A Copper Shortage Is Coming to the US. a Mine in Alaska May Be the Answer

Copper prices are soaring, and supply is expected to badly lag demand in the coming decade, but a small Alaska mine that’s been in political limbo for years might hold the key to meeting the voracious appetite for the metal.

Bristol Bay is located in the southwest corner of Alaska, in the easternmost arm of the Bering Sea. The area boasts one of the nation’s richest sockeye salmon runs. It’s also home to a stalled project to mine a resource that’s highly important to the AI infrastructure boom.

Locals know all about the Pebble Mine project. The site was touted as having the potential to bring an economic windfall to the remote area, but was stalled by an EPA ruling. The wrangling over the project has gone on for over a decade and has spanned three presidential administrations—but with a copper shortage looming, the mining project has been thrust back into the spotlight.

Copper prices are up sharply, breaking above $12,000 a ton for the first time in the last week and rising more than 40% in 12 months. The AI buildout is one factor that’s sent demand soaring. However, a study by S&P Global this month said that supply will fall massively short between now and 2040, barring a sizable increase in production.

The firm predicts that copper production will peak in 2030, leaving the world roughly 10 million metric tons short by 2040.

The Pebble Mine project sits on vast copper and gold reserves. However, its operations have been blocked since 2014 under an Environmental Protection Agency provision that has remained in place across the Obama, Biden, and Trump administrations.

“Pebble is a world-class deposit,” Deantha Skibinski, who serves as executive director of the Alaska Miners Association, told Business Insider. “The copper in the ground at the pebble project is immense.”

She added that there are few copper producers in the US with the type of reserves that Pebble Mine is sitting on. The project’s owner says the site is the world’s largest undeveloped store of both copper and gold. It also has large deposits of molybdenum and silver, two metals that also play a role in the AI buildout.

Skibinski recalled the EPA’s 2014 decision to block the mine during its exploratory phase after it failed a watershed assessment.

“What they did, which we contend is not legal, is that they issued the 404(c) veto preemptively, meaning before the company went into permitting,” she said. “And that is unprecedented.”

Pebble Limited responded with a lawsuit, kicking off a long, complicated legal saga. More than a decade later, the mine is still not in operation.

Now, as the US under Trump scrambles to secure domestic supplies of critical materials, Skibinski thinks the Pebble Mine project should get another look by the administration.

“You would think that the government should fully examine, transparently and honestly, how to get more mines that produce copper and other minerals online,” she said. “But when you talk about what it actually takes, there are many that say they’re not interested in going that route.”

President Donald Trump expressed support for other Alaska mining endeavors during his first term, including the Pebble Mine and a project that would open up the state’s mineral-rich Ambler Mining District. But the New York Times reported in 2020 that Donald Trump Jr. opposed the mine’s construction, citing the potential environmental impacts.

A spokesperson for Trump Jr. did not return a request for comment. The White House did not reply to a request for comment about the administration’s current stance on the Pebble Mine project.

“It is crucial for the President and all the federal agencies that may be holding up Pebble to understand that copper is vital for meeting our needs of a modern society that relies on it,” said Lisa Reimers, an area native and the CEO of construction and logistics company Iliamna Development. “Pebble Mine is an important project for the United States so we are not to be dependent on foreign companies for copper.”