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Mongolia to hold text message referendum on future of Rio Tinto copper mine

Mongolia will hold a reality television style text message referendum on the future of Rio Tinto’s troubled Oyu Tolgoi copper mine project, the Financial Times reports.

The FT says Mongolian prime minister Saikhanbileg Chimed will ask voters whether their country should develop more of its mineral resources or resort to austerity to support the faltering economy.

Mongolian voters will have four days, beginning Saturday, to text their vote on the future of Rio Tinto’s plans for the $6 billion project.

Shaft at the Rio Tinto Oyu Tolgoi copper and gold mine in the southern Gobi, Mongolia (Brücke-Osteuropa via Wikipedia)

Economists say the copper mine project, which is stalled because Rio Tinto has been unable to reach an agreement with Mongolia over project financing and revenue sharing could generate about a third of the country’s gross domestic product. The lack of an agreement, in concert with current instabilty on financial markets has sent Mongolia’s currency plunging.

Like Kitimat’s plebiscite on the Northern Gateway, the vote will be non-binding. The FT says the vote “could help Mr Saikhanbileg broker a consensus in favour of allowing OT to proceed, cutting through the arguments of critics who say Mongolia is not getting its fair share of the mine’s earnings.”

The FT reports: “The prime minister, who explained the referendum this week on television, was trying to appeal to the general public ‘over the heads of squabbling factions in parliament and break the logjam.'”

Full story at Mongolia holds text message vote on mining v austerity
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Pension funds pressure Rio Tinto to dump out of controversial Alaska Pebble Mine

Rio Tinto says “it intends to undertake a strategic review” of its stake in the highly controversial Pebble Mine project near Bristol Bay, Alaska.

In a news release, Rio Tinto says it is considering its future holdings in a Vancouver-based mining company named Northern Dynasty, which now is the main proponent of the copper and gold mine project. Rio Tinto “through QIT-Fer et Titane Inc., an indirect wholly-owned subsidiary of Rio Tinto plc, owns 18,145,845 common shares of Northern Dynasty, representing approximately 19.1 per cent of Northern Dynasty’s issued and outstanding shares.”

Rio Tinto says the review is part of the financially troubled conglomerate’s review of its mining holdings: “Rio Tinto will consider the Pebble Project’s fit with the Group’s strategy of investing in and operating long life and expandable assets, and with the strategy for its Copper business, which is focused on its four producing assets (Kennecott Utah Copper, Oyu Tolgoi and its interests in Escondida and Grasberg), and two development projects, La Granja in Peru and Resolution in Arizona.”

The Pebble Mine project is as controversial in Alaska and the western United States as the Northern Gateway pipeline project is in British Columbia. Critics say the proposed huge open pit copper and gold mine could endanger the Alaska headwaters of the Kvichak and Nushagak rivers, considered two of the world’s great salmon spawning grounds. Both flow into the “salmon nursery” in Bristol Bay, where young salmon go to feed, possibly also imperiling salmon stocks from both Alaska and British Columbia

On November 4, 2013, the City of New York and the State of California, whose pension funds have large holdings of Rio Tinto stock, wrote to CEO Sam Walsh, asking the company to reassess the project.

New York City controller John Liu and California state controller John Chiang said their letter was prompted when Rio Tinto rival Anglo-American sold its share of the controversial project in September.

Their letter cited environmental concerns, including the fact that the project would leave 10 billion tonnes of mining waste near the salmon spawning grounds, increased regulatory scrutiny from the US Environmental Protection Agency and what the two controllers called “reputational risks” including opposition from Alaska First Nations and even jewelry companies like Tiffany & Co and Zales and Jostens. The letter cited a poll which showed 73 per cent of Americans, 84 per cent of Alaskans and 98 per cent of Bristol Bay residents opposed the project.

Rio Tinto replied on November 14, in a letter not from CEO Walsh but from John-Sebastian Jacques, chief executive of the copper division, saying Rio Tinto would “encourage a responsible approach among all shareholders” and the company would continue to “review and analyze” the risks involved.

On December 19, the two controllers then called upon Rio Tinto to divest itself of the Northern Dynasty shares, calling, according to the Associated Press, Rio Tinto’s response “perfunctory.”

Rio Tinto spokesman David Outhwaite told AP the strategic review is not connected to that letter or a letter the financial officers sent Walsh.

Ango-American, one of Rio Tinto’s giant mining rivals, pulled out of the Pebble Mine project in September. Teck Cominco and Mitsubishi had pulled out earlier, leaving Rio Tinto as the only major company involved in the project.

When it decided to sell its share back to Northern Dynasty, Anglo-American also cited a “strategic review” of the company’s operations.

At the time, Rio Tinto’s Jennifer Ruso told the Alaska Dispatch, the company “will only participate in the project if it can be constructed, operated and closed in a manner that preserves the water, salmon, fisheries, wildlife and the environment. The project must also be developed in accordance with our strict standards for health, safety, environmental protection, cultural heritage, and community relations.”

Northern Dynasty and Rio Tinto then said they were considering an underground mine instead of an open pit operation, which did not satisfy environmental critics of the project.

On December 13, Northern Dynasty reported that it had re-acquired 100 per cent ownership of the Pebble Mine project after completing the pull out deal with Anglo-American.

