Road that open up mines in western Brooks Range gains funding, momentum

A plan to build a 211-mile industrial resource road to the western Brooks Range is gaining momentum.

Ambler Metals Ltd., a joint-venture of Australia-based South32 Ltd. and Trilogy Metals, Ltd. of Vancouver, B.C., signed an agreement to share expenses for preliminary engineering for the road with the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, Alaska’s development finance agency.

The the U.S. Bureau of Land Management recently issued a Record of Decision on its environmental review of the road, which clears the way for federal permits. The road route would cross the Gate of the Arctic National Park for a short distance but is mostly on state and federal lands.

However, it also crosses lands owned by Alaska Native regional corporations and several of the corporations are not happy about the road. They fear it could open access to lands in the region to nonresident sports hunters and fishers, putting pressure on subsistence resources needed by villages.

The first copper discoveries in the region were made over 50 years ago and over the years mining companies looked at transportation systems like railroads and a shorter road the Norton Sound coast. All were deemed uneconomic.

Eventually the state of Alaska and Trilogy Metals, predecessor to Trilogy Metals, settled on a gravel industrial road connecting with the Dalton Highway and ultimately Interior Alaska highways as the most feasible. The state Department of Transportation and Public Facilities began work the road and eventually handled the project to AIDEA, which had developed a similar project, the Red Dog road and port in the 1980s to enable development of the Red Dog Mine.

Trilogy Metals formed the joint venture with South32 Ltd. in late 2019 to explore a group of minerals discoveries in the western Brooks Range. One project in advanced exploration is Arctic, a high-grade copper deposit discovered originally by Kennecott Minerals in the 1980s; another is Bornite, also mainly copper, discovered in the 1960s also by Kennecott. A third discovery in the region, Sunshine, is now in preliminary exploration.

Deposits of copper, lead, zinc, gold and silver have been located in several discoveries, with cobalt found along with copper in Bornite.

The state and AIDEA have funded permitting and development work to date on the proposed new road, and now a Memorandum of Understanding has been signed setting out how the authority and Ambler Metals will share further costs.

Initially the authority and the companies will fund $35 million each, or $70 million, for 2020 predevelopment work. Up to $1 million in predevelopment work is currently planned, with $500,000 committed by both parties.

Work is farthest along on the Arctic deposit, where there has been extensive exploration drilling over several years. A development feasibility study is now underway and is expected to be completed in third quarter 2020, Trilogy said July 8.

There has also been extensive drilling at Bornite, the latest in 2019.

A major exploration program planned for summer, 2020 was deferred because of concerns for COVID-19 virus spread among workers, but the delay is not expected to affect overall development planning, the companies said.

“In the meantime, Ambler Metals will continue advancing the metallurgical test work on both Sunshine and Bornite over the last half of the year which will provide a better understanding of metallurgical performance in an operating scenario,” Trilogy said in its July 8 statement.

“Arctic will be advanced to the next stage of mine design, with optimization studies of previously completed work,” Trilogy said.