Despite all that, the mining giant hasn't lost interest in Alaska, said President and Chief Executive Officer Tom Albanese.

“This doesn't mean that we're not interested in Alaska,” Albanese said in a March 19 interview, prior to speaking at the Arctic International Mining Symposium held in Fairbanks March 18-22. “I'm here to make certain that people realize Rio Tinto continues to be interested in Alaska - we hope it includes Pebble, but it could be something else that will be discovered by ourselves or someone else.”

Rio Tinto's current exploration efforts in Alaska will remain primarily with operating partners NovaGold Resources on the Ambler project and Geoinformatics Exploration in Whistler. Albanese said Rio Tinto will keep its options open regarding Alaska prospecting.

“This will allow us to focus on the things that will be bigger on the world stageÉusing our strategic alliances with exploration-focused companies and juniors will let them do the running on these projects. They'll put the necessary attention and focus on those projects,” Albanese said. “These ore bodies are quite good, but they're not necessarily part of the company's big carriers, like iron ore, that make a difference for Rio Tinto.”

Currently the world's second-largest producer of publicly traded iron ore, the world's largest producer of aluminum and the world's fifth-largest producer of copper, London-based Rio Tinto holds a 19.9 percent interest in Northern Dynasty Minerals. Northern Dynasty acquired the Pebble property in Southwest Alaska in 2002 and drilled out a large, low-grade copper-gold-molybdenum deposit near the surface, and has identified a deeper, higher-grade mineralized zone that would likely be amenable to underground mining.

Northern Dynasty acquired another global mining giant as a partner in Pebble during 2007, Anglo American, which currently holds a 50 percent interest in the project.

In his speech at the biennial conference in Fairbanks, an event hosted by the Alaska Miners Association, Albanese said he has told executives at both Northern Dynasty and Anglo American that he thinks Pebble would be best started with development and production from the underground mineralization in Pebble East, rather than the potential open-pit Pebble West mineralization.

“In our view, we think the underground option is more attractive. It's best to start off in grade; high grade covers a lot of bills,” Albanese said. “That means it will technically be more challenging, so that means more time to get additional drilling completed, several more years to get to a (construction) decision. So that puts it barely in prefeasibility. We think that's the best way to start.”

Going that route, which would require substantially more engineering and environmental studies, would add more time to the project's existing schedule, a good thing in Albanese's opinion. “That could decompress the debate and allow for a more reasonable stakeholder engagement,” he said. “That's the best thing, technically and for engagement.”

Opponents of the Pebble project are some of “the most sophisticated, well-funded and well-managed groups I've seen anywhere in the world,” Albanese said. “But they are about to take a local issue and turn it into a statewide issue. That will knock a lot of their constituency out from under them.”

The clean water ballot initiatives in Alaska could cause some support to fall away from the anti-mining effort sparked by Pebble, he said. “People will begin to ask, ÔWhy are we attacking such a big, important sector of our economy?' That position could lose them their constituency.”

The global mining industry has made note of the very-public debate concerning Pebble, Albanese said, noting Alaska's falling rank on the Fraser Institute's annual survey of mining providences throughout the world.

“Alaska has gone from being better than average in the global perspective to being at average or slightly worse than average in just three years,” Albanese said. “The sentiment about Pebble has had an affect on industry's perspective of mining in Alaska on the world stage.”

Albanese can speak knowledgeably about Alaska's mineral potential. He's a graduate of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, receiving a bachelor's degree in mine economics and a master's degree in mine engineering in the 1970s. He cut his teeth prospecting mineral deposits in Alaska for Resource Associates of Alaska, later for NERCO Minerals and then Kennecott Exploration. Albanese served as manager of the Greens Creek Mine during its restart in the 1990s, beginning the corporate ladder climb within Rio Tinto after the company acquired Kennecott in 1989.

Albanese took over the helm of Rio Tinto in early 2007, a year in which the low-cost producer completed its $38 billion acquisition of Alcan, produced record earnings of $7.4 billion and spent $8 billion on capital projects.

Rio Tinto's board recently rejected two different unsolicited acquisition offers from BHP Billiton, another global mining giant that currently is exploring the large-scale high-grade coal resource in Northwest Alaska located on land owned by Arctic Slope Regional Corp.

“BHP Billiton is attracted to our success, and I believe, attracted to our superior growth pipeline. We have much stronger experience in resource evaluation,” Albanese said, adding that the company leads the mining industry in producing resources sought after by the rapidly growing China market.