The company, however, is looking for new partners. It says:

Our primary focus is to select the right partner for Northern Dynasty and the right investor for Alaska, a company with sufficient financial resources and technical capabilities, working experience in the United States and a shared commitment to environmentally sound and socially responsible development. We have little doubt that Pebble will attract major mining company interest in the months ahead.

The news release says that Northern Dynasty has spent US$556 million over the past few years and “substantial progress has been made toward our goal of permitting, constructing and operating a world-class, modern and environmentally responsible mine at Pebble that will co-exist with the fisheries resources of southwest Alaska.”

In the news release, Northern Dynasty President & CEO Ronald Thiessen said Pebble’s engineering design, environmental science and regulatory planning were advanced that the company would begin to ask for US and Alaska permitting under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) sometime the first quarter of 2014.

It describes the project this way:

The Pebble Project is an initiative to responsibly develop a globally significant copper, gold and molybdenum deposit in southwest Alaska into a modern, long-life mine, which will benefit not only Northern Dynasty, but the people, culture and industries of the State of Alaska, as well as suppliers, consultants and industries in the Lower 48 United States of America.
A recent study authored by IHS Global Insight, entitled The Economic and Employment Contributions of a Conceptual Pebble Mine to the Alaska and United States Economies found the Pebble Project has the potential to support 15,000 American jobs and contribute more than $2.5 billion annually to US GDP over decades of production.

The Pebble Project is located 200 miles southwest of Anchorage on state land designated for mineral exploration and development. It is situated in a region of rolling tundra approximately 1,000 feet above sea-level, 65 miles from tidewater on Cook Inlet and presents favourable conditions for successful mine site and infrastructure development.

As the Alaska Dispatch reported when Anglo-American pulled out, the copper and gold deposits are so extensive and potentially valuable that pressure to develop the mine will continue despite the threat to salmon and the Alaska environment.

Tiny amounts of copper in rivers endanger salmon by affecting sense of smell

Tiny amounts of copper in a river affect a salmon’s sense of smell, making it harder to avoid predators, according to a study at Washington State University.

Jenifer McIntyre says the copper means that a salmon can’t detect another compound that ordinarily alerts them to be still and wary.

The minute amounts of copper can come from mines and even the brake linings of cars.

“A copper-exposed fish is not getting the information it needs to make good decisions,” says McIntyre, a postdoctoral research associate in WSU’s Puyallup Research and Extension Center, whose study built on earlier work that showed that copper can affect a salmon’s sense of smell and thus changing its behavour.

McIntyre put the two together, exposing juvenile coho salmon to varying amounts of copper and placing them in tanks with cutthroat trout, a common predator.

Healthy salmon can smell compounds in the water that are released when another fish is damaged. That substance, called Schreckstoff, German meaning “scary stuff,” alerts fish to nearby predators.

In her experiments, conducted in a four-foot-diameter tank, fish that weren’t exposed to copper would freeze in the presence of Schreckstoff, making it harder for motion-sensitive predators to detect them. On average, half a minute would go by before they were attacked.

But salmon in water with just five parts of copper per billion failed to detect the Schreckstoff and kept swimming. They were attacked in about five seconds.

“It’s very simply and obviously because predators can see them more easily,” says McIntyre. “They’re not in lockdown mode.”

The unwary exposed fish were also more likely to be killed in the attack, being captured 30 percent of the time on the first strike. Unexposed fish managed to escape the first strike nearly nine times out of ten, most likely because they were already wary and poised to take evasive action.

McIntyre also noticed that the behavior of predators was the same whether or not they had been exposed to copper.

Copper finds its way into streams and marine waters from a variety of sources, including motor vehicle brake linings, pesticides, building materials and protective boat coatings. Actual amounts will vary from undetectable in rural or forested areas to elevated in urban areas, especially when runoff from a storm washes roads of accumulated brake dust and other contaminants.

With testimony from McIntyre’s NOAA colleagues and others, the Washington State legislature in 2010 started phasing out copper brake pads and linings over the next 15 to 20 years. According to the state Department of Ecology, brake pads are the source of up to half the copper in the state’s urban waterways.

McIntyre used concentrations of between 5 and 20 parts per billion but has sampled highway runoff with 60 times as much copper. Copper’s effect is mediated by organic matter, which can make the metal unavailable to living things.

“My scenarios are potentially more like a hard-rock copper mining situation than storm water runoff, which typically carries dissolved organic matter along with the copper and other contaminants,” McIntyre says.

A number of large copper mining projects are proposed for the northwest region including, the controversial Taseko’s Prosperity copper mine near Williams Lake which was stopped after the local First Nations and environmental groups opposed the use of one lake for a tailings pond. Taseko is now trying to revive the project. There area also a number of copper mine proposals for the both the northwest BC coast and the Sacred Headwaters region, source of the major salmon rivers, the Skeena, Nass and Stikine. There is also a proposed copper mine Pebble Mine, at Bristol Bay, Alaska, another prime area for sockeye salmon.

Environmental impact of the Canadian copper mine projects are likely to be affected by the provisions of Bill C-38 which speed up environmental assessment and essentially gut habitat protection for fisheries.

Her research, conducted for a University of Washington doctorate with colleagues at UW and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, appears in the latest issue of the journal Ecological Applications.