SWA Lithium Drills New Smackover Well and Conducts Extensive Reservoir Testing Program at South West Arkansas Lithium Project

SWA Lithium, the Joint Venture between Standard Lithium Ltd. (“Standard Lithium” or the “Company”) (TSXV: SLI) (NYSE American: SLI) and Equinor ASA (“Equinor”) which is developing the South West Arkansas Project (“SWA” or the “Project”), is pleased to announce that it has successfully commenced drilling a new well into the Smackover Formation at the Project. The well is currently at a depth of approximately 8,000’ below surface (2,438 m), and has a targeted total depth of 9,600’ (2,926 m). SWA Lithium is also undertaking an extensive field program to re-enter the wells drilled in 2023 to conduct detailed reservoir testing and brine sampling work.

New Exploration Well
The new well, named Lester-1, is a vertical exploration well being drilled by local contractors, and its location is shown in Figure 1 below. The well fills in a data gap in SWA Lithium’s proposed first area of operation, and after spudding of the well on December 27^th, 2024, is now at a depth of 8,000’ and advancing steadily. During drilling, it is intended to retrieve core from the Upper and Middle Smackover Formation limestone and the bore terminate in the Lower Smackover Formation. After installation of production casing, the borehole will be selectively perforated in zones of interest and multiple large-scale representative samples of lithium brine will be produced from the formation. The same horizons of interest will also be subjected to permeabilitity testing to assess reservoir characteristics and behaviour. Discrete core samples will be sent for third party assessment of porosity and permeability. All data gathered from this new well will be used to inform the forthcoming front end engineering design (“FEED”) and Definitive Feasibility Studies (“DFS”). An image of the rig and drillsite is shown in Figure 2 below.

Figure 1 – Map showing location of the Lester-1 well currently being drilled by the SWA team; plus locations of existing 2023 wells being tested and resampled as part of the current field program. The dashed grey box represents the approximate region of SWA Lithium’s proposed first area of operation at the Project in southwestern Arkansas. The hatched box of the central processing facility shows the land owned by SWA Lithium that will be used to house all the process facilities for the Project.

Figure 2 – Drill rig at the Lester-1 drillsite.

Field Program
The SWA team is also conducting an extensive field program at four wells in the proposed first area of operation (the four other wells shown on Figure 1). The work consists of well re-entry, hydraulic testing to determine reservoir characteristics, and brine sampling and testing. In addition, large volumes of brine have been collected from the International Paper Company (IPC-1) to allow the field-based pilot testing to be operated (see Standard Lithium’s recent news release dated December 19, 2024). To date, the work has demonstrated that reservoir properties are better than previously gathered in the preliminary feasibility study, and also, where lithium brine samples have been sent off for third-party analysis, the lithium concentrations are higher than previously published. Key data will be made public when available, and all relevant data will be provided in the DFS later in 2025, along with all QA/QC information.

Standard Lithium’s Director and President, Dr. Andy Robinson commented: “The Standard Lithium and Equinor teams, along with our various field and drilling partners are working hard to gather all the remaining sub-surface data we require for our first commercial lithium project. The remaining field programs are required so that our engineering and design partners can complete the FEED and DFS studies by mid-2025. The SWA Lithium Joint Venture remains focussed on execution and moving the Project towards commercialisation.”

Qualified Person

Steve Ross, P.Geol., a Qualified Person as defined by National Instrument 43-101 – Standards of Disclosure for Mineral Projects, has reviewed and approved the relevant scientific and technical information that forms the basis for this news release. Mr. Ross is Vice President, Resource Development for the Company.

Standard Lithium | www.standardlithium.com