New owners plan to close Troy Mine
Hecla Mining Co. announced Friday it was acquiring Revett Mining Co. in a $20 million stock deal that anticipates closing one silver and copper mine in Northwest Montana and pursuing the development of another.
Under the merger, each share of Revett stock will be exchanged for 0.1622 of a share of Hecla.
Shareholders of Revett, which is based in Spokane Valley, Washington, still must approve the merger.
If it moves forward, Hecla intends to continue the permitting process for Revett’s Rock Creek Mine under the Cabinet Mountains Wilderness near Noxon.
The company based in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, also plans to close and reclaim the Troy Mine southwest of Libby, which Revett put on care and maintenance in January.
Revett President and CEO John Shanahan said the company was unable to maintain the Troy Mine while pursuing development of Rock Creek.
When Revett shut down the Troy Mine, it employed 85 workers.
The Hecla deal is expected to close late in the second quarter of 2015.
Rock Creek holds an estimated 229 million ounces of silver and 2 billion pounds of copper, according to Revett. It’s about 50 miles north of Hecla’s Lucky Friday Mine in Idaho.
As global commodities prices have fallen in recent months, silver prices declined from a high of $21.45 per ounce to just over $17 per ounce on Friday. Copper prices also fell sharply in recent months.
Companies have nevertheless continued to pursue new projects with an eye on the long term.
Rock Creek has enough ore to maintain production for more than three decades or more, according to documents submitted to regulators.
Another silver and copper mine, Montanore, is proposed immediately north of Rock Creek by Mines Management Inc. of Spokane.
The proposal cleared a significant hurdle this week when the Kootenai National Forest issued a long-awaited environmental study that will allow the project to proceed pending final approval.
Both Rock Creek and Montanore would go beneath the Cabinet Mountain Wilderness, a 35-mile-long range of glaciated peaks and scenic river valleys that received its name from early French explorers who thought the area’s rock formations resembled cabinets.
The Rock Creek Alliance, an organization focused on protecting water quality in northwest Montana and northern Idaho, has said the two mines would have overlapping detrimental effects on the environment. The Rock Creek mine would disturb almost 500 acres on the surface, including 140 acres of National Forest.
Approval is pending after a U.S. District Judge in 2010 found problems with the Forest Service’s environmental study of the project and sent it back to the agency for reconsideration. The ruling prompted anther environmental study which began in 2011.
A draft of that supplemental study is expected this summer, said Bobbie Lacklen with the Forest Service. The timing of a final decision will depend in part on the public response to the upcoming study, she said.