Red Dog is one approval away from a new corporate owner

The company that runs the Red Dog zinc mine is close to disappearing into a larger one. Teck Resources, which owns and operates the mine in the Northwest Arctic, is merging with the global miner Anglo American to form a new company called Anglo Teck. One regulatory approval is still outstanding, and the companies expect to close sometime between this month and March.

Red Dog matters more than most mines do to the place around it. It employs about 600 people full time, and NANA Regional Corporation says it funds more than 80 percent of the Northwest Arctic Borough's budget.

Teck told federal securities regulators this week that the two companies have settled the last mechanics of the deal, including how quickly Anglo American must pay a roughly $4.5 billion cash payout to its shareholders after closing. Teck would survive as a subsidiary of the new parent company.

What the filings do not say is what any of this means in Alaska. None of them addresses the agreements that let Red Dog operate on Alaska Native corporation land, the royalties those agreements carry, or the payments the mine makes to the borough. On paper, the mine's management would simply report to a new owner.

Duncan Wanblad would lead Anglo Teck, with Brock Gill overseeing the region that includes Alaska, in roles that take effect as soon as the deal closes.

The change arrives while the mine faces a deadline of its own. NANA says the Aqqaluk deposit now being mined will be exhausted by 2031, and that a replacement has to be found and permitted within eight years. Teck has been evaluating two possibilities on state land, Aktigiruq and Anarraaq.

It also arrives in the middle of a long dispute over the mine's water. State environmental regulators renewed Red Dog's wastewater discharge permit in April, extending interim discharge limits another decade. NANA supported it, and says more than 82 percent of its shareholders backed continued operations in a 2023 survey. The Kivalina IRA Council, the federally recognized tribal government downstream, objected, and tribal entities and environmental groups have warned about water quality, subsistence fish and village health.

That argument now continues under a different owner.