Steve Halabura

Steve Halabura is the founder, President and CEO of Buffalo Potash Corp. (TSXV: BUFF; OTCQB: BLPTF), a Saskatchewan junior working to produce potash — the potassium nutrient in fertilizer that has no substitute — without sinking a mine shaft. Under his leadership, the company released a positive Preliminary Economic Assessment (PEA — an early-stage study of whether a project can be mined profitably) for its Disley project in May 2026. A professional geologist (P.Geo.) who has spent three decades on the evaporite rocks — ancient salt layers — that host Saskatchewan's potash, Halabura has twice been part of potash ventures that ended in acquisitions by major producers.

His record comes from the last Saskatchewan potash boom. Halabura held senior exploration roles at Anglo Potash Corp., which BHP Billiton bought in 2008 to consolidate ground around what became its Jansen project, now under construction as one of the largest mining investments in Canadian history. He then filled a similar role at Potash One Inc., which Germany's K+S acquired in 2011 for about C$434 million; Potash One's Legacy project became the Bethune mine, the first new Saskatchewan potash operation in more than four decades. That history — two potash juniors taken into deals with BHP and K+S — is the core of Buffalo's credibility with investors.

Buffalo's method reflects his read of the basin. Conventional Saskatchewan mines sink shafts roughly a kilometre through water-bearing rock, a step that has pushed new projects into multibillion-dollar budgets. Halabura's team instead drills horizontal wells into the Prairie Evaporite Formation, dissolves sylvite (potash ore) with injected water and pumps the brine to surface plants, where it is crystallized into MOP (muriate of potash — standard fertilizer-grade potassium chloride). The plan is deliberately modular: an Initial Production Module of about 125,000 tonnes per year, followed by two 500,000-tonne-per-year mines (Disley East and Disley West) for up to 1,125,000 tonnes per year at full build-out, as set out in the NI 43-101 PEA (the Canadian technical-report standard) filed in May 2026. In September 2026, the company completed its final horizontal well and closed out its drilling program.

For potash investors, Halabura offers a rare combination: a working geologist who has twice moved Saskatchewan potash ground into major hands, now running a challenger that argues the next mine does not need a shaft. Following him is a practical education in solution-mining economics, staged capital spending, and the geopolitics of a market where Russia and Belarus ship roughly a third of world supply while Canada holds the largest reserves. The caveat is straightforward — Buffalo is still pre-revenue and a PEA is preliminary by definition — so his main value today is how clearly he explains each de-risking step, from drill results to permitting, as the Disley project advances.