The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 256
The Pebble Mine project advanced to the final step of the permitting process would produce 320 million pounds of copper; 363,000 ounces of gold; 15 million pounds of molybdenum; 1.8 million oz of silver; and 12,000 kilograms of rhenium annually over the first 20 years of mining, according to the results of a new preliminary economic assessment published by Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. on Sept. 9. In addition to the proposed 20-year-mine submitted for permitting, the PEA...
Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. Oct. 4 reports that it has concluded its 2021 field program at the company's Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum-silver project in Southwest Alaska. The principal focus of this year's program entailed: • The continuation of select environmental baseline studies. • Site care and maintenance, including the Pebble project site, and other facilities located within Iliamna. • The demobilization and removal of facilities and equipment no longer requi...
In the most recent update on Pebble Limited Partnership’s administrative appeal to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. reported it has been assigned a new review officer for the appeal of the federal agency’s issuance of a negative record of decision for the world-class copper-gold project in Southwest Alaska. Following last November’s negative record of decision by Army Corps, Pebble Partnership submitted a request for appeal of the federal permi...
Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. says the recent 8.1 magnitude earthquake caused substantially less ground movement at the Pebble site than factored in during the designing of the proposed tailings facility for a future mine at this world-class copper project in Southwest Alaska. "We determined the 8.1M earthquake that occurred last month south of the Alaska Peninsula, about 300 miles from our site, create ground acceleration at Pebble that is 20 – 30 times less than the d...
The Environmental Protection Agency Sept. 9 announced its intention to reinitiate the process of making a Clean Water Act Section 404(c) determination to protect certain waters in the Bristol Bay region of Southwest Alaska. Providing such a determination is finalized, it would purportedly protect waters that are essential to commercial, subsistence, and recreational fisheries. Such stringent protections, however, would make advancing the nearby Pebble mine nearly impossible....
Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. April 27 announced the publication of an environmental, social & governance report that outlines its 20-year commitment to environmentally sound and socially responsible development of the proposed Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum-silver-rhenium mine project in Southwest Alaska. "This ESG report is an effort to explain simply and directly, without embellishment, what NDM (Northern Dynasty Minerals) and PLP (Pebble Limited Partnership) have done in...
Rhenium is exceptionally resistant to heat and wear, characteristics that make it a vital ingredient in superalloys used in jet and industrial gas turbine engines. "The high-temperature properties of rhenium allow turbine engines to be designed with finer tolerances and operate at temperatures higher than those of engines constructed with other materials," the United States Geological Survey penned in a fact sheet on the critical metal. "These properties allow prolonged engine...
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers does not subscribe to the idea that it is better for the residents of the Bristol Bay region of Southwest Alaska to have worked and lost than never to have worked at all. In its public interest review for the Pebble project, Army Corps determined that some Bristol Bay residents that become accustomed to increased income and lower living costs from developing Pebble may be forced to move out of the region or lower their standard of living after...
Amongst the rarest of the stable elements on the periodic table and an important ingredient in the emerging thin-film solar panel sector, tellurium embodies what it means to be a metalloid – an element that possesses the properties of both a metal and non-metal – critical to the United States. "Most rocks contain an average of about 3 parts per billion tellurium, making it rarer than the rare earth elements and eight times less abundant than gold," the United States Geo...
Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. says the US Army Corps of Engineers' rejection of the compensatory mitigation plan submitted for the Pebble Mine project in Southwest Alaska is unlawful, unprecedented in Alaska, and unsupported by the administrative record. "I am very confident in saying I believe our CMP is both compliant with the Clean Water Act and fully responsive to the Corps' demand. So, we were shocked when they found our plan to be non-compliant, and even more so that...
Contending that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers' decision to deny the major federal permit needed to develop the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska goes against the record established during the permitting process, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. Intends to pursue every appeal available to set the record straight. "It is our view that this decision, the process by which it was reached and the facts upon which it is based stand as a significant outlier from standard USACE...
Pebble Limited Partnership has submitted a compensatory mitigation plan for Pebble, which is the final piece needed for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to finalize a record of decision for the world-class copper-gold-molybdenum-silver-rhenium mine project in Southwest Alaska. Following publication of a Final Environmental Impact Statement for Pebble in July, the Army Corps sent Pebble Partnership a letter that details the need for "in kind" and "in watershed" mitigation for...
A pitch to deep-pocketed investors about the potential to develop a world-class mine at the Pebble copper project in Alaska turned out to be a clandestinely videotaped sting operation that compromised the integrity of Pebble Limited Partnership CEO Tom Collier. A pair of operatives for the Environmental Investigation Agency, a United Kingdom-based environmental group, posed as representatives of a Hong Kong-based investment firm with links to a company owned by the Chinese...
