I have been in oil and gas a long time now. There are other salts removed from the water that all oil wells produce. That water has been out of circulation of the water cycle for thousands or maybe millions of years and leaching minerals out of the rock. Around Kingfisher, OK, wells are drilled with the planned intent of getting iodine out of the brine waters.
That article also talks about the find in northern Nevada and the find in the Salton Sea area. I figure both of those will be strip mined. The article alludes to such and I thought maybe you were confusing the different locations. My bad.
My semi-educated guess is that we will find LOTS more lithium in places like Idaho. Lithium has only recently really found a market so it's sort of been overlooked in the past.