Northern Dynasty seeks to overturn Alaska decision

Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. [NDM-TSX; NAK-NYSE] said Thursday December 3 that its U.S. subsidiary is preparing a ‘request for appeal’ of the US Army Corps of Engineers’ recent decision to deny the company’s application for key permits related to its Pebble copper-gold deposit in southwest Alaska.

Northern Dynasty shares advanced on the news, rising 8.0% or $0.035 to 47 cents on volume of 2.1 million. The shares are currently trading in a 52-week range of $3.28 and 42 cents.

The negative record of decision (ROD) issued by the lead federal regulator of Alaska’s Pebble Project on November 25, 2020 denied the project a ‘dredge and fill’ permit under the Clean Water Act on the grounds that it’s compensatory mitigation plan is non-compliant and the project is ‘not in the public interest.’

The Pebble Partnership has 60 days to submit its application for administrative appeal to the US Army Corps of Engineers’ (USACE) Pacific Ocean Division Engineer headquartered in Hawaii.

“It is our view that this decision, the process by which it was reached and the facts on which it is based stand as a significant outlier from standard USACE precedent and practise,” said Northern Dynasty President and CEO Ron Thiessen. “We believe there is a sound basis for this permitting decision to be overturned.”

First discovered in 1989, the Pebble project ranks as one of the world’s largest undeveloped gold-copper resources. At a 0.3% copper equivalent cut-off, the Pebble project is estimated to contain 6.456 billion tonnes in the combined measured and indicated categories at a grade of 0.40% copper, 0.34 g/t gold, 240 ppm molybdenum, containing 57 billion pounds of copper, 71 million ounces of gold, 3.4 billion pounds of molybdenum and 345 million ounces of silver.

A mine development proposal provides for 20 years of mining at an average daily throughput of 180,000 tones and processing of 1.3 billion tonnes of mineralized material.

However, the project has been through a roller coaster of regulation over the past 13 years. Republican President Donald Trump revived the project early in his term after the Obama administration blocked it, but opposition from prominent politicians saying it would harm the state’s billion-dollar salmon industry prompted an about-face from the outgoing Trump administration.