The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 51 - 61 of 61
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...
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...
On the final leg of his three-day tour of Alaska, President Barack Obama visited Dillingham and Kotzebue, two remote Alaska communities with starkly different views on the development of Alaska's rich mineral endowment. On Sept. 2, Obama travelled to Dillingham, the largest community in the Bristol Bay region of Southwest Alaska and ground zero of the movement to prevent the development of Pebble, a world-class mineral deposit that contains an estimated 81 billion pounds of...
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...
On the surface, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's endeavor to halt the development of the Pebble Mine in Southwest Alaska has the appearance of a federal agency doing its job - protecting the environment. Pebble developers contend that under this thin but durable veneer lies a secretly crafted plan, not only to stop development of a mine at Pebble, but to lay the groundwork for a larger initiative that would broaden EPA's powers. "It lets EPA zone America - zone...
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...
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 is drawing fire from lawmakers, business groups, project developers and the state of Alaska over its handling of the Bristol Bay Assessment and associated attempt to prevent the Pebble Mine project from getting the opportunity to have a fair hearing under established permitting regulations in the United States. Mounting pressure from various parties has persuaded the EPA Office of Inspector General to launch an investigation of the...
FAIRBANKS - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency endeavor to use a presumed authority under Section 404(c) of the federal Clean Water Act to pre-emptively ban the permits required to develop the Pebble Mine cast a dark shadow over the Arctic International Mining Symposium, a mining convention held in Fairbanks every other year. "We have a federal government that, as far as I am concerned, contains people that are intent on shutting down our state's economy," Pebble Partner...
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...
