Newfoundland & Labrador’s Only Known Salt Dome
Fischell’s, located 15 km south of Atlas’ flagship Great Atlantic Project, is a very large salt dome-style deposit and forms the centerpiece of a highly prospective 226 sq. km land package on the west coast of Newfoundland that is being advanced by Atlas Salt spin-out company Triple Point Resources Ltd.
Triple Point continues to evaluate the timing and method of creating liquidity for its shareholders. Atlas Salt is the largest single investor in Triple Point with 27.45 million shares representing nearly 30% ownership of the company.
In a June 8, 2023, news release, Triple Point announced that it has successfully completed a Phase 1 Dome Assessment of Fischell’s conducted by RESPEC, a South Dakota-based global expert in hydrogen salt caverns.
“Fischell’s Dome offers the potential to store more than 35 million cubic meters of hydrogen, or the equivalent of 180,000 tonnes of hydrogen. This makes the Fischell’s asset much larger than expected and the largest known dome on the east coast of North America.
“The report confirms Fischell’s Dome has space for several caverns, each capable of storing over 8,000 tonnes of green hydrogen, offering massive storage that could store all the energy from projects currently proposed by Newfoundland and Labrador’s wind energy industry.
“In comparison, the ACES Delta Hubs in Delta, Utah, USA, is currently constructing two hydrogen caverns with a capacity of 5,500 tonnes. ACES Delta is one of the world’s largest clean hydrogen storage projects in construction.”
Rowland Howe, President of Atlas Salt, commented: “The salt endowment of the Bay St. George Basin continues to exceed expectations. The spinout last fall allowed Atlas to focus all of its energies on Great Atlantic, a potential `disrupter’ in Eastern North America’s road salt market given its unique advantages in terms of its homogeneous nature, shallowness, and port proximity.”
“Mr. Salt” continued: “A separate highly-skilled team at Triple Point is focusing on unlocking the full value of Fischell’s and other mineral licenses prospective for salt dome-type deposits that are also in demand for their salt cavern renewable energy storage potential. Salt cavern storage is expected to be a key component in the proposed ‘Clean Energy Hub’ driven by the Canada-Germany Hydrogen Accord signed in August 2022.”
The salt endowment of the Bay St. George Basin is truly remarkable. Atlas shareholders have tremendous leverage to this discovery with the company’s 100% ownership of Great Atlantic and a major equity position in Triple Point. Great Atlantic and the emerging Clean Energy Hub are game-changers for this region.
Rowland Howe
President, Atlas Salt
Fischell’s Salt Dome – Massive Scale
An unconstrained three-dimensional gravity inversion model for the Fischell’s Salt Dome, or FB-1 anomaly, measures 4.1 km x 1.3 km extending to a depth of greater than 2.4 km, providing significant volume potential as outlined in an August 2022 NI-43-101 Technical Report (available on SEDAR). The discovery drill hole, Hooker #1, was completed about 50 years ago at the centre of a gravity anomaly from approximately 100 metres off the Trans-Canada Highway. The hole cut 739 meters of salt, starting at a depth of 360 meters, and ended in salt mineralization at 1,099 meters.
Multiple large salt caverns are possible at Fischell’s for safe and efficient underground storage of renewable energy including hydrogen, similar to how the “Delta Dome” is being used in Utah as part of the world class Advanced Clean Energy Project. As the salt is dissolved to create cavern space at a deposit like Fischell’s, a brine is produced that may allow for the sale of salt by-products into the food, chemical and agricultural markets.
Modelling has also identified a potential second deeply rooted salt dome (Fischell’s East) starting just 3 km east of the main deposit. Fischell’s East has a vertical cylindrical shape with a diameter of 1.5 km and an average density of 2.35 grams per cubic centimetre, based on the 2022 Technical Report. This target area has never been drilled and further work is planned to follow-up on the encouraging gravity signature.
Fischell’s is located is in the heart of the Bay St. George Sub-Basin (160 km x 60 km) which formed as a pull-apart trough adjacent to, and west of, the northeast trending Long Range Fault, a major strike-slip fault and part of the Cabot Fault system.
"We believe that Atlantic Canada presents a huge opportunity for us but also for Canada to contribute to a green energy transition. Canada is a close and like-minded partner in the energy transition."
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
Proposed Clean Energy Hub
On August 23, 2022, Canada and Germany signed an historic “Hydrogen Accord” in Stephenville, Newfoundland, a gateway to Europe at a time of heightened global energy concerns.
Canada is working with European partners to strengthen global energy security and accelerate the global clean energy transition. To these ends, Canada’s allies in Europe have initiated efforts to displace imports of Russian oil and gas in the short term while accelerating efforts to deploy renewable energy and clean hydrogen.
The Canada-Germany Hydrogen Alliance commits the two countries to:
- Enabling investment in hydrogen projects through policy harmonization
- Supporting the development of secure hydrogen supply chains
- Establishing a transatlantic Canada–Germany supply corridor
- Exporting clean Canadian hydrogen by 2025
The Newfoundland Advantage
Clean Energy Hub
- The west coast of Newfoundland has some of the greatest potential for wind energy development and green hydrogen production in North America, strongly encouraged and incentivized by the provincial and federal government
- The area’s wind resource, combined with important infrastructure and potential world class salt cavern storage, makes the concept of a Clean Energy Hub extremely compelling
- Newfoundland’s expertise in building large-scale oil projects, and its overall pro-resource stance, will aid tremendously in the creation of a world class Clean Energy Hub
Energy Storage
Energy storage is a key component to deliver clean energy transition. With climate change and associated green environmental policies driving significant investment toward alternate energy sources and global carbon emission reduction, underground storage will play an important role in Canada’s energy future.
What is a Salt Dome?
Unlike Great Atlantic, which is a homogenous, flat-lying and relatively shallow high-purity salt deposit, Fischell’s Brook is considered a salt dome-type deposit which is more vertical in its orientation.
Salt Domes can contain very large amounts of Salt, and they also hold a particularly special advantage – these structures are ideal for cost effective and environmentally friendly underground renewable energy storage, which is why U.S. strategic oil reserves for many years have been kept in salt caverns. These caverns are created in a salt dome by drilling into the structure and circulating water, which dissolves the salt. The leftover brine is then removed, leaving a storage cavity. The surrounding salt has properties that prevents gas and air from migrating out of the caverns, including very low porosity and permeability plus self-healing characteristics.
