Danke Edelman 
Shock and Awe Mining Tactic’s Comes Back to British Columbia
My hasty letter to the editor of the Vancouver Sun is a response to your Tuesday’s Business page headline that Teck Cominco has cancelled the Galore Creek Mining Project that it held with Joint Venture Partner NovaGold, that was hailed only this past May 23, 2007, as British Columbia’s return to the world mining stage.
This decision that came to light in the early hours of Monday morning seemly came from out of nowhere. Only last Friday the share price on NovaGold on the TSE and AMEX was challenging its all time high of $20.00 with a staggering 10,000,000 short position. Teck Cominco, announced that they were suspending construction and operations at Galore Creek Mining Camp. This was one of NovaGold flagship projects, and the reaction in the stock market was to wipe out a billion dollars in market capitalization in the first minutes of trading on Monday morning. To say nothing about the loss in small mining companies looking in the area for new mining projects. For a junior mining company like NovaGold that has been the poster child for the Junior mining sector here in BC and the world, the damage that was done to its unequaled reputation is unjust, and plain and simply put, not fair.
I believe I am qualified to express an opinion. I have been to every Annual meeting of NovaGold since 2002, after I first became a shareholder in late 2001. I have listened to every conference call over the years, when management updated their projects. There was something about this company, Novagold, and the people that were different from the many others I have followed over the years. These guys had a penny stock, but they were not paper hangers, they were the real deal. I got the feeling very early that they were determined to build a Big Mining Company, a great one, big deposits, big projects, infrastructure builders, job creators, and even better they were experienced miners, coming back to British Columbia, believing in this Province once again, and you got a sense that they could pull it off and Boy did they ever succeed. They believed in their dream and in the great "Challenge in Abundance" that this great province British Columbia has to offer, determined to help feed a world, in need of our resources and to help build emerging world economies with new infrastructure. They believed in the commodity cycle and they were right. I saw it in the seminars that I had in our office or attended outside, when V.P. Mr. Greg Johnson spoke about his company, it inspired me. They were going places and invited you along for the wild ride. It is truly why I became a stockbroker over 25 years ago; to help build good profitable projects that were win/win. They wanted and got solid partners with the Native Tahltan Band, the Governments, and the communities where they worked from, because it was win/win, mining in the 21st century, to do it right. They bought a green power project and did detailed environmental studies to fit this project into the historical lands of the Tahltan and detailed plans to reclaim it at the end of the mine life. Each and every year they added properties and attracted more and more talented people. It reminded me of a sports team that everyone wanted to play for. I have been on two trips to Galore Creek with Gold Analysts and each time the excitement grew. Everyone, from the chopper crew to the dinner crew was in on the growth of this company. This was like a high tech company that you read about, where everyone is sharing in the growth, but it is in the Mining business in the middle of British Columbia. These guys, right from the beginning, put one foot in front of the other, no short cuts to hard work and effort had a goal and worked to move toward it.
Now the NovaGold team, after busting their collective butts for over 6 plus years and with the accumulated management experience of the better part of 500 years (hiring some of the best talent in the business, many educated at UBC and BCIT) between them or more to build a great Mining Company they envision, they face their flagship mining project in British Columbia being shut down. Why?
I am not an expert but I don’t believe the reasons they gave stand the smell test, something just doesn’t add up, and the conference call was vague at best, as to the reasons why they are shutting down this project. A project that our fellow British Columbians invested their funds in, pension funds invested, British Columbians invested in equipment, students and trades people invested time to be educated to work in this remote mining camps.
