The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
North of 60 Mining News - September 25, 2023
Giga Metals has outlined a deposit at Turnagain that would support a mine that would produce 35,224 metric tons of nickel and 2,064 metric tons of cobalt annually for 28 years.
The geometry of the surfacing at the Turnagain nickel deposit lends itself to a compact open-pit mine with a low strip ratio.
With the completion of a prefeasibility study, Giga Metals Corp. and joint venture partner Mitsubishi Corp. are another step closer to developing a large nickel-cobalt mine with a low carbon footprint at the Turnagain project in Northern British Columbia.
"We see a nickel project like Turnagain with low carbon intensity in a stable jurisdiction has a key role to play in the future of the nickel industry, in particular for the battery industry," said Kota Ikenishi, general manager of Mitsubishi's battery minerals office.
With 1.57 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 0.21% (7 billion pounds) nickel and 0.013% (435 million lb) cobalt, plus 1.16 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.22% (5.3 billion lb) nickel and 0.012% (307.8 million lb) cobalt, Turnagain is a potentially large source of two battery metals needed for the clean energy transition.
The nickel and cobalt at Turnagain happen to be hosted in ultramafic rocks enriched with brucite, a mineral that is particularly good at absorbing carbon dioxide.
University of British Columbia Professor Greg Dipple identified ultramafic rocks such as those found at Turnagain as the largest CO2-storing reservoirs on Earth. This potential, however, can only be fully realized if the rocks are unearthed, crushed, and exposed to the atmosphere, which is what needs to happen to extract the battery metals.
As such, the tailings from mining at Turnagain will absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, which will offset much of the greenhouse gas emissions that will be associated with mining and recovering the nickel and cobalt found there.
The potential for a large and low-carbon battery metals mine near Canada's west coast is why Mitsubishi invested US$6.2 million (C$8 million) to acquire a 15% interest in Hard Creek Nickel Corp., a joint venture formed to advance the Turnagain project toward development.
The JV now has a clearer picture of a long-life and large-scale project that will deliver high-grade nickel sulfide concentrate to a market needing large quantities of both nickel and cobalt for the lithium batteries powering electric vehicles and storing renewable energy.
"This engineering study shows that the Turnagain Project has a low-risk flow sheet that will consistently and predictably deliver a high-grade, high-quality concentrate similar to concentrates successfully treated by nickel processing companies for decades," said Giga Metals CEO Mark Jarvis.
The PFS prepared for Giga Metals and Mitsubishi details a mine at Turnagain that is expected to produce roughly 982,500 metric tons of nickel and 58,000 metric tons of cobalt over 30 years of mining.
It is expected to cost roughly US$1.89 billion to develop this mine and another US$1.64 million in sustaining capital over the life of the mine, including closure costs.
At long-term metal prices – $9.75/lb for nickel and $26.54/lb for cobalt – the battery metals operation detailed in the PFS would generate a post-tax internal rate of return of 11.4% and a net present value of $574 million.
The engineering and economic study envisions a large open-pit mine that will use large electric shovels loading 227-metric-ton trucks and an electric trolly to assist the trucks out of the pit – a technology proven to reduce cycle time by speeding the climb and reducing the carbon footprint by using hydroelectric power to tow the trucks.
This low-cost and very-low-carbon electricity would come from plugging Turnagain into BC Hydro's Northwest Transmission Line, which comes within 160 kilometers (100 miles) of the mine.
The entire cost to build a powerline that connects Turnagain to BC Hydro's NTL is included in the initial capital costs for the mine.
The combination of hydropower, the technologies being used, and CO2 sequestration in tailings, means that the mine would net less than 1.8 metric tons of CO2 per metric ton of nickel produced.
Giga Metals says incorporating battery-electric or fuel-cell powered vehicles in the testing phases of commercialization offers the potential to further reduce the carbon footprint of the Northern BC nickel-cobalt mine.
The Hard Creek Nickel partners are now looking ahead to the next step to delivering low-carbon nickel and cobalt into a global energy transition demanding these battery metals.
"We look forward to Turnagain's potential to be further verified in works ahead," said Ikenishi.
"This PFS is a significant step forward for our project which will allow us to advance discussions with potential strategic investors," added Jarvis.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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