FPX Nickel Corp (TSX-V:FPX) said it has appointed Cooper Quinn as the president and chief executive officer of its recently formed carbon capture and storage (CCS) subsidiary, CO2 Lock Corp.
Quinn has over 15 years of experience in Canadian and international geoscience, with a diverse background in senior management of exploration programs and company leadership, FPX Nickel noted.
"We are very pleased to welcome Cooper as CO2 Lock's CEO, who will lead the charge in our pursuit of opportunities in large-scale, low-cost and permanent CCS," Peter Bradshaw, FPX's chairman said in a statement.
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"Cooper brings a demonstrated track record of value creation in the geosciences and a personal passion for environmental sustainability, key attributes for accelerating our ambitions to achieve gigaton-scale carbon mineralization in prospective geological settings around the planet," Bradshaw added.
FPX set up CO2 Lock in March this year to pursue geoscience-related CCS opportunities. The subsidiary is focused on developing CCS operations in geological settings worldwide with similarities to FPX's Decar Nickel District. It has established ownership interests in prospective mineral tenures and is developing intellectual property associated with the operation of CCS sites worldwide.
"I'm very excited about the opportunity represented by CO2 Lock," commented Quinn. "Shifting our planet to net-zero is going to require a staggering amount of emissions reduction and CCS to return the atmosphere to pre-industrial levels."
CO2 Lock's vision is to commercialize the CCS potential of ultramafic brucite-rich serpentinized peridotite host rocks, with a mission to license or construct and operate commercial CCS projects capable of permanently and profitably locking away hundreds of millions of tonnes of CO2 per year at scale.
In pursuit of this objective, CO2 Lock will execute exploration and engineering activities to advance the development of large-scale carbon operations capable of mineralizing carbon dioxide in these rocks and associated carbon-depleted waters both at-surface (ex-situ mineralization) and underground (in-situ mineralization).
Quinn added: “I'm hopeful CO2 Lock can contribute a meaningful amount to this global challenge. Having access to the five years of CCS data and research from FPX, we have an excellent head start, including a global database of potential storage locations that gives us a first-mover advantage in developing standalone sites to permanently mineralize and store CO2."
Quinn‘s experience in the mining industry ranges from on-site project exploration to public company management, mergers and acquisitions, and due diligence mandates. Most recently, he was the president of Canterra Minerals, a public company conducting exploration activities in Newfoundland.
Prior to joining Canterra, Quinn was president of Osprey Gold, an exploration company focused on Nova Scotia, which was acquired in 2020 by MegumaGold.
Quinn assumes the role of CO2 Lock's CEO from David Molinski, who served as the entity's founding CEO. Molinski will continue to serve on CO2 Lock's board of directors alongside Bradshaw and FPX's president and CEO, Martin Turenne.
FPX Nickel is focused on the exploration and development of the Decar Nickel District, located in central British Columbia, and other occurrences of the same unique style of naturally occurring nickel-iron alloy mineralization known as awaruite.
Contact the author at jon.hopkins@proactiveinvestors.com