Teck Cominco sited higher construction costs, a longer construction schedule, and a higher Canadian dollar reduced operating margins while perhaps less concern on capital cost. Three Teck Cominco engineers arrived at this after briefly looking over the Feasibility study done in the fall of 2006, in the past few months. In every power point presentation that I can remember NovaGold used prices of long term metal prices of .90 cent Copper $550.00 Gold and $8.00 Silver and they were advancing the project then (NovaGold always hanged with the label of to conservative) and these prices were only raised in the feasibility study to $1.50 copper, $550 gold and $12.00 for silver that outlined the cost and profit projections of the operating mine. What has changed since May 2007when this partnership was formed, well Gold is up 20% and spent more days above $800.00 than at any time in history in nominal dollar terms, Silver is up 10% and Copper is down -6.5o %, there was a reference to long term copper prices on the call, but Teck left it up to the folks on the call to speculate on long term prices of copper, but I would like to note that long term copper prices have averaged $2.10lb in the last 130 years, so $$1.50 is not very aggressive, at a time that much of the developing world is going through period of industrialization, and the Canadian dollar is up 10%, which was always billed as a plus in the presentations I attended or at least a wash, as they could buy equipment and supplies cheaper with a stronger Canadian dollar. How in the face of this does a world class deposit suddenly and without warning become uneconomic? How can some of the best mining engineers, that are sought out around the around the world, be so far out of line in their budget, 2 billion plus dollars!, and this was left to be explained in a hastily prepared 40 minute conference call, that very few investors even knew about.
British Columbians, this is a 20 year project that holds close to 60 billion dollars in metal value at today’s prices. Then there is the vast potential to add to that resource base, as more is learned about the vast Galore Creek mining camp, and to say nothing about the mining district it opens up that could rival the mining districts in Chile. This is the area of the famed Stikine Mining camp area of BC that opened up this area in the 1980’s. Galore Creek is projected to produce metals that Canada and world needs and generate annual revenues of 1.6 billion dollars over the first five years. At today’s metal prices the mine is paid for in less than three years, what do they want polished gold and silver bars on the board room table, before they start to work on this project? 
I am writing this because we as citizens of British Columbia deserve better than this, we are talking about the men and woman that have an opportunity to earn a good living in jobs that can’t be exported, a province where students and workers can educate themselves to work at these good paying jobs, in this mining district , for their lifetime, if they so choose. To work and pay taxes and contribute to the Canada Pension Plan, Union Pension Plans, Unemployment Insurance and our medical plans to help make and keep them strong.
Instead, British Columbians face a robust mining project that stands to be shelved for no good reason, at least that I have heard. 1000 men and women out of work, countless contractors, helicopter companies etc, that have invested in this to help make it a success face unemployment and maybe worse. 
Teck Cominco is building mines and operating mines in Canada and around the world and I wish them all the very best success in all their endeavors in far away countries, but why did they invest a paltry sum of 400 million to earn a 50% interest in a British Columbia Gold and Copper district, with metal values of 60 Billion in metal value, that has the potential to open up this province the likes that we have not seen since the 1950’s and 1960’s, when determined business men and women embraced calculated risk and went for it. Only to shut it down, it seems to me that those kinds of companies should get out of the road and let a real dedicated miner buy them out, and lets get on with it.
I can only speculate that Mr. Ian Telfer of Wheaton River fame would be working 24/7 to get the road and tunnels done to get at the ore, mythical cost increases be damned. Teck Cominco should GIVE IT BACK.
Are we as British Columbians going to allow the historical lands of the Tahltan be ripped up with a road to nowhere? And go back to the days of broken commitments and dashed hopes and dreams for no good economic reason. To have billions of dollars in equity disappear in companies who highest thought was to build back the mining business in this province and make us a stronger province. Are we going to begin to produce valuable metals, instead of just looking for them, finding them, and shutting the projects down? We are asked in my work community to contribute to the new geology wing at UBC, for what? To see our tax subsidized universities and colleges train and educate dedicated students to be shipped overseas again to develop ever harder to find minerals deposits while great projects sit idle in our own backyard, workers sit by unemployed, distributors of machines and equipment inventories empty because great projects are shelved.
If this is the case, we are no longer the great entrepreneurial province that rewarded risk takers, rewarded hard work, and no longer believe that we are as productive as any people or place on earth today. We cannot afford to step back in time on this project; we must show the world we are back in the mining business.
John Newell
Vancouver, BC
And a shareholder of NovaGold
