The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Permit review slows minerals critical to clean energy goals North of 60 Mining News - February 23, 2022
The Bornite Camp on the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects at the western terminus of the proposed Ambler Road.
The yellow line shows the 211-mile route federal regulators approved for the proposed road to the Ambler Mining District.
In a move criticized by a wide swath of Alaska policymakers and trade organizations, the Biden administration has filed a motion to reverse the federal authorizations for a proposed 211-mile road to the mineral-rich Ambler Mining District in Northwest Alaska.
"You would think President Biden would want to improve access to American sources of copper and other strategic minerals that are needed in our combined efforts to increase renewables. Instead, actions like this only serve to push development to Third World nations that don't have the environmental ethic that Alaskans have," said Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy.
The Ambler District hosts numerous high-grade deposits and occurrences that could provide billions of pounds of the copper, zinc, cobalt, and other metals critical to manufacturing the electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure required to meet the Biden administration's climate objectives.
During a Feb. 22 roundtable discussion on critical minerals, President Joe Biden acknowledged the need to bolster domestic supply chains for the materials needed to power clean energy manufacturing and clean energy jobs in the United States.
"These minerals power phones and computers, household appliances, electric vehicles and batteries, solar panels, wind turbines, and so much more," Biden said during his opening remarks of the roundtable discussion. "Without these minerals ... they simply can't function."
The President went on to explain that the U.S. is nearly 100% reliant on other countries – particularly China, Australia, and Chile – for many of these critical minerals.
"And when it comes to clean energy, China has spent years cornering the market on many of the materials that power the technologies that we rely on," he said. "That's why I committed us to build a clean energy supply chain stamped 'Made in America.'"
While Biden was touting the need to expand American critical mineral production, the U.S. Department of the Interior announced that it had filed a motion to remand the Final Environmental Impact Statement and suspend the right-of-way permits issued to build a road needed to deliver Alaska mined metals into American supply chains.
"Unfortunately, the only ones who benefit from today's Ambler decision are foreign adversaries who take advantage of bad policies and twist them to their benefit," said Associated General Contractors of Alaska's Executive Director Alicia Amberg. "My members want to build the new infrastructure Alaska needs, including roads. We want those jobs, and we want the opportunities new mines located along the Ambler Access Project would provide to Alaskans. Today's announcement is an unwelcome and unnecessary setback."
Conflicting messages
The entire Alaska delegation in Washington, D.C. finds the Biden administration's understanding and commitment to domestic clean energy supply chains at odds with the U.S. Department of the Interior's court filing to pull the federal Ambler Road permits for additional review.
"America's lack of mineral security should be one of the Biden administration's highest priorities, but its incoherent policies are making the problem worse. It's stunning: on the very same day the President attempted to tout 'progress' on mineral development, his administration backtracked and set back this crucial project, which will enable Alaska to responsibly produce a range of needed minerals," Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said. "This decision will harm Alaska, including the Alaska Natives who support and will benefit from this project."
Congressman Don Young, R-Alaska, says the Interior Department's decision to review the Ambler Road permits could not have come at a worse time.
"We are in the midst of a continued global supply chain crisis that has seriously constrained the availability of critical minerals," the Dean of the House said. "Frankly, we can and should be responsibly developing critical minerals here in Alaska instead of continuing to be reliant on adversarial nations and the whims of geopolitical faceoffs."
"This filing is a continuation of the Biden administration's self-destructive policies that target Alaska families and American workers while seriously undermining our national security," added Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska.
A group of five Alaska trade groups were also perplexed and dismayed by the apparent conflict between the Biden administration's voiced commitment to domestic critical minerals production and slowing the development of a road that could help achieve that pledge.
"On one hand, you have the Biden Administration saying, 'we want to produce more critical minerals here in the U.S.,' but then they deliberately bring domestic mining projects here in Alaska to a crawl," said Alaska Miners Association Executive Director Deantha Skibinski. "It makes no sense, and will empower mining powerhouses like China, which already produces 87% of the minerals needed for renewable energy products. This policy defies logic."
"Today, we saw the Biden Administration announce that 'as a new minerals economy was being built in the U.S., it would be built around working Americans,'" Alaska Support Industry Alliance CEO Rebecca Logan added. "A same-day action to delay the Ambler Project is insulting."
A win for road opposition
While many of Alaska's policymakers, business and Alaska Native leaders were dismayed by the Biden administration's decision to revisit the federal permits for the Ambler Road, the decision was hailed as a win by the Tanana Chiefs Conference, an Interior Alaska Native non-profit corporation.
