Mr. Ronald Thiessen reports

INDEPENDENT PRELIMINARY ECONOMIC ASSESSMENT FOR NORTHERN DYNASTY'S PEBBLE PROJECT COMPLETED: POSITIVE PROJECTED FINANCIAL RESULTS, EXCELLENT OPTIONALITY AND IMPORTANT BENEFITS FOR ALASKA

Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. has completed an independent technical report entitled "Pebble Project, NI 43-101 Technical Report Update and Preliminary Economic Assessment, Alaska, United States of America, effective date Aug. 21, 2023," that will be filed at SEDAR+.

"The proposed mine for the Pebble project would provide good-paying, year-round employment for thousands of Alaskans, something desperately needed in southwest Alaska," said Ron Thiessen, president and chief executive officer of Northern Dynasty. "The mine would mean substantial tax revenues for Alaska, including contributions to the Alaska Permanent Fund, which will be important for the future economic sustainability of the region. New infrastructure developed to support the proposed project would offer the additional benefit of potentially lowering energy costs for the region. The July, 2020, environmental impact statement of the Pebble project states that the proposed mine can be developed and operated without harming the fishery, and so, with Alaska's excellent track record of managing all its resources for the benefit of its people, it can have both the mine and the fishery."

The 2023 PEA was prepared to accomplish several objectives. The report is an independent review of the project that provides cost and price estimates to reflect current economic volatility. It includes an infrastructure plan that uses the southern route for project access as defined in the original permitting application for the Pebble project. In addition, the 2023 PEA updates the status of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) final determination and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers record of decision appeal processes (see the Northern Dynasty Jan. 31, 2023, and July 28, 2023, news releases, respectively).

The 2023 PEA provides production, financial and cost estimates for a proposed 20-year, 180,000-ton-per-day open-pit operation with conventional processing producing two concentrates for the Pebble project in southwest Alaska as described in the Pebble project permit application and its amendments. U.S. dollars and U.S. standard units are used in the 2023 PEA and in the information herein unless otherwise indicated. All results presented are posttax. Unless otherwise noted, all figures in the study are based on the forecast long-term metal prices shown herein.

    FORECAST LONG-TERM METAL PRICES

Metal       Unit   Forecast price ($/unit)

Copper        lb                    $3.90                   
Gold          oz                    1,700                  
Molybdenum    lb                    12.50                  
Silver        oz                    22.50                  
Rhenium       kg                    1,500                  

The proposed project would be capable of processing 1.3 billion tons of mineralized material over 20 years of mining at a low strip ratio of 0.12 to 1, with an average annual mine operating cost of $14.17 per ton. Average annual metal production is forecast to be 320 million pounds copper, 368,000 ounces gold, 15 million lb molybdenum, 1.8 million oz silver and 10,000 kilograms rhenium, with life-of-mine metal production of 6.4 billion lb copper, 7.4 million oz gold, 300 million lb molybdenum 37 million oz silver and 200,000 kg rhenium.

The forecast financial results of the proposed project with third parties providing key infrastructure (the base case) are tabulated herein. On July 27, 2022, Northern Dynasty announced a royalty agreement by which the royalty holder has the right to acquire five royalty tranches. Currently, the royalty holder has acquired one tranche, but the table provides the financial results assuming all five tranches of the royalty are acquired.

In June, 2021, Pedro Bay Corp. announced it had signed an agreement whereby a fund had obtained an option to buy portions of its land to create a conservation easement. PBC and the fund announced the exercise of the option in December, 2022. While the Pebble Partnership has not explored the full range of options available to it with this announcement, its current assumption is that the northern route defined in the FEIS is no longer practicable and thus does not qualify as an alternative as defined by the Clean Water Act (CWA). Accordingly, the 2023 PEA analyzes the amended version of the southern transportation alternative proposed by the Pebble Partnership for the transportation route in its original 2017 permit application.

The total initial capital cost for the design, construction, installation and commissioning of the proposed project is estimated to be $6.77-billion, which includes all direct and indirect costs, as well as a contingency. Northern Dynasty believes it is most likely that, if approved, the proposed project would be developed with partners which will provide the primary infrastructure (marine terminal, access road, ferry, natural gas pipeline and mine site power plant) in return for lease payments or tolls at rates which provide a return on investment to the developers of the infrastructure. The capital cost of this infrastructure which may be provided by third parties is estimated at $2.64-billion, which would reduce Northern Dynasty's portion of the cash outlay required for construction. The financial results also include anticipated metal streaming, which would provide proceeds of approximately $1.2-billion toward the initial capital cost.

