Brian Jaskula, a mineral commodity specialist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s National Minerals Information Center, said he knows of no research into lithium deposits in Hawaii and it’s not something the lithium industry is discussing.
Other experts told PolitiFact that it’s unlikely large lithium deposits would be found in Hawaii. The type of magma in volcanoes there isn’t associated with lithium. Lithium is associated with granitic and rhyolitic volcanism and sediments derived from them, McKibben said. Rhyolitic and basaltic refer to the chemical classification of magma — the hot fluid under Earth’s crust.
"In simpler terms, the more ‘evolved’ a magma is, the more lithium it will have," said Tom Benson, a co-author of the McDermitt caldera study and vice president of global exploration at Lithium Americas, a Canadian mining company.