The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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After two years of legal wrangling, Pebble Limited Partnership and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have traded the courtroom floor for a negotiating table to resolve differences that would likely influence the viability of developing a mine at the world-class Pebble copper deposit in Southwest Alaska. In 2014, the Pebble Partnership filed a suit action in federal district court in Alaska, alleging that EPA violated the Federal Advisory Committee Act by working...
The unseasonably, interminably, unspeakably cold spring that is delaying mineral exploration and development work in Alaska this year is being mimicked by a financial chill that is affecting Alaska exploration efforts just like it is the rest of the world. Not to put too fine a point on it, but from a mineral exploration standpoint, Alaska is shaping up to be as dead as a doornail this summer (ever wonder where that saying came from ... but I digress.). How dead? Try this statistic on for size: Of the 49 exploration projects...
Mineral exploration spending in Alaska will likely struggle to top US$80 million for 2014, a dramatic fall from the US$365.1 million pinnacle reached in 2011. "The din of mineral industry activity that is normally a part of the summer months in Alaska is decidedly muted this year as the global mining industry attempts to lift itself off the bottom of a plus-18-month-long slump," Avalon Development President Curt Freeman opined in a June column written for Mining News. Unlike 2...
A Washington, D.C. think tank has weighed in on the question of whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency erred in conducting an assessment of large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska before such a project was even proposed, let alone engaged in the federal permitting process. EPA published its findings in a “Bristol Bay Assessment” and decided to place limits on development of the enormous and contentious Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum project in Sou...
Over the past month, the world has been awash in year-end 2013 mining news, ranging from exploration and production statistics to economic impact numbers and mining favorability polls. The Alaska highlights from this wad of info include the results from the annual Fraser Institute political jurisdiction favorability survey where Alaska placed first in the world out of 112 jurisdictions for mineral potential. However, Alaska plummeted to 21st place on the survey's Policy Percep...
The State of Alaska and its mining industry continue to benefit from a world-class natural resource base while being buffeted by significant challenges, mostly related to downward market trends for minerals and energy. The wide array of complex resource development issues and decisions facing Alaska resource managers, policy makers and the private sector is unabated - in fact it has grown - and the Alaska Department of Natural Resources is determined to address them as best we can despite adverse fiscal conditions. Some good...
Is the impasse between Pebble Limited Partnership and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over the potential development of the world-class Pebble copper deposit in Southwest Alaska about to be resolved? Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., currently the sole owner of the Pebble Partnership, believes the standoff will likely be over by January if an ongoing lawsuit between Pebble and the EPA runs its full course, and possibly sooner if the parties come to an agreement outside of...
Unlawful, unfair and unwise - this is how the leadership of the Pebble Limited Partnership characterized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's efforts to detrimentally limit the company's ability to apply for the permits needed to develop a mine at the world-class Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum project in Southwest Alaska during separate speeches delivered Nov. 5. "It is outrageous that one federal agency would bypass everything else, all the processes, come to a predeterm...
The Alaska Supreme Court May 29 ruled that public notices should have been required before the Alaska Department of Natural Resources issued some miscellaneous land-use permits to the Pebble Limited Partnership, overturning a lower court ruling. Land- and water-use permits are needed for mineral exploration drilling in Alaska. The ruling came as a result of a court case in which Nunamta Aulukestai took DNR to court over the lack of public notice prior to issuing permits for ex...
Did the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency secretly collaborate with environmental activists to contrive and execute a plan to roadblock the enormous Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum project? This is the question that U. S. District Court Judge H. Russel Holland in Anchorage is trying to answer after hearing May 29 arguments from both sides. The Pebble Limited Partnership alleges that EPA worked behind the scenes with lawyers, scientists, non-governmental agencies and other an...
Citing a need to ensure clean drinking water, the Obama administration May 27 unveiled new rules that broadens what is considered the Waters of the United States and, thereby, pushing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Water Act authority further upstream. President Barack Obama said the new measures - which add wetlands and small tributaries to the navigable waters protected under the Clean Water Act - are needed to protect sources of drinking water for some 117...
Former U.S. Defense Secretary William S. Cohen March 24 said he and his firm, The Cohen Group, assisted by law firm DLA Piper, will conduct an independent review of whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency acted fairly in connection with its evaluation of potential mining in the Bristol Bay watershed in Southwest Alaska. "An investigation being conducted by the EPA's Office of Inspector General; inquiries and hearings into EPA actions by the House Committee on...
Recently, in litigation pending before the federal district court in Anchorage, the Pebble Project withstood an attack seeking to defeat the project's opposition to what may be called the Massacre of 2012. When the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency promulgated its Bristol Bay Watershed study under the theoretical authority of Section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act, it was immediately criticized on the grounds that the report was generated on the basis of advice from certain...
