Tom Collier, CEO of Pebble Limited Partnership, has submitted his letter of resignation. The move comes one day following the release by an environmental group of secretly recorded videos of Collier. The recordings also featured Ron Thiessen, president of Pebble’s parent company Northern Dynasty Minerals. They discussed the company’s relationship with Alaskan politicians and regulators.
On Tuesday, recordings were released by the Environmental Investigation Agency where people hired to pose as potential investors in the Pebble Project recorded calls with Pebble officials in August and September of this year.
One tape featured Collier discussing Senator Lisa Murkowski’s reluctance to act against the Pebble Project: “It’s an age-old practice where when you have constituents, you have important people who support you on two sides of an issue, you try to find a way to satisfy them both. You don’t choose one or choose the other. You try to satisfy them both. The way that Senator Murkowski has done that is that when she’s asked a question she says things that don’t sound supportive of pebble – but when it comes time to vote, when it comes time to do something, she never does anything to hurt Pebble. Never.”
Collier then offered an example: “So last year, the House of Representatives passed a what’s called a rider to an appropriations bill. So a piece of legislation that would have prevented the federal government from funding the permitting process for Pebble. It would have killed Pebble. It then goes to the United States Senate and the Senate has to consider this. The committee that it goes to is the committee that’s chaired by Lisa Murkowski. So Lisa Murkowski kills the bill. Right? It doesn’t go anywhere. That’s the end of it. No problem for us. Dead. But in what’s called the committee report, so this is something that’s not voted on it’s just a report that’s issued by the committee at the time, Lisa Murkowski says I’ve got some questions about this Pebble Project that I think need to be answered before it can move ahead. So she threw a bone to those constituents that are against us in the committee report but when it really mattered she didn’t do anything.”
Similar sentiment was expressed about Senator Dan Sullivan and Governor Mike Dunleavy, among others in the state and federal government.
Murkowski was quick to respond, saying that she takes her criticism of the project seriously: “I am not ‘embarrassed’ by my statement on it and I will not be ‘quiet in the corner.’ I am dead set on a high bar for large-scale resource development in the Bristol Bay watershed. The reality of this situation is the Pebble project has not met that bar and a permit cannot be issued to it.”
Governor Dunleavy’s office said: “The individuals in those videos embellished their relationships with state and federal officials at all levels.”
Former Pebble Partnership CEO John Shively will be Pebble’s interim CEO while the company seeks a new leader.
