The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 50
Saskatchewan, Canada's so-called breadbasket because of its seemingly endless grain fields and also the country's second-largest oil and gas producing province, has hopes of adding diamonds to the portfolio. After years of probing beneath the Prairie and studying the results, two mining companies are inching closer to deciding whether they have the resources to go commercial. Claiming to have control of the world's largest diamond deposits, Victoria, British Columbia-based Kensington Resources and its joint venture partners...
Global diamond mining giant De Beers has optioned properties in northern Canada to two junior explorers. Vancouver-based Pure Gold Minerals has negotiated an agreement covering 6,300 square miles north of Norman Wells in the Northwest Territories, while Montreal-based Ditem Explorations, with a mere stock market value of C$1.4 million, has gained access to 1,684 square miles on Southampton Island in Nunavut Territory. South Africa's De Beers through its Canadian subsidiary holds rights to more than 42,000 square miles in...
Healthy bullion prices are driving a resurgence of exploration spending in Canada, with budgets at their highest level in seven years. In a note to clients, National Bank Financial said that "after a prolonged drought," second quarter spending was up 20 percent from a year earlier, 75 percent ahead of 2002 and 100 percent above the late 1990s, when gold prices were only half of today's US$400 an ounce. The Canadian bank said North America's 11 largest gold producers hiked their exploration budgets to US$28 an ounce in the...
For Inco, it is the road to becoming the world's largest nickel producer. For the residents of isolated, depressed Labrador, it holds the rare promise of steady jobs and solid economic gains. For the government of Newfoundland and Labrador, it will be a triumphant end to some of the toughest resource-development negotiations in Canadian history. For now, if all goes as planned, the mine and concentrator at the Voisey's Bay project and a demonstration processing plant at Argentia, Newfoundland, will begin operations in 2006, a...
Eastern European organized crime could take the sparkle off the Northwest Territories' diamond industry by smuggling diamonds from global war zones into the Canadian production life, warns Canada's spy agency. An intelligence report obtained by the Canadian Press news agency said the potential exists for criminal elements, notably syndicates in eastern Europe, to "fraudulently market (conflict diamonds) as bona fide Canadian stones." It said that would put Canada in contravention of the Kimberley Process Certification...
The evidence continues to indicate that British Columbia's mining industry is on the road to recovery. Exploration spending edged up last year to C$55 million, from C$40 million in 2002 and a rock-bottom C$25 million in 1999, although the B.C. Mining Association has set a C$100 million target for the province to replace mines that will shut down over the next few years. But the feared demise of the industry just four years ago has been postponed. At that time, the province was in dire straits after losing an estimated C$750...
A proposal to create Canada's fourth largest gold miner has unraveled, with shareholders of Iamgold rejecting a controversial C$2.3 billion merger with Wheaton River Minerals. Iamgold shareholders voted 58 percent against the plan July 6, reviving what had already been a tangled ownership battle involving two U.S.-based companies. Denver-based Golden Star had previously launched a C$1.1 billion hostile bid for Iamgold and Idaho-based Coeur d'Alene Mining, the largest U.S. silver producer, had offered C$3 billion in cash and...
Canada's diamond industry has had its wings clipped, just as it was taking flight. The Yellowknife operations of Sirius Diamonds and Arslanian Cutting Works NWT, holding a combined C$17.2 million in government loan guarantees, were forced into interim receivership in mid-June, triggering an emergency response from the Northwest Territories government. The plants employed about 90 people. The territorial government said June 23 it would continue to backstop Arslanian, by introducing new partners and ensuring that the firm's...
The cutting and polishing sector of Canada's much-touted diamond industry needs some trimming and buffing of its own, suggests a new report from the mining industry that has angered the Northwest Territories government. The study, entitled National Diamond Strategy: An Industry Response, said efforts to build a value-added component to the thriving diamond mines has resulted in "short-term, unsustainable policies" that penalize primary producers and in money-losing ventures that employ too many foreign workers. "Clearly any...
Long the symbol of a "dirty" economy and seemingly destined for oblivion in the age of global warming, coal is making a resurgence in the United States and Canada, propelled by the big blackout last summer and the volatility of natural gas prices. It is a small advance, but 4,900 megawatts of coal-fired generation is under construction or in advanced development in the United States and another 11,000 megawatts is in early development, according to a Standard & Poor's report in March. Beyond that, 90 new coal-fired power...
China's hunger for nickel could force producers to develop a rationing system, an analyst told the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada. Raymond Goldie, with Salman Partners, said supplies are about 6 percent behind demand, pushing the spot price for nickel above US$6 a pound on the London Metal Exchange - the highest level in many years. He said the next 10 years "should be exciting ones" for the nickel explorers and producers, but the "next two or three years could be scary as we are forced to deal with...
