The Red Dog mine is a large zinc and lead mine located in the CDP of Red Dog Mine, part of the Northwest Arctic Borough of the U.S. state of Alaska. Located about north of Kotzebue, the facility is operated by the Canadian mining company Teck Resources on land owned by the NANA Regional Corporation.
The mine is the world's largest producer of zinc and has the world's largest zinc reserves. Red Dog accounts for 10% of the world's zinc production. Red Dog accounted for 66% of the mineral value produced in Alaska in 2018. In 2008 the mine produced of zinc, of lead, and of silver, for a total metal value of over one billion dollars. At the end of 2008 the mine had reserves of of zinc at a grade of 17.1% and lead at a grade of 4.5%, as well as significant additional zinc and lead in the less well-measured resource category.
According to a 2007 EPA report, the mine, which produces from an open pit, was mining the Aqqaluk ore body, immediately adjacent to the previous pit. Aqqaluk contains an additional 56 million metric tons (62 million short tons) of lead and zinc ore. The expansion was expected to keep the mine operating until 2031.
Location Red Dog is located on land owned by the for-profit NANA Regional Corporation (NANA)—one of thirteen Alaska Native Regional Corporations created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) as part of the settlement of Alaska Native land claims.Corporations Database (NANA Regional Corporation, Inc.). Division of Corporations, Business & Professional Licensing, Alaska Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development. Retrieved on 2007-03-18. NANA's land base in the Kotzebue area in northwest Alaska. NANA's Alaska Native shareholders are of Inupiat descent. The mine is operated by the Canadian giant mining company Teck Resources in partnership with NANA Development Corporation. Ore concentrate taken from the mine is trucked westward on the Red Dog Mine Haul Road to the state-owned but Teck Resources-operated DeLong Mountain Port facilities on the Chukchi Sea, where it is stored until the shipping season.
The Iñupiaq villages of Kivalina with a population of 377, and Noatak with 428 inhabitants, are the nearest permanent settlements to the mine.
History In the mid-1950s, Bob Baker, a local bush pilot and prospector, noticed red-stained creeks in the area, but was unable to land his plane nearby. In 1968, at Baker's urging, a U.S. Geological Survey geologist sampled rocks and stream sediments in the region, including samples from the future site of the Red Dog mine, and named Red Dog Creek after Bob Baker's dog, an Irish Terrier (Tailleur; USGS Open File 70-319).Tailleur; USGS Open File 70-319 In the mid-1970s, after investigations by BLM-contracted geologists confirmed significant mineralization, interest in the region from major mining companies and NANA intensified. Significant exploration, soon including drilling, of deposits in the region began in 1975 (Alaska Minerals Yearbook 1978–1979).
In 1980 the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) became law and NANA officially selected the land underlying Red Dog. Drill exploration of the Red Dog deposit began in 1980, by Cominco American. In 1982 NANA and Cominco American (a mining company that had staked the land, and later became Teck Cominco) signed an agreement to develop the deposit.
In 1986 the State of Alaska agreed to fund and take ownership of a road (DeLong Mts. Transportation System) from Red Dog to the coast, and a shallow-water port site. Also in 1986, residents of Kotzebue and 10 other area villages voted to form the Northwest Arctic Borough, to be economically based on taxing the Red Dog mine. Construction of the road, port site, and mine began in July 1987. Mine operations commenced in December 1989.Alaska Resource Data File, USGS Open File 00-23, p.2.
Background The Red Dog lead-zinc mine is operated by Teck Resources, a giant Canadian mining company that was associated with Cominco since 1986, "when Teck and two industry partners acquired a shareholding from CP Limited". Teck and Cominco completed their merger in July 2001. The Red Dog mine operator was first called Cominco Alaska, Inc., a subsidiary of Cominco American.
The mine, which is the largest lead-zinc mine in the world, is located in a remote region of northwestern arctic Alaska. The land is owned by the for-profit NANA Regional Corporation (NANA)—one of thirteen Alaska Native Regional Corporations created under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) in settlement of Alaska Native land claims. NANA's land base in the Kotzebue area in northwest Alaska. NANA's Alaska Native shareholders are of Inupiat descent.
The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) first investigated the veins of ore in 1968, at the urging of a local bush pilot and prospector, Bob Baker, who noticed red-stained creeks in the area in the mid-1950s. A USGS geologist sampled rocks and stream sediments in the region, including samples from the future site of the Red Dog mine, and named Red Dog Creek after Bob Baker's dog, an Irish Terrier (Tailleur; USGS Open File 70-319). In the mid-1970s, after investigations by BLM-contracted geologists confirmed significant mineralization, interest in the region from major mining companies and NANA intensified. Significant exploration, including drilling of deposits in the region, began in 1975.
In 1980 the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) became law and NANA officially selected the land underlying Red Dog. Drill exploration of the Red Dog deposit began in 1980, by Cominco American. In 1982 NANA and Cominco American (a mining company that had staked the land, and later became Teck Cominco) signed an agreement to develop the deposit. In 1986 the State of Alaska agreed to fund and take ownership of a road (DeLong Mts. Transportation System) from Red Dog to the coast, and a shallow-water port site. Also in 1986, residents of Kotzebue and 10 other area villages voted to form the Northwest Arctic Borough, to be economically based on taxing the Red Dog mine. Construction of the road, port site, and mine began in July 1987. Mine operations commenced in December 1989.
