The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Teck, NANA explore 1 billion-metric-ton Anarraaq zinc deposit while permitting Aqqaluk
With reserves in the main pit of the Red Dog zinc-lead-silver mine running low, Teck Resources Ltd. and NANA Regional Native Corp. waited, with cautious optimism, for the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to provide final approval for development of the Aqqaluk deposit, a huge zinc-lead deposit that would extend the life of the Red Dog zinc mine by about 20 years.
Since the partners in the world's largest zinc mine began mining Red Dog's Main Pit in 1989, they have removed more than 9 million tons of zinc, about 1.5 million tons of lead and nearly 93.5 million ounces of silver.
Concentrates shipped from the Northwest Alaska mine account for 80 percent of the zinc ore mined in the U.S. every year.
The Aqqaluk deposit, which lies adjacent to the north side of the main pit, contains 51.6 million metric tons of reserves with an average zinc content of 16.7 percent along with 4.4 percent lead, enough ore for Red Dog to continue to be a global zinc supplier for the next two decades.
Permitting Aqqaluk
The Red Dog partners' quest to permit Aqqaluk began in May 2007, when they sought required modifications to the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit to include the development of the Aqqaluk project.
Though mining the new deposit, which borders the north side of Red Dog's Main deposit, will not substantially change operations at the mine, the EPA determined that a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement is needed before it can approve the expansion.
The modified plan proposed by Teck and NANA is to fill in the pit currently being mined with waste rock from the Aqqaluk deposit. The Aqqaluk ore will be mined and processed utilizing the same techniques and facilities used during the past two decades.
The request to update the NPDES permit triggered a National Environmental Policy Act review of the project. The EPA, which is the lead agency in the NEPA process, determined that a Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement needed to be completed to assess the environmental impacts of the proposed mining plan.
The partners hope to have permits in hand to develop Aqqaluk during the second half of this year. Mining of the adjacent deposit needs to begin in 2010 for operations to continue without interruption. Aqqaluk will provide enough ore to keep Red Dog in operation until about 2031.
"We anticipate that the final EIS will be published in mid-October," Karl Hanneman, Teck's director of corporate affairs in Alaska told Mining News Sept. 24, "So that's good news, and that will hopefully allow us to meet our timeline of moving into Aqqaluk early next year."
Stale EIS
The SEIS will replace the Environmental Impact Statement issued for the Main Pit in 1984, which the EPA has characterized as stale.
"Some things have happened over the life of the operation. We now have a better understanding of the impacts on water. We now have a better understanding of the impacts of dust. So, justifiably there were reasons to say, 'OK, this EIS needs to be updated,' " James Kulas, Red Dog's manager of environmental and public affairs said. "I applaud the agency for the work they've put behind it. They have done a very thorough and robust job of evaluating this. This is a full-blown environmental impact statement. It has turned out to be a very big deal."
NANA Elder Roland T. Booth Sr. said he believes that the long and extensive process for gaining regulatory approval to develop a deposit directly adjacent to the one currently being mined has been made more complicated than it needs to be.
"I am just a regular, everyday, Native board member for our Native regional corporation. From a Native standpoint I would think it would be just a simple thing," Booth told Mining News during a June 30 visit to Red Dog.
"From this pit (main pit), which we would think would be the same thing to over there (Aqqaluk), is a totally different thing, a totally different battle, totally different issues, which I didn't really envision some 30 years ago when we were just starting out," said Booth, who has served as a director of NANA since 1972.
Seeking more zinc
Though Teck cut back its exploration in 2009 due to financial constraints, the Vancouver B.C.-based miner continued to seek out zinc deposits that will add additional years to the life of the mine.
The company's scaled-back exploration focus on Anarraaq, a deep deposit that lies about seven miles northwest of the Main pit.
According to a 2004 report written for the Society of Economic Geologists, the Anarraaq deposit consists of a barite body, estimated to be as much as 1 billion metric tons, and a zinc-lead-silver massive sulfide zone with an estimated resource of about 18 million tons at 18 percent zinc, 5.4 percent lead, and 85 g/t silver.
Teck discovered the massive deposit while drilling a large gravity anomaly in 1999, subsequently establishing an inferred resource on the massive deposit. Additional drilling in the same anomaly turned up another promising zinc target. In 2002 drill crews intersected 4.3 meter averaging 30 percent zinc about 3 miles, or 5 kilometers north of Anarraaq.
"There is a (airborne) geophysical program going on over a couple of the deposits that are known to exist in the Red Dog vicinity on which we have done previous drilling," Hanneman told Mining News in September. "We are doing the geophysical surveys to identify correlations between the drilling and the geophysical signature."
Aqqaluk, Anarraaq and the multiple other targets in and around Red Dog have the potential to continue to supply much of the world's zinc needs for decades to come.
Over his more than 16 years of covering mining and mineral exploration, Shane has become renowned for his ability to report on the sector in a way that is technically sound enough to inform industry insiders while being easy to understand by a wider audience.
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