This spring, Homeland Nickel CEO Steve Balch drove with a team of business partners and a geologist up winding roads within the Rogue River-Siskiyou National Forest.
This area of Curry County is part of the Josephine Ophiolite, one of the largest ultramafic rock complexes in North America, which means movement among tectonic plates has thrust the Earth’s mantle into view through a car window.
Road cuts reveal laterite, a reddish soil rich in iron. It’s what gives Homeland Nickel’s nearby 2,000-acre mining claim its name — Red Flat. Over millions of years, weathering has washed away silica in the soil, leaving behind high amounts of metals. Homeland Nickel, as one might guess, is interested in the nickel portion.
“Oregon has the largest source of nickel in the United States,” Balch said.
The team stopped next to a road cut, and Robert Osborne, a geologist who has spent more than 40 years scouting the Earth’s nickel laterite, scooped some of the red soil into his hands.
“This is the high iron portion,” Osborne said. “Part of it's also magnetic.”
He looked pleased as red soil jumped toward a pen magnet he waved over the sample.
“This will carry grade,” he said.
Balch estimates Red Flat contains over 300 million pounds of nickel. That’s only one of nine mining claims his company holds in Southern Oregon. He said the nearby Cleopatra claim could hold more than 700 million pounds of the metal. Those numbers come from exploratory drilling by another company nearly 20 years ago.
“By tons, our Cleopatra deposit is the single largest nickel deposit in the United States,” Balch said. That’s besides a large deposit of lower-grade nickel in Alaska, he clarified.
Growing demand
Mining companies have long known this area was rich in nickel, but they had little reason to rush in while global supply was so high. Currently, most nickel comes from Chinese-run mines in Indonesia.
“Calling Indonesia the Saudi Arabia of nickel is actually an insult to Indonesia, because its market share is vastly larger than that of Saudi Arabia with respect to oil,” said Cullen Hendrix, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
The U.S. recently signed a trade deal with Indonesia to allow more American investment into mining critical minerals.
But Hendrix said demand for nickel is still projected to outpace supply. The International Energy Agency forecasts nickel demand will double by 2040. Historically, nickel was mostly used in stainless steel products. Future demand is expected to come from electric vehicle batteries. The agency predicts the world will need 60 new nickel mines by 2030 to keep up.
The only U.S. nickel mine is in Michigan and slated to close in 2030.
“The real unknowns… are what kind of policies the U.S. puts in place to support not just the domestic nickel industry but also many of the other kind of critical mineral supply chains and industries that we currently do not have in the United States,” Hendrix said.
The federal government has previously backed domestic nickel production. The Riddle Mine in Douglas County was the nation’s largest nickel producer, operating from 1954 to 1987 with federal contracts. Lawmakers considered a domestic nickel supply important for national security.
The U.S. has taken an interest in the metal once again, not only for use in armaments but also for battery technology. The U.S. Geological Survey added nickel to its list of minerals critical for the U.S. economy and national security in 2022.
Environmental concerns
The debate over nickel mining in Southern Oregon stretches back decades.
Michael Dotson, executive director of Klamath-Siskiyou Wildlands Center, said local residents and conservation groups have long opposed mining in the region now claimed by Homeland Nickel. He said opposition goes back to the 1980s, when communities feared nickel mining near the California border would pollute watersheds.
“That was a big impetus to organize and secure protections for Northwest California's Smith River National Recreation Area,” Dotson said.
More than a decade ago, Republican Curry County commissioners opposed nickel mining on Red Flat.
In 2017, concerned communities helped secure a 20-year ban on new mining claims across 100,000 acres of federal land — called a withdrawal — in southwest Oregon. Supporters hoped Congress would pass legislation to permanently protect the region within that time.
Historic claims within the withdrawal, like Homeland Nickel’s Red Flat area, can still be mined with a U.S. Forest Service permit. That’s what the company is in the process of doing now.
Dotson said mining the area would devastate the pristine environment. And he has doubts about the amount of recoverable nickel at the claims.
“We're talking about a form of probably strip mining,” he said, “to find small traces of the mineral.”
At Red Flat, the Homeland Nickel team walked through exploratory trenches dug by a previous claimant. The vegetation growing on laterite is often sparse due to low levels of nutrients. But this area is covered in forest. Osborne, the geologist, said he is amazed at the unique ecosystem that has adapted to grow here.
It’s that habitat Dotson wants to protect.
The landscape is home to the endangered Stansell’s daisy, although no one spotted the flower during the visit. Down the road, a cluster of carnivorous cobra lilies grows.
Homeland Nickel plans to scrape off the top of this plateau, along with the native vegetation, to process the nickel it contains. But Balch said the company would collect native seeds before mining begins and revegetate the land with nursery-grown plants as mining moves across the claim. The company said byproducts left after removing nickel from this laterite are non-toxic.
Dotson is skeptical, although he said it’s hard to know the impacts without the company’s finalized plan. He’s especially worried mining could pollute the nearby Piston River and Hunter Creek, habitat for trout and salmon.
“There's a risk of leaching into water sources and aquifers,” he said. “There's air pollution issues.”
Similar concerns have arisen elsewhere. Indonesia is having its own national debate around the environmental costs of leading the world in nickel mining.
Neighbors of the Riddle Mine benefited from jobs, but also complained of sinus and respiratory issues from the dust.
“After the plant opened, a fine haze of red dust hung in the air. The dust seeped into nooks and crannies of people's homes and cars. It blanketed plants, yards and rooftops. Some wiped the oily red dust off their car windows each morning just to back out of their driveways,” Coos Bay’s The World reported in 2008.
Hendrix said the project could even raise local energy prices.
“These kinds of projects have radiating ripple effects for other aspects of the local economy that I think are important to keep an eye on,” he said.
Homeland Nickel would need to widen forest roads to transport material from the claim. In the quiet valley below, residents would see traffic from large trucks. For the life of the mine, this remote area of untouched backcountry would fundamentally change.
“The mining industry has treated the environment like crap,” Balch said. “I don't think anyone disputes that, especially the mining industry, because it's a legacy that we've had to try and outlive.”
Balch said local communities would come out ahead. He said the operation, which would include concentrating and refining the nickel nearby, could employ as many as 1,000 people for decades as the company moved from property to property. At current prices, he estimated Southern Oregon has $6 billion worth of nickel.
Federal support
This may be the right time for Homeland Nickel to realize such a project. President Donald Trump has directed agencies to speed up the permitting process for mineral extraction.
Balch said he’s seen an impact. He said it used to take over a year for the Forest Service to even respond to a permit request.
“Since the Trump administration has become involved indirectly with our file, we're getting very timely response from the Forest Service, kind of on a weekly basis,” he said.
Balch said the agency recently approved his company’s use of aerial surveillance to better map the claims.
Balch said that the company could start mining in a couple of months if it had all the necessary permits. But while the administration may be favorable to mining, he’s prepared for a less welcoming local response during public comment.
“Because it's in Oregon, it could be an infinite length of time,” he said. “We don't know.”
