The project continues to move forward on several fronts. Here’s a summary of recent developments:
Leadership changes
Patrick Keenan has joined our executive team in St. Paul as chief financial officer, succeeding Douglas Newby, who will continue to advise the company as president of Proteus Capital, focusing on project finance and strategy.
Pat brings tremendous mining and finance experience to the team. He was most recently senior vice president of finance and treasurer for Newmont Mining, but previously spent more than 20 years at Rio Tinto where he served in various leadership roles including chief financial officer for Rio Tinto’s Energy group based in Brisbane, Australia, Kennecott Utah Copper in Salt Lake City, and Rio Tinto Diamonds based in London. In these roles, he had financial oversight of major open pit and underground mining operations and projects globally, including diamond, uranium and coal mines, and the Bingham Canyon copper mine in Utah, one of the larger open pit copper mines in the world.
We look forward to benefiting from Pat’s knowledge and experience as we enter the important phase of project finance and prepare to construct and operate Minnesota’s first copper-nickel-precious metals mine.
Litigation update
As you may know, mining opponents earlier this year filed four separate lawsuits in U.S. District Court in Minnesota against the U.S. Forest Service and the project – two related to the appraised valuations in the land exchange, one related to endangered species, and the fourth for alleged violations of the National Environmental Policy Act and the Weeks Act.
All of the issues in these lawsuits were raised and addressed during the comprehensive, public environmental review process. The federal and state agencies involved in that process took painstaking efforts to follow the law and to ensure their decisions are defensible in court. For this reason, we are optimistic we will receive favorable outcomes in all of these cases.
Judge Joan Ericksen heard argument on two preliminary motions (not the merits of the case) April 28 in one of the land exchange lawsuits, but has not yet issued a decision. She is scheduled to hear argument on preliminary motions in the other three cases August 3, 2017. It is not known when she will rule following the August 3 hearings.
Permitting
This week the Department of Natural Resources issued for local government review our Public Waters Work Permit application. Local units of government and tribal entities have 30 days to review and comment on the document. If issued, the permit will allow us to extend the length of a culvert under a road we are widening on our property. It is not a big permit in the scheme of things, but every little step forward helps.
The state continues to review and process our other permit applications, including our major Dam Safety and Water Appropriations permit applications, which have already progressed past local government review. All the permit applications we have submitted to the agencies, including the Permit to Mine application, are moving forward with no perceptible red flags.
As always, because we do not control the permitting schedule, a good place to keep current on permitting activities is to visit the state’s website at http://www.polymet.mn.gov.
We will continue to keep you posted. As always, we welcome your questions and feedback. You can contact us at 218.471.2150 or email info@polymetmining.com. |
