Bismarck, N.D.-The North Dakota Department of Mineral Resources has approved a drilling permit for Denver-based Dakota Salts LLC for what the department describes as the first exploratory potash well in nearly three decades. Dakota Salts LLC has the permit for one test well near Lignite in Burke County, which will be only the fifth since 1976, according to State Geologist Edward Murphy. The funding will come from state grant money to study whether mines can be used to store compressed air for electricity-generating wind farms once the potash is removed. Dakota Salts, a subsidiary of London-based Sirius Exploration PLC, says the mining caverns could also store carbon dioxide from North Dakota’s coal-burning power plants or natural gas from the state’s oil fields. Toby Hall, a Sirius Exploration spokesman in London, told the local press that the 8,900-foot deep test well would be drilled by the end of the year. Murphy said North Dakota likely holds some 50 billion tons of potash, adding that North Dakota’s potash beds, created by oceans that dried up some 400 million years ago, cover about 11,000 square miles in the northwestern corner of the state. But Murphy noted that potash has not attracted a lot of interest in recent years, with only four test wells having been drilled in recent years, because deposits in Canada less than 150 miles to the north are at shallower depths and easier to recover. According to Murphy, however, that could change with advanced drilling techniques used by the oil industry, which could reduce the costs.
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