PATIENCE LAKE, SK - The project to bring back idled capacity at PotashCorp's Patience Lake solution mine near Saskatoon, SK, is on budget and ahead of schedule.

A visit to the property shows a flurry of construction activity underway at several sites where 22 new injection wells, one recovery well and three new pipelines are under construction. At one site, nine directional wells were drilled (completed in May 2008) in close proximity to each other by a 180-foot-high "walking" rig that moves from one well site to the next on its own power.

This rig is now completing the eight wells in Southeast block which is the last group to be drilled. This area is scheduled to come on stream summer of 2009.

The resulting cluster of wellheads will be enclosed by one building that blends with other buildings on this agricultural landscape, located about 16 km (10 mi) east of Saskatoon. The directional nature of the new fully cased wells, meanwhile, will allow the facility to pump brine (water saturated with common table salt, sodium chloride, but deficient in potassium chloride) into nine widely dispersed points in the old mine workings located about 1,000 meters (more than 3,000 feet) below the Earth's surface. As a safety precaution, brine feeding all three new injection pipelines to the multiple well sites will be transported in carrier pipes enclosed by larger pipes designed to detect and contain any leaks.

Before the start of the project, the Patience Lake facility included only 10 injection wells with nine recovery wells. Increasing capacity here is a straightforward and cost effective process, according to one of the mine officials overseeing the work.

"It's a simple way to more than double our current capacity at a relatively small cost," says Rob King, Senior Process Engineer at Patience Lake and coordinator of the project.

The Patience Lake project, announced in March 2007, will bring back 360,000 tonnes of previously idled potash capacity. The estimated cost of the project is Cdn $110 million and is scheduled to be fully completed in the first half of 2009. Certain wells including the nine in Northwest block will come into production in fall of 2008, eight months ahead of schedule.

Patience Lake was a conventional potash mine before flooding made it unworkable. It was converted to a solution mine in 1988. Today, potash here is mined by injecting heated brine into the underground mine workings. The heated brine dissolves potash from the walls and pillars of the mine, and then the resulting brine rich with potash is pumped back up to surface and piped to a cooling pond. As the brine cools, the crystalline potash settles to the bottom of the pond, where it is removed with floating dredges and pumped to the mill.

No tailings are created from this process; however, tailings left over from the conventional operation of the facility are used to produce brine for the solution mining process. As a result, the old talings pile is being consumed as the project moves forward.

Work at PotashCorp's Patience Lake facility is one of several projects announced in 2007. These projects, combined with expected other future debottlenecking and expansion opportunities at our existing Saskatchewan facilities are expected raise PotashCorp's projected annual capacity to 15.7 million tonnes by the end of 2012 and up to 17.2 million tonnes by 2015.

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