Canada is the only G7 nation without a strategic petroleum reserve. Triple Point Resources says the fix is already here—five kilometres wide and 1.5 deep, in western Newfoundland.

Riddle: what gets larger, and more valuable, the more you take away from it?
Answer: a salt dome.

Never heard of one? Then we’ve got a story for you — and it’s buried right under a stretch of highway you may well have driven.

Thirty kilometres south of Stephenville, on Newfoundland’s west coast, lies the Fischells Dome: a deposit of some of the purest salt found anywhere, five kilometres wide, four long and more than 1.5 kilometres deep, capped by 300 to 500 metres of solid bedrock. If you hollow-out caverns inside it, you’ll have underground storage on a scale surface tanks can’t touch—for hydrocarbons, for hydrogen, for compressed air, and, potentially, for something of national consequence: a strategic energy reserve.

That last possibility is why a quiet local project is starting to draw attention well beyond the province.

This province has the potential to really become a centrepiece and a hub for energy storage.

—Julie Lemieux, CEO, Triple Point Resources

An asset “proven and tested”

Julie Lemieux, CEO of project proponent Triple Point Resources, calls the dome an exceptional and rare asset. Salt domes are common in the Gulf of Mexico, she notes, but vanish up the eastern coast until you reach Atlantic Canada.

“The fact that we have one that is proven on the eastern side of North America is highly unique,” Lemieux said. “The Fischells Dome is unique in that it has been drilled, proven and tested for energy storage. There’s no other dome across this region that has been tested as much as ours.”

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