NICKEL 



441 



Table 88. — World nickel-laterite identified resources 



[Identified resources are specific, identified mineral deposits that may or 

 may not be evaluated as to extent and grade, and whose contained min- 

 erals may or may not be profitably recoverable with existing technology 

 and economic conditions] 



Ni 



Area Tons of ore (percent) 



Philippine Islands 1,000,000,000 0.8 



Indonesia 500,000,000 .9 



Australia 100,000,000 1.2 



Solomon Islands 100,000,000 1.2 



New Caledonia 500,000,000 1.8 



Malagasy 2,000,000 2 



Cuba 2,000,000,000 1 



Dominican Republic 70,000,000 1.5 



Guatemala 100,000,000 1.5 



Venezuela (Loma Hierro) 60,000,000 1.6 



Colombia (Cerro Matoso) 40,000,000 2.5 



Brazil 20,000,000 2 



Puerto Rico 100,000,000 .9 



Greece 2,000,000 1.7 



U.S.S.R. 100,000,000 1.5 



Yugoslavia 20,000,000 1 



United States: 



Nickel Mountain (Riddle), 



Greg 10,000,000 1.5 



Northern California and rest of 



Oregon 55,000,000 .75 



Washington (Cle Elum, 



Blewett) 30,000,000 .5 



North Carolina 5,000,000 1 



The world nickel laterite resources (table 88) 

 include areas that have only recently been ex- 

 plored, such as the Solomon Islands, Colombia, and 

 Australia, but most of the remainder have been 

 known for many years, particularly the larger re- 

 sources. The United States laterite estimate of 100 

 million tons probably will not be greatly increased, 

 and the individual laterite bodies that it comprises 

 are small. A number of companies have been and 

 are currently negotiating with local governments for 

 operating concessions in the Philippines, Indonesia, 

 New Caledonia, Colombia, and Venezuela, and de- 

 velopment has been delayed by such negotiations 

 and difficulties of financing in areas where the risk 

 appears high. 



In a few areas the laterite estimates are probably 

 quite accurate; in others, when large-scale mining 

 starts, renewed exploration probably will substan- 

 tially increase the resource estimates, such as in 

 Indonesia, Australia, and Colombia. 



Another very large nickel resource, recently de- 

 scribed by McKelvey and Wang (1969), occurs on 

 the deep floor of the Pacfiic Ocean in the form of 

 manganese-oxide nodules. The nodules cover 20-50 

 percent of the bottom in large areas of the north- 

 east, central, and southern Pacific. In addition to 

 dominant manganese and iron, the nodules contain 

 copper, nickel, and cobalt, with an average ratio of 

 3:4:1. Nickel content ranges from 0.1 to 1.1 per- 

 cent, but large deposits appear to contain 0.8-1.1 



percent. Estimates of the size of the nodule deposits 

 range from 90 billion to 1.7 trillion tons; thus for 

 a liberal estimate, a resource of 1.7 trillion tons of 

 nodules averaging 0.95 percent nickel would con- 

 tain 16 billion tons of nickel. However, the amount 

 in deposits of suitable quality, abundance, and en- 

 vironmental setting to warrant dredging is likely to 

 be much smaller. 



SPECULATIVE RESOURCES 



The discovery of the Thompson district, Mani- 

 toba, in 1949, and particularly the discovery of the 

 Thompson mine in 1956, revealed a new type of 

 nickel-sulfide deposit. Data collected by the company 

 geologists indicated that the nickel was derived 

 from peridotite and serpentinite where metamor- 

 phosed to a garnet-amphibolite-sillimanite assem- 

 bage, indicating a temperature of 600 °C or higher. 



Unmetamorphosed peridotites in the area (as else- 

 where in the world) contain 0.25-0.3 percent nickel; 

 metamorphosed peridotite (metaperidotites) in the 

 area contain significantly less. There is evidence 

 that sulfur was available in hydrothermal solutions 

 during metamorphism — metamorphosed iron-forma- 

 tion in the area has been partly converted to pyr- 

 rhotite (Fei_:cS). In such an environment it is 

 possible or even probable that nickel was mobolized 

 by hydrothermal solutions during metamorphism 

 and deposited at present sites as the sulfide (pent- 

 landite), as first proposed by Michener (1957). 



If this mechanism for the formation of the 

 Thompson deposits is valid, peridotites throughout 

 the world could have associated nickel-sulfide de- 

 posits where sufficiently metamorphosed in an en- 

 vironment where sulfur was available — for example, 

 in proximity to black shales, which commonly con- 

 tain sulfur in disseminated pyrite. 



Another possibihty that would make vast quan- 

 tities of nickel available would be the development 

 of new metallurgical techniques to produce nickel 

 from peridotites and serpentinites. Large bodies of 

 these rocks occur in certain areas of the world, in- 

 cluding both Eastern and Western United States, 

 and they universally contain 0.2-0.4 percent nickel. 

 The nickel is probably included chiefly in the lattices 

 of the silicate minerals (mainly olivine and serpen- 

 tine), but no method is now available for extracting 

 it economically. 



As shown in table 87, conservative estimates of 

 world nickel resources are about 2 billion tons of 

 sulfide averaging 1.0 percent nickel and 7 billion 

 tons averaging more than 0.2 percent nickel. For 

 nickel laterites (table 88), the figure is about 5 

 billion tons averaging about 1.0 percent nickel. The 



