Alaska Energy Metals is expanding its presence in Canada with the acquisition of Quebec

The company is also developing the Nikolai project in Alaska, where it increased known nickel resources to 8 billion pounds in February after updating its NI 43-101 mineral resource estimate.

“Our Nikolai nickel project, home to the Eureka deposit, already contains one of the largest known nickel resources in the US. “We intend to acquire Bambino so that we can continue to increase our share of nickel and other strategic metals in the rapidly growing lithium-ion battery industry, as well as the long-term energy storage industry in North America,” CEO Greg Beischer said in a statement.

From 2007 until last year, Beischer was CEO of Millrock Resources, a project generator for the mining industry. In spring 2023, he founded Alaska Energy Metals specifically to develop the Nikolai project, building on a long history dating back to 1995 when he was an exploration geologist at Inco (acquired by Vale in 2006).

With the Quebec land package, Beischer saw similarities to Nikolai’s geology in an area he had become familiar with in the 1990s while also prospecting for nickel for Inco.

“We discovered it on a purely conceptual basis at the time, but it wasn’t rich enough for Inco in the 1990s,” Beischer said in an interview. “We drilled thousands of meters of disseminated nickel sulfide, which today has the potential to be an economic, high-grade ore deposit.”

Beischer said there are about seven companies in North America working on similar projects — massive nickel deposits.

“It is a lower grade than what has been mined in the past, but I think these are next-generation nickel deposits that will be mined in the future because finding high-grade massive nickel sulfide deposits is extremely rare and difficult,” he said.

Beischer pointed out that the last truly globally significant mass of nickel sulfide deposits discovered on Earth was the Boise Bay deposit in Labrador — and that was 30 years ago.

“They are really rare. So, in the face of enormous demand, the industry will migrate to mining mass-distributed nickel in the same way that our industry migrated to mining porphyry copper deposits 50 or 60 years ago,” he predicted.

“Previously, we were only mining high-grade copper deposits, then we realized that in such a large area there were huge lumps of rock with slightly dispersed copper sulfides, but we could mine these large quantities through economies of scale and make a lot of money,” Beischer said. “And now, 50 years later, that’s where almost all of our copper comes from, and I think the same thing will happen with nickel.”

He noted that in the late-mid-1990s, Inco recognized at a high level that the Nikolai project was similar to the Nurilsk area in Russia, which is the largest accumulation of nickel sulfide on earth.

At Nikolai, the company has a five-year exploration permit that allows drilling anywhere in the project, but is still years away from a mine project.

“We found that the deposit contains a very higher quality core that could be extracted earlier at a zero recovery rate. This should really help the early stage economy. I think we made an excellent discovery here. We’re in really good shape.”

Although the price of nickel has fallen over the past year due to a surge in supplies from Indonesia, Beischer is undeterred and said the demand outlook is very good. However, he is concerned about delays in mine permitting in the longer term ahead of US mine construction.

Obtaining permission to develop mines in Canada is much faster than in the USA. It takes about two years, as opposed to seven in the US.

US disconnection

“There is a disconnect in the federal government – ​​they are really pushing for the electrification of our society, but they are not pushing for development,” Beischer noted. “The country is defenseless. “I think it is at risk of supply chain disruptions and disruptions to its smooth expansion into a more electrified society.”

Beischer said it may be helpful to post robust information boards about permit application deadlines and response times from permitting agencies.

“The permitting process is political. Politics can really impact the science and engineering of the US permitting process. I think it’s bad. “I believe the project should be assessed solely from a scientific and engineering perspective, not a political one,” he said.

“The US federal government is pushing really hard on the development of electric vehicles and the electrification of our society in general, and that will require a lot of metal, but there doesn’t seem to be the same will within the same administration to extract resource minerals in America.”

Beischer also pointed out that the United States is at risk of being cut off from metal supplies from abroad.

“We should develop our own resources here. The federal government is providing money to help, but it’s not making it easier from a permitting standpoint. There’s a bit of a disconnect there. “When a project is proposed, we look to see if there is a way we can make the project work that is acceptable to the environment and people, taking into account the economic benefits that come with it,” he said.

“But I don’t get the same feeling from our federal regulators. It’s more about… “is there a way to stop the project?” The agencies simply don’t move fast enough and there is no timetable for their response, so the number drops year over year and it likely takes twice as long for surgery to be approved in the United States as it does in Canada, even though the process is quite similar.

“The system we have simply needs to move faster, especially if there is an urgent need to electrify our society – then permitting agencies should act with the same urgency.”