Economics Under the terms of the Teck Cominco/NANA agreement, NANA received royalties of 4.5% until the capital costs of the mine were recovered, which occurred in late 2007. At this point, the royalty due to NANA increased to 25%, and will increase by an additional 5% every year, to a maximum of 50%. Under the terms of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANSCA), which created NANA and the other native corporations in Alaska, NANA must share approximately half of its profits from natural resources with the other eleven land-based regional native corporations. If the mine remains profitable at the current level, this will mean a distribution of several hundred million dollars a year of mine profits to the regional native corporations.
Geology The Red Dog area has the world's largest known zinc deposits, which include the four at Red Dog as well as Anarraaq and Su-Lik, respectively northwest. They are stratiform massive sulfide bodies hosted in Carboniferous black shale and altered carbonates. Mesozoic mountain-building tectonic events (i.e. the Brookian orogeny that built the Brooks Range) deformed and thrust faulted the sedimentary strata that host the deposits and the deposits themselves. Subsequent uplift and erosion exposed parts of the deposits at today's earth surface.
Red Dog is an example of a sediment-hosted Zn-Pb-Ag deposit, with the zinc-lead ore considered to have been deposited on the sea floor as a stratum of sulfide sediment. Zinc, lead, silver, and barium were deposited in black muds and carbonates on or beneath the seafloor, in a deep quiet ocean basin, some 338 million years ago in the Mississippian period.
Fluids probably percolated through a huge mass (hundreds of square kilometers) of sediments. The nature of the fluids caused them to absorb and concentrate trace amounts of zinc and lead contained in the rocks the fluids were passing through. These metals were then caused to precipitate, by chemical or biological or physical agents, from the fluid onto or into the seafloor to form the Red Dog deposits.
One model holds that very saline brines formed in a restricted ocean basin within a hundred kilometers of the site of the Red Dog deposits. The brine fluid infiltrated the subsurface and was tectonically pumped through the rock mass, becoming enriched in metals as it stripped those metals from the rocks it passed through. The fluid traveled several kilometers below the earth's surface. The fluid eventually reemerged through fault systems focused on the location of the Red Dog deposits, in a manner somewhat similar to the process surrounding black smokers.
Reserves and resources (2007)
According to a 2007 article in the Alaska Journal of Commerce—at that time—there were several ore bodies that contained zinc at Red Dog. The main pit ore body had 19.5 million metric tons (21.5 million short tons)of ore containing 20.5% zinc. The figures represent the orebody before mining began in 1989. This is the currently permitted area of active mining, which is expected to be mined out by 2012. The ultimate size of this pit will be deep. The Aqqaluk ore body with at 16% zinc. This is adjacent to the Main pit. It is well understood geologically and metallurgically. A Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement is expected to be produced in 2008 as part of the process of permitting the development of this ore body. Most of the waste rock from this operation is expected to be placed in the depleted Main pit. The Qanaiyaq ore body with at 23.7% zinc. Also an open-pit target, studies of the ore characteristics of Qanaiyaq continue. The Paalaaq ore body with at 15% zinc and the Anarraaq ore body with at 15% zinc are both deep underground and will be accessed by tunnels and shafts, if they are eventually mined.
Geography Red Dog mine is located at . It is in the De Long Mountains in the remote western Brooks Range about north of Kotzebue and from the Chukchi Sea.
Regional The mine lies within the Northwest Arctic Borough, the boundaries of which are exactly coincident with the boundaries of the NANA Regional Corporation. The borough, which is approximately the size of Indiana, has only 11 communities and a population of only 7,208 people, 84% of whom are native or part native, and 40% of whom report speaking native at home. No roads connect the communities. The nearest permanent settlements to the mine, roughly west and south respectively, are the villages of Kivalina, population 377, and Noatak, population 428, at the 2000 census.
Although native populations have historically used areas around the mine and port for seasonal food-gathering, there are no permanent residents at the mine or port site. The workforce consists of about 460 employees and contractors, of whom somewhat more than half will be on-site at any given time. All staff work on a rotation, most on either a 4 weeks on/2 weeks off or 2 week on/1 week off schedule. At the mine, everybody stays in the single large housing unit, tucked in among the process buildings near the edge of the open pit. A small portion of the work force stays at the port site. Contracted employees stay at the ConPac south of the main accommodations during the summer months. NANA shareholders comprise 56% of the mine's workforce.(Operation and Site Performance 2006 Red Dog Mine, Teck Cominco Limited)
The Red Dog mine provides over a quarter of the borough's wage and salary payroll. While many of the borough's residents benefit from the mine and associated economic activities, virtually all of the borough's residents rely on subsistence activities which are dependent on a healthy environment.Alaska Economic Trends, Alaska Department of Labor, Vol. 19, Num. 1, January 1999.
Environmental concerns