The 2023 PEA also evaluates potential mine expansion scenarios, which are presented to demonstrate optionality inherent in the polymetallic Pebble deposit and a possible pathway for future mine development. The study also assesses the potential of the future addition of a gold plant. Any future development option beyond the proposed project would require extensive federal, state and local permitting processes and approvals before proceeding, which would be in addition to the initial permits and approvals required for the proposed project and, very importantly, in consultation with the people and communities of western Alaska, as well as state agencies.

The 2023 PEA has been prepared within the guidelines established by National Instrument 43-101 to disclose the current cost estimates and potential financial results for the Pebble project. The company is a foreign issuer under the U.S. Exchange Act and entitled to file continuous disclosure reports with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission under the multijurisdictional disclosure system between Canada and the United States, and to provide disclosure on the company's mineral projects, including the Pebble project, in accordance with NI 43-101 disclosure standards and Canadian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy Definition Standards. For this reason, information contained in this news release in respect of the Pebble project may not be comparable with similar information made public by U.S. companies subject to the reporting and disclosure requirements under the U.S. federal securities laws and rules and regulations thereunder.

The mineral resources in the 2023 PEA have been independently audited and have not changed materially from the company's previous technical report, effective date May 19, 2023. The 2023 PEA is preliminary in nature and includes inferred mineral resources that are considered too speculative geologically to have economic considerations applied to them that would enable them to be categorized as mineral reserves, and there is no assurance that the 2023 PEA will be realized, or that the project economics will be achieved. The 2023 PEA is a preliminary analysis of the potential viability of the Pebble project's mineral resources, and should not be considered the same as a prefeasibility or feasibility study as various factors are preliminary in nature. Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability, and there is no assurance that the Pebble project mineral resources will ever be upgraded to reserves. The 2023 PEA assumes that the proposed project will ultimately be able to obtain the required federal government and State of Alaska permits to enable development of the proposed project. Neither the 2023 PEA, nor the mineral resource estimates on which the 2023 PEA is based, have been adjusted for any risks that: (i) the Pebble Partnership may not be able to appeal the record of decision issued by the USACE on Nov. 25, 2020, denying the granting of the required permit under the CWA; or (ii) the ability to overturn the final determination issued by the EPA on Jan. 31, 2023. In addition, the 2023 PEA does not account for any additional capital or operational costs that may be necessary to obtain the required federal or state permits, should adjustments to the operating or environmental mitigation plans be required to be made to secure the required permits.

Investors are encouraged to read the full text of the 2023 PEA, which will be filed in Canada on SEDAR+ and will also be filed in the U.S. on EDGAR in the coming days.

The National Instrument 43-101 technical report was prepared by Ausenco Engineering Canada Inc., with contributions by the qualified persons listed below. The qualified persons are independent of Northern Dynasty and have reviewed the scientific, technical and economic information contained in this news release:

• Robin Kalanchey, PEng, Ausenco Engineering Canada Inc.;
• Scott Weston, PGeo, Ausenco Sustainability Inc.;
• Graeme Roper, PGeo, Tetra Tech Canada Inc.;
• Greg Z. Mosher, PGeo, Tetra Tech Canada Inc.;
• Hassan Ghaffari, PEng, Tetra Tech Canada Inc.;
• Sabry Abdel Hafez, PhD, PEng, Worley Canada Services Ltd.;
• Les Galbraith, PEng, PE, Knight Piesold Ltd.;
• Stuart J. Parks, PE, Nana Worley;
• James Wescott Bott, PE, HDR Alaska Inc.;
• Steven R. Rowland, PE, Recon LLC.

Stephen Hodgson, PEng, a qualified person who is not independent of Northern Dynasty, has approved the scientific, technical and economic information contained in this news release on behalf of the company.

About Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd.

Northern Dynasty is a mineral exploration and development company based in Vancouver, Canada. Northern Dynasty's principal asset, owned through its wholly owned Alaska-based U.S. subsidiary, Pebble Limited Partnership, is a 100-per-cent interest in a contiguous block of 1,840 mineral claims in southwest Alaska, including the Pebble deposit, located 200 miles from Anchorage and 125 miles from Bristol Bay. The Pebble Partnership is the proponent of the Pebble project, an initiative to develop one of the world's most important mineral resources.

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