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The oil giant said Tuesday that it was acquiring assets from a Chicago company as it looks to start producing graphite, a key battery ingredient, by the end of the decade.
Sept. 9, 2025, 10:30 a.m. ET
Exxon Mobil, the largest U.S. oil and gas company, is pushing further into the electric vehicle business with an acquisition it says will help it produce graphite, an important battery ingredient, by the end of the decade.
Under the deal, announced Tuesday, the oil giant will buy a production facility, research center and other assets from Superior Graphite, a privately held Chicago company, for an undisclosed price.
It is the latest in a series of small bets Exxon is making to produce the materials needed to power electric cars and trucks and help balance supply and demand of energy on the power grids. The company is also working to extract lithium from underground brine in southwest Arkansas.
“Like in any market, there are fluctuations in the near term,” Dave Andrew, Exxon’s vice president of new market development, said in an interview with The New York Times. “But we fundamentally see the demand for batteries and electric vehicles and, increasingly, in large-scale energy storage solutions, increasing over the longer term.”
Exxon is investing at a difficult time for the U.S. battery business. The challenges include lower-than-expected demand for electric vehicles, higher tariffs on imported materials and the end, next month, of a $7,500 federal tax credit available for the purchase or lease of battery-powered cars.
The oil company is aiming to start commercial-scale production in 2029, Mr. Andrew said.
There are two main categories of graphite, a soft, dark gray form of carbon that typically makes up one half of a lithium-ion battery: mined graphite and its manufactured cousin, synthetic graphite. Exxon plans to make the latter.
