Carlsbad, N.M.-Denver-based Intrepid Potash is another step closer to establishing its proposed HB Solar Solution Mine in the Carlsbad area, but company officials say the date is still a couple of years away. The Eddy County Commission recently approved the issuance and sale of New Mexico taxable bonds totaling $60 million for the solution mining project, which Intrepid says will help finance the cost of acquiring and constructing facilities. “The bonds are certainly important to us,” Intrepid spokesman Will Kent told Green Markets. “It makes the project that much more doable for us.” He said a similar request is in the works for Lee County. Last January the Bureau of Land Management sidetracked the project by announcing that an environmental impact statement would be required because of concerns about plans to use solution mining techniques in the worked-out areas of the old Eddy Potash Mine. Eddy was part of the Mississippi Chemical holdings acquired by Intrepid in 2004 after its closure because the depletion of higher-grade ore zones made it uneconomical to mine by conventional methods. “At this point, it looks like it will be September of 2011 when BLM will have completed the assessment,” Martin Litt, Intrepid executive vice president and general counsel, reported in the local press. “Then from that point it will probably be another year or so before we can move dirt and go into full production.” Litt said the $60 million generated from the sale of the industrial revenue bonds will enable Intrepid to purchase equipment at today’s prices. Hugh Harvey, Intrepid’s chief of technology and engineering, added that he “would have never dreamed it would take 5 ½ years to get this project off the drawing board.” He added that the former Eddy mine still has a large amount of potash that can be recovered by solution techniques developed at the Intrepid mine in Moab, Utah.
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