Donald Trump U.S. presidential win will let Northern Dynasty Minerals proceed with an application for a copper and gold mine in Alaska that has been stalled almost three years by environmental regulators aiming to protect the world biggest sockeye salmon fishery.
Ronald Thiessen, CEO and President, said he expected the U.S. EPA to announce in the first quarter of 2017 that it will let the application process proceed for the controversial project. He said the company has held discussions with Trump transition team, including Myron Ebell, who heads the EPA transition.
Shares in Northern Dynasty, which owns the massive, world-class Pebble deposit in southwest Alaska Bristol Bay region, have more than doubled since the U.S. election.
In February of 2014, the EPA took the unusual action of blocking a mine before the project owner even applied for a development permit. The permit would have allowed Northern Dynasty to seek a deep-pocketed partner(Anglo American Mining?) and resume permitting the project, one of the biggest undeveloped copper and gold molybdenum deposits in the world.
Yet opponents remain determined to stop the Pebble project again, and Alaska governor Bill Walker has said that he is skeptical of the project. If Northern Dynasty is excited about Trump taking office, he said that he does not know what their crystal ball is showing them, but Kimberly Williams, director of Nunamta Aulukestai, a non-profit group of tribal governments and village corporations in the Bristol Bay area, says that they are against the project on environmental and cultural interference grounds.
But since this deposit is of world class, it can afford to meet reasonable financial claims by the tribes (including employment and management of environment), while still making a reasonable profit to make American metals available to the world markets.
We would think the the tribes should support the development of the Pebble Project for their own benefit and for those of the U.S.A.
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