On the face of it, President Barack Obama's decision to place a ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Bristol Bay Region appears to have handed opponents of the Pebble Project another weapon in their ongoing fight to block development of the enormous copper-gold-molybdenum deposit. But Pebble supporters say a moratorium on petroleum exploration in Bristol Bay has little or no relationship to the merits of the mine project. Oil and gas drilling in Bristol Bay has long been a contentious issue, dating back to the...
In an industry eager for even a scintilla of good news, a recent report from industry analyst SNL Metals & Mining recently gave the good-news-starved industry a bit of hope. SNL's article, titled, "Too early to start celebrating a recovery in the sector," indicated that although the downward trend in mineral exploration has not broken yet, the market has stopped down-grading mining equities, with a modest gain in market capitalization since its most recent low in mid-2013....
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has offered the proposal of allowing the Pebble Limited Partnership to apply for permits to develop a less than average-size porphyry mine at the world's largest undeveloped copper-gold-molybdenum deposit. Falling short of an outright ban of building a mine at Pebble, the EPA is proposing Clean Water Act Section 404(c) permit restrictions aimed at limiting the footprint of any mine allowed to be developed at the enormous porphyry...
The din of mineral industry activity that is normally a part of the summer months in Alaska is decidedly muted this year as the global mining industry attempts to lift itself off the bottom of a plus-18-month-long slump. Some Alaska projects are moving forward but most field budgets are small with commensurately reduced goals attached. Larger mining companies, many under new management, are rapidly shedding non-core assets while revising budgets and timeframes for...
At the recent Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada meeting in Toronto, Dr. Richard Schodde, managing director of MinEx Consulting, presented some key factors which affect the time span between a mineral discovery and start-up of commercial mining. The study reviewed about 3,500 nonferrous metal deposits discovered between 1950 and 2013. Dr. Schodde's findings suggest that only 45 percent of all discoveries made since 1950 have turned into mines. The rate is...
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said its Bristol Bay assessment provides evidence that the Pebble copper project is too big and the Bristol Bay watershed is too special to risk the outcome of a state and federal permitting process. To circumvent permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act, a rigorous permitting regime over which EPA holds great sway, the environmental regulator Feb.28 initiated a review under Section 404(c) of the federal Clean Water Act...
After spending more than half a billion dollars to take the Pebble Project to the cusp of permitting, Anglo American plc has pulled out of The Pebble Limited Partnership, an alliance it forged six years ago with junior Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. to gain a 50 percent stake in one of the largest copper-gold-molybdenum deposits on the planet. According to the most recent published resource estimate, Pebble contains 80.6 billion pounds of copper, 107.4 million ounces of gold...
Having enjoyed one of the warmest and driest summers on record, most of Alaska is now paying the piper as unseasonably cold and in many areas, snowy, weather takes hold of the state. With the termination dust come news that is both good and bad, a common theme in what is turning out to be a year of significant cutbacks for exploration, development and production plans. Earlier in 2013, I summarized the expected decrease in exploration expenditures this year. Now that the bulk...
After spending more than half a billion dollars to take the Pebble Project to the cusp of permitting, Anglo American plc has pulled out of The Pebble Limited Partnership, an alliance it forged six years ago with junior Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. to gain a 50 percent stake in one of the largest copper-gold-molybdenum deposits on the planet. According to the most recent published resource estimate, Pebble contains 80.6 billion pounds of copper, 107.4 million ounces of gold...
A growing number of Lower 48 lawmakers are weighing in on the potential risks and rewards of building a mine at the enormous Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum deposit in Southwest Alaska, shifting the frontline of the escalating battle to Washington D.C. With the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency seemingly positioning itself to exercise unprecedented powers to halt the Pebble project without giving developers the opportunity to have their plans vetted under the current permitti...
The second draft of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Bristol Bay Assessment strengthens the notion that Pebble and other copper deposits in the Bristol Bay watershed are at risk of losing mining habitat due to the salmon population found there. After spending about a year studying the area of Southwest Alaska where the enormous Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum project is located, EPA released the initial draft of the Bristol Bay Watershed Assessment in May, 2012. Based on...
Mineral consulting group Behre Dolbear Group Inc. released its 2013 "Ranking of Countries For Mining Investment Where Not to Invest." Since 1999 the group has compiled annual political risk assessments from key players in the global mining industry. Geology and mineral potential are not considered in this survey, since such potential is inherently indicated by the fact that mineral exploration, development, and mining activity are occurring in these countries. The only...
