Weekly Post: The Higher You Get, The Higher You Get by Robert Glenn Ketchum (#101-200)

Continued. . .

The Higher You Get, The Higher You Get

by Robert Glenn Ketchum

Growing up my parents had a home near Sun Valley, Idaho. It was there that I learned to ski. Over many years I befriended members of the Decker Flats Climbing and Frisbee Club, with whom I had both life, and art-forming outdoor experiences. I had my camera, and these are my adventures.  Enjoy!!  ~Robert Glenn Ketchum

Monday, March 2, 2020

The Higher You Get, The Higher You Get - Sun Valley and the DFC&FC, #200: DFCFC, #200: As edge my way along the lakeshore, Belle, my lab, keeps sticking her nose into the snow to investigate whatever she smells beneath it, and as a consequence, her snout is cutely decorated with powder. In fact, everything around me is decorated with powder, and as I draw closer to Schiestler Peak, there is much powder decoration to ponder. The light snowfall has etched the granite crags and terraces, making them more pronounced, and the blowing winds of the past night have knocked all the snow from the trees, so they stand in sharp contrast to the bedecked rocks. The weather is streaming through overhead, the clouds zooming across the skies, driven by high winds in the upper atmosphere. When breaks in the weather appear, pockets of sunlight flash blindingly across the landscape, which I work myself into a frenzy trying to capture on film, but it is COLD, I am still sleepy, and I have not yet hit my morning stride. The tripod legs are especially cold, even through my gloves, but hey! I’m havin’ some fun now. Actually, I am. It is a blustery, beautiful beginning of the day, but I am definitely going to want breakfast when I get back to camp, starting with something hot to drink.

photograph(s) © copyright, ROBERT GLENN KETCHUM, 2020, @RbtGlennKetchum @LittleBearProd #LittleBearProd

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HELP WANTED: Hypothetical Partner for the Pebble Mine by Joel Reynolds, NRDC

HELP WANTED: Hypothetical Partner for the Pebble Mine

April 22, 2019

Joel Reynolds, Natural Resources Defense Council

Canadian owner of widely condemned Bristol Bay mine desperately seeks new partner with a few billion to spare. Financial, social, and environmental indifference required. No need to apply if you’re fazed by economic infeasibility, relentless local opposition, pervasive risk, and potentially catastrophic social and environmental impacts.

It’s no secret that Northern Dynasty Minerals (aka the Pebble Partnership)—the sole remaining partner in the embattled Pebble Mine proposed for the headwaters of Alaska’s Bristol Bay—is in urgent need of a new financial partner. To be sure, after four of the world’s major mining companies (Mitsubishi Corporation, Anglo American, Rio Tinto, and First Quantum Minerals) have walked away from the project since 2011, it’s a tough sell.

At last year’s general meeting of shareholders, Northern Dynasty CEO Ron Thiessen expressed confidence they can make a deal. The only question, he told me, is “what deal”—that is, what terms will be required to entice a buy-out or at least a new major partner. With the company’s history of failed partnerships in mind, I began to speculate about what the profile of such a partner, if indeed there is one to be found, might look like.

Here, in no particular order, are some essential characteristics:

(1) Unconcerned by financial risk
Contrary to industry practice—and despite repeated requests—Pebble has refused to release an economic feasibility analysis for its latest mine plan, now under permit review by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. When asked by the Army Corps’ consultant AECOM to produce information on Pebble’s “cost/feasibility,” the company refused, citing a Canadian securities regulation whose purpose is to prevent securities fraud relating to mining properties. When pressed by the Bristol Bay Native Corporation (“BBNC”) last December, Pebble’s CEO Tom Collier, too, declined, explaining that such an analysis “remains on our to-do list.” Just this month, pressed by E&E News, he demurred once again because “an economic analysis is not a required piece of the permitting puzzle.”