption is quoting you a wish.
2. The project has to get built. Permits are in hand, offtakes are signed, and federal money is committed, which is more than most critical minerals projects ever achieve. But royalty checks start when production starts, not when press releases do.
3. Inside the unit is everything. Acreage in the unit shares the royalty. Acreage near the unit shares the anticipation. Those are very different assets, and most mailer offers price neither correctly.

What this means if you own in the trend

If your family's Smackover minerals are in Columbia, Lafayette, Union, Miller, Nevada, Calhoun, or Hempstead County, the forty dollar oil check is no longer the whole story, and it may not even be the main story. Whether your old lease reaches brine constituents, whether a bromine era brine lease is already recorded against your tract, and where you sit relative to the units being formed are document and map questions we answer every week. The full picture, including the Texas side where ownership law is still unsettled, is on our Smackover and lithium brine page.

And if the acreage came down through an estate that never got probated, which in south Arkansas is more the rule than the exception, read Minerals Need a Probate. Don't Walk Away. before anything else. The lithium does not care about your title, but the people paying for it will. While you are at it, learn to read the statement you may already be getting, because some south Arkansas owners have been paid a brine royalty for years without recognizing it as separate from oil.

We buy across the trend, we price the lithium exposure as its own visible line with the probability we assigned, and about half the time our honest answer is that holding is the better play. Send us what you have through the free valuation form, or call or text 918-984-1645, and we will show you the arithmetic on your acres.