Standard Lithium Drills and Samples Highest Confirmed Grade Lithium Brine in North America

Standard Lithium Ltd. (“Standard Lithium” or the “Company”) (TSXV: SLI) (NYSE American: SLI) (FRA: S5L), a leading near-commercial lithium company, is pleased to announce that, as part of its significant resource expansion work in the East Texas Smackover region, it has sampled, to the best of its knowledge, the highest confirmed lithium grade brine in North America, with a grade of 634 mg/L lithium. In Standard Lithium’s experience, the grade of lithium in brine used for Direct Lithium Extraction (DLE) has a meaningful impact on both capital expenditures and operating costs in connection with the extraction process, with a higher grade typically resulting in lower overall costs.

Dr. Andy Robinson, President and COO of Standard Lithium commented, “We’re excited to discover this outstanding resource and to add it to our expanding portfolio of select projects in the Smackover Formation. We have built a large and technically diverse team of Smackover specialists who have been working for almost three years to understand the most prospective areas to secure the highest quality brine resources in East Texas. The technical group has been supplemented by a strong team of mineral and land professionals who have been securing the extensive brine rights in these key project areas. Based on this work, the Company acquired the rights to one existing well and to drill a new deep well. We are delighted that sampling from the new well has led us to find lithium brine with, to the best of the Company’s knowledge, the highest grade in North America.”

“These very high-quality lithium brine resources, located in the heart of the Gulf Coast region, are close to, and highly complementary to, Standard Lithium’s existing lithium projects and have the potential to play a key role in future lithium production as part of the Company’s development and commercialization program. We look forward to working with the local communities and building our presence in East Texas, and we will be releasing further technical reports defining the project areas in the near future.”

Analysis and Testing Details

Over the past three years, the Standard Lithium team has been developing a thorough understanding of the Smackover Formation in Texas, via analysis of existing petro-physical logs, 2D seismic data and existing core sample analysis (retained from previous drilling activity). This understanding has been supplemented by sampling and analytical testing of produced water from existing oil and gas production wells from the Smackover Formation in the East Texas area. As a result of this data gathering and interpretive work, the Company identified a select number of highly prospective lithium brine project areas in the Smackover Formation in East Texas and began an extensive brine leasing program in the key project areas. The greatest level of effort to date, and the Company’s principal brine leasing focus, has been in the region close to the Arkansas and Louisiana state lines. As the Company has been securing brine rights in the key project areas over the last 18 months, it also secured access to a pre-existing oil and gas production well and drilled a new exploration borehole (see news release dated October 27^th, 2022).

The pre-existing well was re-entered using a workover rig and the existing production casing was perforated at various depth intervals to gather new brine samples from different levels in the Smackover Formation. The new exploration borehole was advanced and cased using a drill rig, and subsequently sampled using a workover rig. Figures 1 and 2 below show images of the two recent project sites.

Brine samples taken from these two wells, in addition to samples taken from other closely adjacent wells completed in the Smackover Formation in East Texas, are shown in Table 1 below. All brine samples were analyzed at multiple analytical laboratories (both third-party and also at the Company’s analytical facility in El Dorado, Arkansas) in order to confirm sample quality and maintain QA/QC procedures. The Standard Lithium data provided in Table 1 below were all analyzed, performed, and reported by Western Environmental Testing Laboratories of Sparks NV, a third-party, accredited testing facility. Additional representative lithium brine analyses from other lithium brine projects in North America are provided for context.

Table 1: East Texas Lithium Brine Analyses in Standard Lithium Project Areas

Notes:
[1] Smackover Formation descriptors (Upper, Middle, and Lower) are a local project area naming convention.
[2] For East Texas wells, average of all samples taken from the wellbore, including duplicates where applicable to provide a representative brine sample.
[3] Average brine sample from Salton Sea, Table 1, Warren 2021. Techno-Economic Analysis of Lithium Extraction from Geothermal Brines. Golden, CO: National Renewable Energy Laboratory. NREL/TP-5700-79178.
[4] Average brine analysis from Table 7, E3 Lithium 43-101 Technical Report: Lithium Resource Estimate, Bashaw District Project, central Alberta, Report date: August 23, 2022, Effective date: July 11,2022
[5] Indicated Resource Concentration, Anson Resources, Paradox Lithium Project, Total JORC Mineral Resource estimation, DFS, September 2022
[6] Average Clayton Valley lithium brine composition, Table 14-3, Pure Energy Minerals, Preliminary Economic Assessment (Rev. 1) of the Clayton Valley Lithium Project Esmeralda County, Nevada, March 23, 2018

Quality Assurance
Steve Ross, P.Geol., a Qualified Person as defined by NI 43-101, has reviewed and approved the relevant scientific and technical information that forms the basis for this news release. Mr. Ross is a consultant to the Company.