Helium confirmed at Northeast Minnesota drill site

BABBITT — A company looking for helium beneath Northeastern Minnesota’s forest floor said it found the lightweight gas this week, confirming an earlier 2011 finding.

In a news release Thursday, Feb. 29, British Columbia-based Pulsar Helium said its drilling rig encountered gases with a 12.4% helium concentration at depths of 1,750 and 2,200 feet. The concentration was measured with an on-site mass spectrometer. The collected gas samples will be sent to a laboratory for “full molecular composition, removal of atmospheric (air) contamination, and isotopic characterization,” the company said.

Pulsar Helium President and CEO Thomas Abraham-James called the initial findings “an outstanding result.”

“It is a big day for helium exploration, confirming the original discovery in the new jurisdiction of Minnesota. I look forward to keeping the market updated with further results as they are received,” Abraham-James said in the release.

The drill site, called the Topez Project, is located 9 miles down the graveled Dunka River Road — riddled with potholes and tire ruts amid an unusually warm winter — as well as Cleveland-Cliffs’ Peter Mitchell Mine and the unincorporated community of Isabella.

The

company began drilling earlier this month

and had planned to drill another 50 feet down to a depth of 2,250 feet, but abnormally warm temperatures and looming road weight restrictions have forced the company to stop early and dismantle the Wyoming drilling rig, which is usually used for oil and gas drilling.

Crews plan to install a well-testing device on the borehole to take additional samples and conduct more tests when road conditions allow.

Helium was first found at the site in 2011

when a drill crew from Duluth Metals, a precursor to copper-nickel mining company Twin Metals, was searching for platinum-palladium minerals in the Bald Eagle Intrusion. A borehole instead hit a pocket of gas that tests showed contained 10.5% helium — the second-highest concentration found in North America — with the remainder carbon dioxide and nitrogen.

Anything above 0.3% is considered of economic interest.

Helium is often a byproduct of the oil and natural gas industry, but the Minnesota find could provide a hydrocarbon-free source of the element when there is otherwise a shortage of the gas. Pulsar has said it wants to install a production well on-site if conditions are right, but Minnesota would likely need new regulations overseeing it.

Helium is highly sought after for being very nonreactive and can be a lightweight gas or take a liquid form near absolute zero to cool equipment. It’s used in everything from magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines, semiconductor manufacturing and leak testing, to air tanks for medical patients and deep-sea divers, to the aerospace and defense industries.

Helium forms as radioactive elements uranium and thorium decay deep in the earth. It then moves up through fissures and gets trapped in pockets closer to the surface.

And thanks to the Midcontinent Rift, which formed 1.1 billion years ago as North America tried to pull itself apart, sending magma up and leaving behind deposits of copper, nickel and other metals in areas like Minnesota’s Duluth Complex and Tamarack Intrusion, there are plenty of fissures for that helium to take.

While this is the first helium discovery in Minnesota and the Duluth Complex, Pulsar officials believe the geology of the Bald Eagle Intrusion could contain more helium pockets.

Jimmy Lovrien covers mining, energy, climate, social issues and higher education for the Duluth News Tribune. He can be reached at jlovrien@duluthnews.com or 218-723-5332.