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OGDEN — Compass Minerals has ended its plans to tap the Great Salt Lake for lithium, an ambitious initiative meant to serve the growing market for lithium-ion batteries used in electric cars.
Notably, the plans at Compass Minerals' facility adjacent to the Great Salt Lake in western Weber County had drawn increasing scrutiny and regulatory attention from Utah lawmakers worried about the potential impact to the lake. Ahead of Wednesday's announcement, the firm had announced a deal with Ford Motor Co. last May to supply it with battery-grade lithium carbonate, then took a step back last November, saying it would "indefinitely" suspend the Weber County plans.
Now the initiative in Weber County, tapping the minerals in the Great Salt Lake brine, has been scrapped altogether, the Overland Park, Kansas-based firm said. Compass Minerals also taps the Great Salt Lake brine to produce crop fertilizers and products that can be used in de-icing of roads, among other things.
"The environment surrounding our lithium project today is markedly different than the one that existed a couple of years ago when we started down this path," Edward Dowling, the Compass Minerals president and chief executive director, said in a statement. "The simple fact is that the regulatory risks have increased significantly around this project. When combined with other changes to the commercial landscape, it became clear that the risk-adjusted returns on this project are inadequate to justify the investment."
The firm has spent some $77.3 million on the plans in October, November and December last year, it said in its earnings report for the period.
Compass Minerals' lithium plans publicly emerged in mid-2022, when it announced a preliminary accord to explore supplying Ford with lithium carbonate, followed by the announcement of a firmer agreement last year. Compass had also been in talks with South Korea's LG Energy about supplying it with lithium carbonate.
As the plans were first unfolding, Compass Minerals had said it expected to reach a production capacity once fully operational of 35,000 metric tons of lithium carbonate a year. It estimated a total of 2.4 million metric tons of the substance in the Great Salt Lake.
The plans, though, came under scrutiny from Utah lawmakers, worried about the impact to water levels in the Great Salt Lake, and, in response, they passed HB513 last year, which Compass had said created obstacles for its plans. HB513, as described by Alliance for a Better Utah, requires mineral extraction firms to pay a severance tax to a fund for the lake and makes them minimize water use and resupply water to the lake to offset their use.
Notwithstanding the announcement, Compass Minerals indicated that its lithium plans may not be dead altogether.
"Compass Minerals will continue to monitor and engage in legislative and regulatory processes in Utah to preserve the long-term optionality of the lithium potential at its Ogden operations," the firm's statement said.
