Company proposes to upcycle Minnesota iron mine waste in central North Dakota

A company wants to bring waste from a Minnesota iron mine to North Dakota, where it could be used to produce pig iron – a precursor to steel.

The North Dakota Industrial Commission voted Jan. 24 to give $7 million to a company that would use iron from Minnesota to produce low-carbon pig iron at Underwood – a $2 billion project. 

The North Dakota Development Fund, part of the Commerce Department, last week announced it would provide $3 million to the same project by North American Iron.

The Industrial Commission approved the pig iron project and seven others for loans or grants – with forgivable loans for two fertilizer plants among them. 

Gov. Doug Burgum said the low-carbon pig iron could lead to low-carbon steel in North Dakota.

“We could end up with a steel plant in North Dakota if we get this pig iron thing going,” Burgum said. 

The plant would be at the site of Rainbow Energy Center’s Coal Creek Station power plant about 10 miles south of Underwood and 50 miles north of Bismarck. 

“Coal Creek really brings all the things we need,” Jim Bougalis, CEO of Scranton Holding / North American Iron, told the Clean Sustainable Energy Authority on Jan. 23. Bougalis said the Coal Creek site has the space it needs, rail access, power and water supply. 

That authority voted to forward the project to the Industrial Commission, which consists of Burgum, Agriculture Commissioner Doug Goehring and Attorney General Drew Wrigley. 

The project would take mine waste from Minnesota’s Iron Range and use hydrogen to fuel the pig iron plant. 

“This project is only viable due to the combination of existing underused iron resources in Minnesota in close proximity to North Dakota and its energy industry,” according to the company’s grant application. 

The company would take natural gas, remove the hydrogen and sequester the carbon dioxide that is left behind. 

Bougalis said using hydrogen reduces the carbon emissions by about 96% compared to a traditional blast furnace for making pig iron.  

“Our No. 1 emitter is steam,” Bougalis said. 

The Coal Creek site also has underground storage available to sequester the CO2. 

Scott Skokos of the Dakota Resource Council, an environmental and landowner rights group, said it was good to see the projects coming out of the Clean Sustainable Energy Authority begin to diversify and not just benefit the coal industry. 

While the pig iron project appears to have some environmental benefits, “North Dakota is again essentially being used as a waste dump,” Skokos said. 

The proposal says the project would create about 500 jobs in North Dakota and 150 in Minnesota. 

The project would take mine waste from stockpiles at Calumet, Minnesota, and return the land “to a usable condition for forest, wetlands, recreational use, or other purposes,” according to the application. 

Bougalis said the mine waste would be crushed, screened and washed in Minnesota.

 “We process it down to half the volume and then we ship it to North Dakota and turn it into pig iron,” Bougalis said. 

Bougalis said North Dakota is more attractive than Minnesota for the plant in part because “regulation has run rampant in Minnesota,” he said. 

“This one super excites me,” Burgum said. “It’s a complete gift from the state of Minnesota.”

Bougalis said construction would take about three years and use about 1,000 construction workers. The application said the plant could be operational by 2029. 

The pig iron from the plant would be shipped to foundries and steel plants in the U.S. Bougalis said those plants rely largely on imported pig iron. 

Burgum said the pig iron plant could lead to a $5 billion or $6 billion steel plant and be a “game-changer for central North Dakota.”

“There are so many wins stacked up on this one,” he said. 

The $7 million in funding from the Industrial Commission will be used toward engineering and design of the facility, said Reice Haase, deputy executive director of the commission. The funding will be used to reimburse the company for eligible expenses after work has been documented and after verification that private matching dollars have been spent, he said.

The $3 million in funding from the North Dakota Development Fund requires the facility to be based in North Dakota, said Jessica Tooke, CEO of the Development Fund. If the project moves out of state or transfers ownership, the $3 million shall be immediately repaid, Tooke said. 

North Dakota Monitor reporter Mary Steurer contributed to this report.