After Governor Bill Walker released his preliminary budget last week, the state is looking for additional revenue wherever possible.
As we previously reported, Donlin Gold’s Yukon Kuskokwim Project is quietly progressing while the proposed Pebble Project fights law suits with the Environmental Protection Agency.
We asked the local chapter of the Alaska Mining Association member Jim Duffield what the mining outlook is under Walker’s administration.
Duffield: “Governor Walker is definitely a friend of resource development, I’ve known him for a number of years. And he’s been involved in a lot of resource projects, his focus has primarily been for trying to monetize in some form or get Alaska’s gas to market so that’s kind of his big thing but he’s a good guy for pretty much all resources.”
Duffield added that the federal government seems to be the ones discouraging mining operations.
