Pebble Limited Partnership Archives - Page 3 of 6

Investors sue parent company behind gold mine in Alaska

January 4, 2020 — The company behind a proposed copper and gold mine in Alaska faces lawsuits from investors claiming it misled shareholders who have seen an 85% drop in stock value since the summer.

Two lawsuits filed in U.S. District Court in New York claim Northern Dynasty Minerals violated federal securities law when project executives did not fully provide information about the project, The Anchorage Daily News reported Friday.

Developer The Pebble Limited Partnership and parent company Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. sought to build a mine about 200 miles (320 kilometers) southwest of Anchorage and near the headwaters of the world’s largest sockeye salmon fishery in Bristol Bay.

The project was criticized by environment groups and also condemned by Alaska Republican U.S. Sens. Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski.

Read the full story from the Associated Press at The Seattle Times

2020 was an eventful year for the Pebble Mine project

December 28, 2020 — It was a momentous year for people who have fought for and against the proposed Pebble Mine.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in November denied Pebble’s request for a federal permit, stopping the mine likely for good. The decision was met with mixed emotions from people in Bristol Bay.

Sue Anelon works for the Iliamna Development Corporation. She said the mine would have been a significant boost to village economies.

“I’ve seen the good and the bad,” she said. “When Pebble was here and a lot of people were working, they were paying for their own groceries, they were paying their own fuel. They were buying trucks, they were buying Hondas. People were paying for things. Now they can’t do that. They have to rely on the government.”

Billy Trefon Jr., a Nondalton resident, was elated by the decision.

Read the full story at KTOO

Shareholders file Pebble Mine class-action suit, parent company plans permit appeal

December 18, 2020 — This week, a group of shareholders filed a class action lawsuit against Northern Dynasty, claiming the company and its directors misled shareholders about the viability of the proposed Pebble Mine and that its stock prices were artificially inflated between Dec. 21, 2017, and Nov. 25, 2020.

Northern Dynasty is the parent company of the Pebble Limited Partnership, which owns the mineral rights to the Pebble deposit and has been promoting the mine to investors and engaging in the permitting process with Alaska’s U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

On Nov. 25, the Corps denied the permit application, stating the proposal did not “comply with Clean Water Act guidelines.” The stock took a nosedive of more than 50 percent immediately following the announcement. The permit process had been considered all but dead before the 2016 election of President Donald J. Trump, whose administration allegedly negotiated with Pebble officials to allow the permitting process to run its course.

On Dec. 17, 2020, two days after the class action filing, Northern Dynasty published a press release detailing its plans to file an appeal of the Corps’ decision, citing the quality of its mitigation plan to compensate for the degradation of habitat in the process of mining the deposit’s heavy metals.

Read the full story at National Fisherman

ALASKA: Relief and disappointment as Bristol Bay reacts to Army Corps’ Pebble permit denial

December 4, 2020 — When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers last week denied the Pebble Limited Partnership a federal permit to develop a mine under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, it surprised people on both sides of the issue.

“I was ecstatic. I was elated. I was so happy to hear that it was finally over,” said Billy Trefon, Jr. from Nondalton, one of the villages closest to where the mine would have been built.

To the south, in Iliamna, Iliamna Development Corporation CEO Lisa Reimers said people feel hopeless.

“Well, we feel like it was — we were lied to by the Army Corps because they said politics wouldn’t be involved. And it ended up being politics,” she said. “The Army stated they’d recommend to build a mine, then out of nowhere they changed their minds.”

Pebble would have been one of the largest gold mines in the world. The Army Corps said last week that the mine proposal didn’t follow Clean Water Act guidelines.

For Trefon, in Nondalton, the project also went against the traditional teachings of elders.

“I was raised up listening to elders telling me that, if you take care of the land, the land will take care of you,” he said. “And it has been doing that for centuries, milleniums. So to us this land is important. The water is important.”

Read the full story at KTOO

ALASKA: Pebble Partnership quietly submits mitigation plan amid political shifts opposing the mine

November 18, 2020 — The day after a record number of Americans voted in the Nov. 3 election, the Pebble Partnership submitted a plan for how it would mitigate damage to wetlands when building the country’s largest open-pit mine, completing one of the final requirements needed before the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers decides whether or not to issue a federal permit for the project.

Though the permitting process is intended to be science-based and apolitical, candidates for both the presidency and Alaska’s congressional seats addressed a mine that has become controversial as it sits at the headwaters of the largest sockeye salmon fishery in the world.

