More than nickel found around Tamarack lands

Earlier this month the Pine Knot reported on a proposal by Talon Metals to bring a nickel mine to Tamarack, near the border of Carlton County and Aitkin County.

But it’s not the only mineral-based exploration being conducted in the area. Rio Tinto, the second-largest mining group in the world, has conducted an exploratory drill in Carlton County, outside Tamarack, in an attempt to locate bedrock that would be ripe for carbon sequestration.

The area is part of the 11-mile Tamarack Intrusive Complex that has had 500 exploratory drills in search of nickel deposits and one nickel mine plan proposed by Talon Metals.

“Our partner Rio Tinto did one drill hole to collect some sample rock for carbon capture research,” said Talon’s community and government relations director Jessica Johnson.

The research is being funded using $2.2 million from the U.S. Department of Energy.

The right type of rocks, high in magnesium and calcium, will react to carbon naturally and create a new mineral, carbonate, “kind of like a limestone,” Johnson said.

Turning carbon into a mineral is safer for storage, she said, and keeps the carbon from warming and harming the planet.

“Once it’s a mineral, it’s not going anywhere,” Johnson said.

She estimated that testing on the samples collected by Rio Tinto will take a couple of years.

Talon’s chief external affairs officer and head of climate strategy, Todd Malan, said carbon mineralization is a cutting edge environmental practice for the way it converts gas into a mineral. The potential for carbon capture around Tamarack was a result of Talon’s nickel exploration.

“What we did find is we have a very large part of the deposit at Tamarack that is not mineralized, but has olivine sand, and that olivine sand is what reacts with carbon dioxide really well,” Malan said. “So, it becomes a way to store carbon in a permanence form different than carbon storage in oil or gas wells [or void spaces]. … This is actually a permanent solution where you’re storing it in rock.”

Malan came to Talon having worked first at Rio Tinto, which has a 49-percent stake in Talon’s project.

The proposed Tamarack mine is Talon’s only project to date, though the company is starting exploration on 400,000 acres in Michigan.

The carbon capture research concerns the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe, an opponent of nickel mining in Tamarack through its Water over Nickel campaign.

Kelly Applegate, commissioner of natural resources for the Mille Lacs Band, said it’s an example of how a project billed as having a small footprint is expanding.

“The original proposal as we understood it, and as we started having an eye on things, was it was a small mine, with references to it being a ‘surgical’ operation,” Applegate said. “It was going to be a minimal … But it’s growing and being layered in with potential carbon sequestration. So, the project there is growing and that’s also a concern.”

The Band believes nickel mining would put the wetlands encompassing a proposed mine at risk.