LithiumPOTENTIAL OF THE MIDDLE EAST IN THE DLE ERA

Lithium exploration has historically been filtered through the economics of solar evaporation, which required brine grades of several hundred milligrams per litre in an arid climate. The Middle East fails that filter almost everywhere and has consequently never been assessed as a lithium province. Direct lithium extraction (DLE) changes the filter: sorbent, membrane and electrochemical processes now recover lithium from brines in the roughly 10 to 500 mg/L range, with electrochemical routes extending below 10 mg/L. Geologic® prepared the first pan-regional review, compiling the documented lithium record of eight Middle Eastern jurisdictions across five resource classes and benchmarking it against the Salton Sea, Smackover, Atacama, Upper Rhine and Qaidam analogues.

The region's defining feature is not grade but co-location. Anatolian geothermal plants already flow lithium-bearing brine at 3.5 to 32 mg/L through surface facilities where sorbents have been piloted on the exact fluids; Dead Sea potash ponds passively pre-concentrate lithium roughly two-fold, to 29 to 40 mg/L, in end brine that is already lifted and paid for; and the Gulf's vast produced-water and desalination-reject streams pair with regionally developed electrochemical DLE now in oilfield piloting. The review also corrects the record: the widely cited 300 to 600 mg/L figure for Iranian brines has no traceable primary source, and the traceable maxima are 144 to 145 ppm. The Middle East is the first major region whose lithium prospectivity is defined by extraction-technology economics rather than by grade.