Montana Limestone supplying rock for wind project

Montana Limestone Company supplied limestone to the Pryor Mountain Wind Project in Montana throughout its two-year construction. The Pacificorp project is producing wind energy and construction is nearly complete.

The wind project is “right outside the (limestone) quarry, so it was just natural to provide the stone,” said Jacob Dow, Basin Electric engineer III - Dakota Coal Company. Dakota Coal is a Basin Electric subsidiary and parent company of Montana Limestone.

“Freight always adds significant cost, so the fact that the quarry is just a couple miles away from the construction site was advantageous for us and the project’s developers,” Dow said.

Since construction began in 2019, Montana Limestone has sold 112,000 tons of limestone for use on the wind project -- that’s more than is shipped to Basin Electric’s Leland Olds Station in an entire year.

Montana Limestone mines chemical-grade limestone for use in emissions abatement at Basin Electric’s coal-based generation facilities and an environmental control additive in the Bakken oil field, so any rock that is not chemical-grade is normally not useful. “But, what was not useful to us was just fine for a construction project, so it worked out very well,” Dow said.