corporation, which owns land at Bornite. NANA can re- ceive up to a 2.5 percent royalty on the ore concentrates produced from Trilogy’s mines under the partnership, according to a company presentation. Another open-pit prospect, Bornite holds about 125 million metric tons of reserves with about 1 percent cop- per, but there is potential for an underground mine with 58 million tons of 3 percent copper, he noted. Bornite was also discovered in the 1950s by a pros- pector well known in mining circles named Riney Berg, according to Van Nieuwenhuyse, who offered a brief anecdote about his work. “He was out there looking for uranium; he had worked at the Kennecott mine so he knew what copper minerals looked like, found some on the surface, did some trenching and got the Kennecott guys all excited. They eventually wrote him a check for $6 million,” he said, noting the value of that much money roughly 60 years ago. “Riney, being a good prospector, spent it all on prospecting. There’s probably a dozen different pros- pects in Northern Alaska that have his name on it.” Trilogy is also finishing a study to see if ore sorting systems used by recycling companies can be applied in mining Arctic. The process uses sensors similar to mag- netic resonance technology that “recognize what rocks have copper, silver, lead and what rocks don’t,” Van Nieuwenhuyse said. “If we could just mine the stuff we want we could get 3 percent copper, not 2 percent,” he said.
age grade being mined in open pit copper mines today,” he said. “It’s not a huge mine, but it produces metal above its weight class because of the grade — 160 million pounds of copper annually, 200 million pounds of zinc, 33 mil- lion pounds of lead, over 3 million ounces of silver and 30,000 ounces of gold.” Those numbers are based on a short, 12-year mine life. According a pre-feasibility study released in Febru- ary, Arctic would generate costs of $911 million to build and operate over that time but with roughly $450 mil- lion in annual free cash flow would have just a two-year payback. “We don’t need higher metal prices to make this thing work,” Van Nieuwenhuyse said. “We just need a road.” The mill and other facilities at Arctic could also be used for Trilogy’s other, larger but less explored Bor- nite copper and cobalt prospect about 20 miles to the southwest or other undeveloped prospects in the area, he added. The company currently estimates Bornite contains upwards of 6 billion pounds of copper, a figure that could grow this coming winter when the results from this year’s drilling campaign. Trilogy has spent $122 million exploring its Alaska prospects overall. The company also has a partnership with NANA Regional Corp., the Northwest Alaska Native regional
January 2019
The Alaska Miner
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