Brief by Allen Best
Mining – November 2008 – Colorado Central Magazine
Another mining company has stepped up to the plate, this time paying at least $500,000 to take a swing at that gigantic molybdenum deposit within the bowels of Mt. Emmons, the mountain literally in Crested Butte’s backyard.
The last hopeful, Vancouver-based Kobex Resources, bowed out in March after apparently deciding that Crested Butte was a more formidable project than it had expected. Kobex spent five million dollars in nine months of planning regarding how it might extract the molybdenum, a metal used to harden steel and for dozens of other industrial applications.
As it has been for 30 years, the community is largely united in opposition to the mine. Water quality is the central argument, but the broader issue is whether a tourism and recreation based economy are compatible with mining.
For a mining company, this adds up to whether the “world class” body of ore, even at $32 a pound for refined molybdenum, is worth years of ankle-biting opposition.
The newest company, Thompson Creek Metals Co., a Denver-based firm, is described as much larger than Kobex, with assets of $1 billion. Thompson Creek’s chairman and chief executive, Kevin Loughrey, said his company has greater financial resources.
The contract with the owner, Wyoming-based U.S. Energy, calls for the payment of $500,000, plus $1 million annually beginning in January during the next 10 years. The contract gives Thompson Creek an escape clause, but also potential to gain a stake in the property.
Local opponents predict that Thompson Creek will beat a hasty retreat.
“Kobex came in, looked at it, and then decided to get out. I think the same thing will happen with Thompson Creek,” Crested Butte Mayor Alan Bernholtz told the Gunnison Country Times. “Once Thompson Creek does due diligence they’ll realize it’s not an ideal location for a mine, because it’s in a municipal watershed.”
Dan Morse, who oversees public lands issues for the High Country Citizens Alliance, said even larger companies have walked away from the ore body. Both Amax and Phelps-Dodge were as large or larger than Thompson Creek, and both eventually walked away from the project.
