Pebble update: Northern Dynasty seeks partners, fights for due process.

• Author: Freeman, Louise
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Mining

The Pebble Project mineral deposit could include 26 billion to 55 billion pounds of copper, 2.3 billion to 3.3 billion pounds of molybdenum, 40 million to 67 million ounces of gold, and palladium, silver, and rhenium in commercially viable amounts. It's a project that could generate a billion dollar a year operating budget. The status of Northern Dynasty Minerals Limited's (Northern Dynasty) copper-gold-molybdenum Pebble Project has undergone rapid change in the past year. In September 2013, London-based Anglo American pic announced it was withdrawing from the Anchorage-based Pebble Limited Partnership (Pebble) after investing $560 million in the project over a period of six years.

Sole Financier Lost

At that time, Northern Dynasty not only lost a key partner but the sole financier of the Pebble Project. Anglo had originally committed to funding up to $1.49 billion. Anglo and Canada-based Northern Dynasty each owned 50 percent of Pebble, which was created to permit, build, and operate the mine.

"That [Anglo's withdrawal] required us to downsize pretty significantly in the fall of last year. Pretty dramatic, we had eighty-five full-time employees between Anchorage and Iliamna. We're down to a fraction of that. That was a major impact [on us] and had a significant impact on the contracting community, and on a lot of firms doing our environmental studies, engineering work that was contracted out, a whole range of those things--those went down to a minimal presence then, too," says Pebble's Vice President of Public Affairs Mike Heatwole.

Since Anglo's withdrawal from the project, there has been a flurry of activity with news breaking every few months. The latest was the announcement in early September that the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is being investigated by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee and the Environment and Public Works Committee to determine if the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) had undue influence over the EPA's drafting of its "Assessment of Potential Mining Impacts on Salmon Ecosystems of Bristol Bay, Alaska."

The House Oversight Committee members wrote in a letter to the EPA that documents obtained by the committee "confirm that the NRDC significantly shaped EPA's decision to severely limit the operation of the proposed Pebble Mine in Bristol Bay, Alaska under section 404(c) of the Clean Water Act. It appears that NRDC's unprecedented access to high-level EPA officials allowed it to...