Northern Dynasty Minerals first set its sights on Alaska's Pebble deposit in the 1990s. After acquiring the property in 2001, the company spent more than a decade and close to $1 billion proving it up as one of the greatest mineral resources ever discovered – certainly on American soil. Consider the following: • contained copper at Pebble is equivalent to ~1.3% of all the copper metal ever discovered or produced in the past 10,000 years; • contained gold at Pebble is equiv...
I write today to share my perspective on the "Pebble Tapes," next steps for the project, and why I agreed to return to the Pebble Project as CEO. Many have asked me why, at 77 years old, I chose to do this. Many also asked why I took on the challenge years ago when I left the cruise ship industry to lead Pebble for the first time. The answer is that I believe in the Project and what it represents for Alaskans. I also believe in the people who have worked so diligently to get...
Much like Mark Twain, who quipped, "The report of my death was an exaggeration," when informed of his obituary in an American newspaper, Politico's report of the untimely demise of the Pebble Mine project in Southwest Alaska was grossly overstated. On Aug. 22 Politico reported, "The Trump administration is planning to block the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska early next week ... marking a surprise reversal that could be the death knell for the massive copper and gold project."...
Already known for its world-class copper, gold, molybdenum and silver endowment, the Pebble deposit in Southwest Alaska is also host to one of Earth's most significant accumulations of rhenium, a highly heat resistant and extremely rare metal that has been deemed critical to the economic and national security of the United States. While Pebble has long been known to host rhenium associated with the molybdenum minerals in the deposit, an official resource of this critical...
The July 24 release of a final Environmental Impact Statement that details a mine at Pebble capable of extracting copper, gold, and other valuable metals from a world-class deposit in Southwest Alaska without harming the Bristol Bay salmon fishery is a landmark achievement for Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., which has spent the better part of two decades advancing the project to this point. "We're ecstatic to reach this major milestone in the advancement of the Pebble Project...
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has determined that a road and pipelines around the north shore of Iliamna Lake is the most environmentally sound route to access the proposed Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum-silver mine in Southwest Alaska. Referred to as Alternative 3 in the draft Environmental Impact Statement for Pebble, this roughly 85-mile northern land-based transportation route would connect the Pebble mine site to Cook Inlet without the need for a ferry to transport...
Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. said its Pebble project could provide another source of jobs and revenue to an Alaska economy challenged by an interrelated combination of COVID-19 and low oil prices. Though fewer than 400 cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed in Alaska, placing it among the lowest states in the country on an absolute and per capita basis, the economic impact of the global pandemic on the largest of the United States is both severe and ongoing. As a result of...
Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. May 13 announced that it has raised C$17.35 million (US$12.3 million) to cover engineering, environmental, permitting and evaluation expenses associated with Pebble and advance the federal environmental impact study for the copper-gold-molybdenum mine project in Alaska to completion. Northern Dynasty raised the money in two concurrent financings – a C$10.1 million underwritten public offering and C$7.25 million private placement. Underwritten b...
Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. Dec. 18 announced that it has raised US$15.5 million, which it will use to continue to advance permitting and outreach at its Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum mine project in Southwest Alaska. The Pebble project is nearing a final decision on an environmental impact statement (EIS) for the proposed mine. The EIS is a lengthy process under the federal National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), that ensures that large projects such as Pebble meet...
As the rest of the country suffers through the Dog Days of summer, Alaska is approaching the end of a topsy-turvy summer season that saw unseasonably hot, dry weather in some parts of the state during some parts of the summer, while other parts of the state have seen record rainfall and unseasonably early snowfall. Gold prices have skyrocketed over the $1,500 per ounce mark and silver prices have moved strongly up, now trading at a one-year high. However, copper and zinc are a...
Earlier this month Reuters reported that several agencies within the U.S. Federal government were "rapidly assessing" our domestic ability to mine and refine rare earth elements and utilize those 17 super cool elements in value-added products needed for a wide and ever-growing array of consumer and national defense products. Not surprisingly, mining industry officials demurred when quizzed about supplying information on where rare elements might be mined in the U.S. and how...
In the famous words of Sherlock Holmes, the game is afoot! After seasonally slower news from Alaska's mining industry in March and April, the dam has broken with over two dozen Alaska mining project news releases issued in the last month. Including those projects moving forward that have not released their 2019 plans, Alaska has become a very busy place under the sun. All of our major metal mines reported strong performances in the first quarter, several of Alaska's most...