In late August, one month after the Army Corps published the project’s final environmental impact statement, the Army Corps said the project could not be permitted as proposed and gave the Pebble Partnership 90 days to provide a compensatory mitigation plan. Before the company would submit its mitigation plan, undercover recordings would lead to the resignation of the company’s CEO, both Alaska senators would state their clear opposition to the project and then-candidate Joe Biden pledged that his administration would block the project.

Despite the string of public relations setbacks, the company maintains that it will be able to move forward with the project, but with a transition in the executive branch expected to bring tighter environmental regulation, the company faces several potential threats during the home stretch of its federal permitting process.

Read the full story at Alaska’s News Source

Pebble mine submits final report, setting stage for Trump administration decision on permit

November 17, 2020 — The developer behind the proposed Pebble mine on Monday announced that the final report needed to potentially win approval for a key permit has been submitted to federal regulators.

President Donald Trump’s administration could make a decision on whether to permit the copper and gold prospect before he leaves office on Jan. 20, either allowing the controversial project to advance or stopping it. A decision could also come later, under President-elect Joe Biden’s administration.

The mine would be built about 200 miles southwest of Anchorage in the Bristol Bay region.

The so-called mitigation plan from Pebble Limited Partnership is meant to address a requirement by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. In August, the agency said that Pebble must select lands in the region for protection to offset damage the mine would cause, if it is built.

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

ALASKA: Leaked tapes and loose talk tarnished Pebble’s reputation. Can the proposed mine go on?

October 7, 2020 — The Pebble Limited Partnership is trying to patch its battered image after secretly recorded videos last month caught its two top executives boasting about their influence over Alaska politicians and regulators.

The controversial Pebble mine proposal faces new challenges after Alaska’s U.S. senators, the governor and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denounced the statements as false.

But despite the blowback from the videos’ Sept. 21 release, the developer of the copper and gold prospect in Southwest Alaska continues its effort to win a key construction permit from the Corps.

“The idea that Pebble is dead, no matter whose opinion it is, is just not accurate,” said Mark Hamilton, vice president of public affairs at Pebble Limited Partnership. “(Pebble) can go forward and it is going forward as we speak.”

Read the full story at the Anchorage Daily News

Pebble CEO resigns after scandal caused by secret recordings

September 24, 2020 — The Pebble Partnership’s CEO Tom Collier has resigned in the fallout of secretly recorded videos that were posted online Monday, 21 September.

Parent company Northern Dynasty Minerals published a statement announcing that John Shively will step back into the role of CEO for the partnership on an interim basis. Shively has been serving as chairman of the board for Pebble since 2014, when he handed off the title of CEO to Collier.

Read the full story at Seafood Source

An Alaska Mine Project Might Be Bigger Than Acknowledged

September 21, 2020 — Executives overseeing the development of a long-disputed copper and gold mine in Alaska were recorded saying they expected the project to become much bigger, and operate for much longer, than outlined in the proposal that is awaiting final approval by the Army Corps of Engineers.

The executives, who were recorded in remote meetings by members of an environmental advocacy group posing as potential investors, said the project, Pebble Mine, could potentially operate for 160 years or more beyond the current proposal of 20 years. And it could quickly double its output after the initial two decades, they said.

“Once you have something like this in production why would you want to stop?” Ronald W. Thiessen, chief executive of Northern Dynasty Minerals, the parent company of Pebble Limited Partnership, said in one of the recordings. Mr. Thiessen said local villages in the area would support extended operation of the mine because of the tax money they would receive. “It’s $10,000 per man, woman and child,” he said. “They want that to go away? No.”

Read the full story at The New York Times

State now has an opportunity to veto Pebble Mine. Pebble foes aren’t getting their hopes up.

August 31, 2020 — Opponents of the Pebble Mine say it’s not enough that the Army Corps of Engineers announced last week that the project, as proposed, can’t get a wetlands permit. Anti-Pebble advocates want a veto. The Environmental Protection Agency has that power. And as of this week, the state has that authority, too. But it won’t last long.

The Corps of Engineers has asked the state for a “certificate of reasonable assurance” that the Pebble Mine will comply with federal and state water quality laws. The Army Corps can’t grant Pebble’s permit if the state refuses to issue that certification.

Salmon State campaign strategist Lindsey Bloom says the state should seize the moment.

“This is the state of Alaska’s one and only opportunity in the Clean Water Act permitting process to really red-light or green-light the permit,” said Bloom, a commercial fisherman from Juneau who works on salmon conservation issues.

As she and other Pebble opponents see it, the mine can’t meet Alaska water quality standards because, according to the environmental report the Army Corps released in July, the mine and its transportation corridor would impact nearly 200 miles of streams and thousands of acres of wetlands.

Read the full story at KTOO