"The 200-plus mile Ambler road represents a fundamental threat to our people, our subsistence way of life and our cultural resources," said TCC President Brian Ridley. "We appreciate that the federal government recognized the flaws in the previous administration's decisions to permit the road."
TCC, along with five Alaska tribes – Alatna, Allakaket, Huslia, Evansville, and Tanana – had previously filed a lawsuit against the federal decisions that approved the road.
These tribal entities believe the road would threaten their traditional way of life, including subsistence activities such as hunting and fishing.
"We have lived on these lands for thousands of years," said Frank Thompson, First Chief of Evansville, a village near the eastern end of the proposed Ambler Road. "Our lives here are only possible because of the subsistence resources that also exist here. The previous administration ignored our knowledge of subsistence resources that exist on these lands and the grave threat to those resources posed by the proposed industrial road."
TCC and the local tribes said the analysis that led to the federal permit approvals should have included the impacts of mining proposed at the western end of the road.
In its motion to suspend the road permits to carry out further analysis on the federal permits, the Department of Interior has requested that the lawsuits filed against it by the TCC led group and a coalition of national and Alaska environmental non-government organizations be suspended.
Ambler District setback
The Biden administration's decision to carry out further review of the road permits will likely set back the timeline for developing the rich minerals resources in the Ambler District.
The richest and most advanced of the projects in the Ambler District are found on the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects. This 448,217-acre land package, more commonly known as UKMP, combines Bornite and several other copper- and cobalt-rich prospects on lands owned by NANA Corp. – the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) regional corporation for Northwest Alaska – with the world-class Arctic deposit and dozens of similar volcanogenic massive sulfide prospects located on state, federal and patented mining claims held by Ambler Metals LLC – a joint venture equally owned by Trilogy Metals Inc. and a subsidiary of South32 Ltd.
Pulling these deposits together into a single project that would support the building of a 200-mile road to the Ambler District was part of the rationale of the Alaska Native and mining sector alliance at UKMP.
The two most advanced UKMP projects, Arctic and Bornite, host roughly 8.9 billion lb of copper, 3.6 billion lb of zinc, 626 million lb of lead, 88 million lb of cobalt, 770,000 ounces of gold, and 58.3 million oz of silver in the indicated and inferred resource categories.
Arctic is the most advanced UKMP project and is slated to be the first mine in the Ambler District.
According to a 2020 feasibility study, a mine at the Arctic deposit would produce 1.9 billion lb of copper, 2.3 billion lb of zinc, 388 million lb of lead, 386,000 ounces of gold, and 40.6 million oz of silver over an initial 12-year mine life.
Earlier this year, Ambler Metals budgeted $28.5 million for a 2022 program at UKMP that was expected to include drilling, engineering studies, and the initiation of federal permitting for the development of a mine at Arctic.
Another $30.8 million, to be funded equally by Ambler Metals and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, was budgeted for the 2022 program to advance the Ambler Access Project, the formal name for the Ambler Road.
With the Biden administration decision to revisit the federal permits, Ambler Metals, AIDEA, the state of Alaska, NANA, and the Northwest Arctic Borough plan to discuss the potential impact of the decision on AIDEA's proposed plan and budget for the 2022 summer field season activities that were previously announced.
Northwest Arctic support
Northwest Arctic Borough, a municipality that covers the entire NANA region at the western terminus of the proposed Ambler Road, has been concerned that federal agencies would initiate a permit review that would delay the industrial access project and the mines it is meant to support.
The municipality has seen firsthand the economic and cultural benefits the world-class Red Dog zinc mine has brought to its region.
Citing the success of Red Dog, along with the 50-mile-long road and port that was developed to support the mine, Northwest Arctic Borough recently passed a resolution in "support of the Ambler Mining District Industrial Access Project and the sound permitting process to ensure responsible development for the region."
Trilogy Metals appreciates this support from Northwest Arctic Borough and communities around the Ambler District that have come out in support of UKMP, and says this will be helpful as the Ambler Road and mining projects move forward.
"Foremost we would like to thank all of the Native villages in the Upper Kobuk Region, and the Northwest Arctic Borough, that have passed resolutions in favor of the AAP. This demonstrates the incredible support for the project from our Native Partners," Trilogy Metals President and CEO Tony Giardini said in response to the news of the federal review of Ambler Road permits. "We see this motion as another step in the consultation process leading to the ultimate development of the AAP and we recognize that subsistence is a key factor not just in the development of the road but in the development of the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects which we believe will have significant positive impacts on the local economy, the provision of high paying stable jobs for Native Alaskans and the production of green metals, such as copper and cobalt which are critical for the decarbonization of the planet."
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.
Reader Comments(1)
Eidolon writes:
Let's go Brandon!
02/25/2022, 6:59 am