Tatneft is building a plant in Tatarstan for the production of sorbents to extract lithium from associated petroleum water. The plant's capacity will be 30 thousand tons, said Nail Maganov, the company's CEO, at the Oil Summit in Almetyevsk.
According to Maganov, the technology for extracting lithium from associated water has already been developed and moved into the industrial category. The company is conducting tests on active wells and obtaining results for metal extraction. The developed sorbents allow almost complete extraction of lithium not only from formation water produced in Tatarstan, but also from similar raw materials in other regions of Russia and beyond. In addition to lithium, other valuable components are planned to be extracted from associated water.
Until recently, Russia practically did not extract lithium independently, despite the critical importance of the raw material for energy storage systems, electronics, and other high-tech industries. The main consumer of the metal is the battery sector, which accounts for about 80% of the world's lithium consumption. Since the late 1990s, industrial production of the metal in the Russian Federation was stopped. The exception was the Malyshevskoye deposit, where only 27 tons were extracted in 2023 — extremely little compared to the country's needs, estimated at 9 thousand tons of imports per year. The country purchased all necessary lithium abroad, mainly in China, Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. Annual costs for importing lithium carbonate amounted to about 4 billion rubles.
However, in March 2026, the situation began to change. The company "Polyarny Litium" (a joint venture of Rosatom and Nornickel) began pilot industrial extraction of lithium at the Kolmozerskoye deposit in the Murmansk region. This deposit, the largest in the country, contains about 19% of all Russian lithium reserves — according to estimates, they will last for 40 years of development. Tatneft's project will be another step towards providing the country with its own strategic raw materials and reducing dependence on imports.
Read more on the topic:
- Russia Launches Lithium Extraction from Oilfield Water in Orenburg Region
- Lithium for Technological Independence: Murmansk Region to Begin Pilot Mining
- Overtaking ExxonMobil and Chevron: "Irkutsk Oil Company" is the first in the world to extract lithium from formation waters