Palmer Project owners have announced a $13.7 million budget for 2026 operations at the Chilkat Valley’s lone major mining project — an increase after a year without new drilling. 

The Palmer Project is currently in the mineral exploration phase. Its managing company Constantine Metals was purchased last year by Vizsla Copper. 

Before extracting and selling ore, the company must demonstrate enough valuable ore in the ground to entice investors, and eventually get the mine permitted and into production. Much of that work centers around drilling and analyzing core samples from the deposit, located above the Little Jarvis Glacier, just north of Flower Mountain.

If the company’s planned 10,000 meters of drilling this year goes forward, it would be on the high end for recent Palmer Project exploration.

Constantine’s reports to the state list one year of comparable drilling in 2023, which saw 10,500 total meters of drilling. The company reported 6,036 meters of drilling in 2024 and 3,500 meters of drilling in 2022. No new drilling occurred last year. 

A 2025 regulatory filing estimated the company would need an additional 30,000 meters of drilling to produce an updated economic assessment — the expected next step in project development. Theoretically, this summer’s planned work gets them a third of the way to that mark. 

The company did not respond this week to questions about their plans or upcoming work.

The Palmer Deposit has seen years of similar work, with no certainty about whether the exploration project will ever result in a producing mine. Statistically, few do.

The mine, however, has completed a preliminary economic assessment, a key benchmark in mineral exploration, said Robert Loeffler, a professor at the University of Alaska Anchorage Institute of Social and Economic Research and former state mining regulator. 

Exploration generally follows a rough overall progression, from initial exploration, to more advanced exploration, to permitting, and eventually production. 

Along that progression, mining companies are subject to regulatory requirements to be publicly listed on major stock exchanges. In Canada, where Vizsla is traded, that includes standardized reports on the estimated economic value of exploration projects — the preliminary economic assessment being one such report. 

Those reports done by third-party geologists serve as “semi-independent assessments so that investors can feel companies’ claims are accurate,” Loeffler said.  

Reaching a preliminary economic assessment puts the Palmer Project in somewhat rarified air. 

According to a 2021 paper co-authored by Loeffler, of 110 major mines and exploration projects in the state that year, only 18 had advanced past a preliminary economic assessment.

Studies cited in Loeffler’s research show only a small fraction — potentially less than 1 percent — of all exploration projects ever make it into production. But for projects that have advanced to an economic assessment, some studies show three-quarters or more making it into production. 

The updated economic assessment recommended in the company’s 2025 filing would add new data to the 2022 preliminary economic assessment. That’s not an uncommon step for projects with new owners or major investors, Loeffler said.

Updating the economic assessment would still leave plenty of checkpoints before serious consideration of the mine going into production.

The company would likely have to complete a series of increasingly detailed updates of the economic assessment — a prefeasibility study and then a feasibility study — before beginning permitting. At each step, the new information would have to demonstrate economic viability.

Without comment from the company, it’s hard to say how far off those next steps might be, and what exactly it would take to get there. However, there’s been a recent spate of public relations spending from the mine and from opponents of the mine. 

Earlier this year, Vizsla paid a firm $600,00 to run a six-month marketing and public relations campaign. The firm, Machai Capital, has run public relations campaigns for a large number of mining firms. 

On the other side, the Chilkat Indian Village’s Chilkat Forever initiative has run a high-profile anti-Palmer Project campaign, including buying billboard ads at a Vancouver mining conference and large ads in the Anchorage Daily News, Vancouver Sun and Seattle Times. 

In recent months, some, including borough elected officials, have said the mine’s future hinges on its economic viability. 

But public opinion may yet have some role to play if the project moves forward. 

If shown to be economically viable, state and federal environmental permitting would still represent an avenue for public voices to come into play. 

According to Loeffler, those permits fall into two broad categories: criteria-based permits and balancing permits. In the first category, government regulators weigh the project against a strict set of criteria. If the criteria is met, the permit is granted. 

Balancing permits have slightly less definitive terms, where “an effect or risk to public resources is balanced against a company’s right to operate,” Loeffler said. 

Those permitting processes include statutory public-input processes, where in theory the public could provide both technical information, but also testimony regarding the effect on public resources. 

Many valley residents have raised concerns about the environmental impact of a potential mine. In a written statement this week, Chilkat Indian Village Tribal Council member Shawna Hotch pointed to a Chilkat Forever letter in late February signed by 245 Chilkat Valley residents opposing the mine. 

Chilkat Indian Village Tribal Council president Kimberley Strong, in her own written statement this week, said the Chilkat Indian Village has concerns with the impact of this year’s exploratory drilling, not just impacts down the road. 

“It’s very important for Chilkat Valley residents to be aware that the ‘exploration activity’ Vizsla is doing involves drilling into potentially acid-generating rock, yet their plan of operations fails to describe how they will address any acid-generating cuttings from the drill rigs,” Strong wrote. 

Others have pointed to potential jobs created by a producing mine. 

Constantine has advertised a range of job openings this spring, and the Palmer Project is projected to employ 94 people if ever in production, roughly a quarter of the employees at nearby currently-producing Kensington and Greens Creek mines.