Can you provide an overview of Northern Dynasty Minerals and the Pebble project they own in Alaska?

Certainly, Northern Dynasty Minerals’ primary asset is the Pebble project located in Alaska, which the company has owned since 2001. To date, the company has invested over US$1 billion in the project and has drilled over a million feet of HQ diamond core. The resources contained within the project include large quantities of copper, gold, molybdenum, silver, and rhenium. Approximately 55% of these resources are classified as Measured and Indicated (M&I), which includes some 6.5 billion tons grading 0.40% copper, 0.34 g/t gold, 240 ppm molybdenum, 1.7 g/t silver, and 0.41 ppm rhenium, containing 57 billion pounds of copper, 71 million ounces of gold, 3.4 billion pounds of molybdenum, 345 million ounces of silver, and 2.6 million kilograms of rhenium. Northern Dynasty Minerals has conducted two Preliminary Economic Assessments (PEAs) on the project, with the first one in 2011 that envisioned 125 years of mine life, 75 years of mining, and 50 years of processing the low-grade stockpiles. The second PEA in 2021 was based on the economic model they took into permitting in 2017, which involved approximately 1.2 billion tons and envisioned a 20-year mine life. This is a vast deposit, and there may be opportunities for different types of mining to be used, and process plant scale or throughput depending on the environmental footprint and metal prices at various times. The 20-year mine life plan that the company submitted for permitting has a capital expenditure (capex) of around US$6 billion.

What is the significance of the October 2022 report by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee for the Pebble project?

The October 2022 report by the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee is a politicized document that does not take into account the facts or science, and most importantly, the final Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) – the official record – of the Pebble project. The former CEO of the Pebble Partnership, Tom Collier, was called before Congress to give testimony about the federal environmental review of the project. In his prepared statement, Mr. Collier responded to unfounded accusations by project opponents that Pebble intended to use a permit for a 20-year project to build and operate a much longer and larger mining project. Nonetheless, the Committee has adopted the baseless rhetoric of Pebble opponents and is promoting the storyline that Mr. Collier’s testimony was intended to mislead Congress into believing that Pebble’s permit application for a 20-year mining project somehow foreclosed the possibility of future expansion, even though the Army Corps had already determined that future expansion of the project was reasonably foreseeable, based on Pebble’s own disclosures.

How can US policymakers balance environmental concerns with the growing need to extract critical minerals?

Balancing environmental concerns with the growing need to extract critical minerals is challenging, primarily because anti-development groups do not believe that North America needs any mines and that all metals required for the US economy can be obtained via recycling. Moving towards a green economy requires electricity, which, in turn, requires a massive amount of copper. The US currently imports 40% of its copper, and by 2030, this is forecasted to be 80%.