Northwest Territories Native leaders have thrown a roadblock in the path of plans for Canada's third diamond mine - the Snap Lake project by De Beers Canada that was expected to open in 2008. Akaitcho and Deh Cho chiefs in the lower Northwest Territories have ruled out another diamond mine until the settlement of their self-government claims is in sight. Chief Peter Liske said the communities are more focused on treaty deals than mine development. Although the First Nations have supported the existing Ekati and Diavik mines,...
The attempt to pin blame in the massive Bre-X Minerals gold fraud drags on, with no hint of compensation for investors who lost an estimated C$3 billion. A long-delayed trial of former Bre-X geologist John Felderhof is now scheduled to resume sometime between late October and early January, but the hearings are not expected to be completed until May 2005. But Felderhof has reportedly been living in Indonesia, the Cayman Islands and Central America. He faces a maximum of two years in jail and C$150 million in fines, but is unl...
Executives of Ivanhoe Mines have cashed in on stock options to fatten their modest salaries. When shares of the Vancouver-based company took flight last summer, several of the top managers seized the chance to exercise their options. Deputy Chairman Gordon Toll, who made C$261,000 in salary and benefits, unloaded more than 1.2 million stock options for a gain of C$11.35 million. Daniel Kunz, who resigned as president a year ago, collected C$38,000 in salary and benefits before he quit, but cashed in 362,400 options for total...
Gold exploration is being fired up in British Columbia and Canada's three northern territories, rekindled by improved metal prices. "The industry is finally coming back," declared Dan Jepsen, executive director of the British Columbia and Yukon Chamber of Mines. The British Columbia Ministry of Energy and Mines is counting on exploration doubling last year's spending of C$55 million, helped by the provincial government's efforts to reduce bureaucratic delays and introduce tax incentives for mining investments. Optimism has...
Having been rebuffed last June, an Israeli diamond consortium has made a second unsolicited bid for the lucrative Ekati mine in Canada's Northwest Territories. But the offer by the DGI Group of Cos. drew a light-hearted response from Ekati owner BHP Billiton, with a spokesman in Yellowknife suggesting that "this comes around every year ... take it with a pinch of salt." Graeme Currie, a mining analyst with Canaccord Capital, told the Financial Post that BHP, having spent millions of dollars to secure diamond exploration prosp...
Low-grade ore has delivered a setback to the flourishing Diavik diamond mine in the Northwest Territories. Toronto-based Aber Diamond, 40 percent operator of the joint venture with 60 percent partner Rio Tinto, said the material has forced it to revise this year's production target from 8.2 million carats to the "mid to upper range" of 7 to 8 million carats. It said the problem is a "shell of low-grade kimberlite mud surrounding the ore body. "This low-grade material will continue to dilute the grade of ore processed through...
Canada's junior mining companies are cash rich for the first time in seven years, having led the way in raising C$3 billion in 2003 to signal the revival of exploration plays along with development and acquisitions both overseas and on the domestic front. The industry has not seen such an influx of cash since the 1997 scandal accompanying the collapse of Bre-X Minerals, followed by a prolonged period of low gold and base metal prices that ended in mid-2003. As a result the stage is set for the liveliest exploration program...
Simmering frustration among British Columbia's miners over the government's failure to settle aboriginal land claims and reduce red tap boiled over March 3 as the industry unloaded on British Columbia Minister of State for Mining Pat Bell. A series of speakers said the industry was paying a heavy price for government cutbacks in gathering geo-science data and other related functions. A recent survey by the Vancouver-based Fraser Institute found 159 mining executives gave the government a poor grade for its policy climate afte...
Anglo Swiss Resources, a Vancouver-based junior miner, is moving ahead with plans to reactive the Kenville mine in southeastern British Columbia as it starts gold and gemstone exploration of the property. The company plans a detailed geological evaluation to determine current and prospective ore reserves at Kenville, which produced 2 million grams of gold from 1890 to 1954, making it the 26th largest producer in British Columbia history. Anglo Swiss also owns 16,800 acres in the Slocan Valley that hosts sapphire, iolite and...
Tahera Corp. is within sight of operating the first diamond mine in Canada's Nunavut Territory. The Nunavut Impact Review Board has recommended approval by Indian and Northern Affairs Minister Andy Mitchell of the Jericho project, about 210 miles southwest of Cambridge Bay, near the Northwest Territories border. Toronto-based Tahera has indicated construction of the C$50 million mine will begin in 2005 and the first diamonds will be produced later that year. Based on proven reserves, the mine and processing plant will have an...
With diamond production soaring in the Northwest Territories, prospectors are ready to flood the region as Canada works its way into third place among world's producers. The Northwest Territories and Nunavut governments have issued more than 2,000 permits covering more than 70 million acres, the bulk of them stemming from exploration work done last spring and summer. Nunavut, which issued permits only once a year in February, has logged a record 1,518 permits covering 64 million acres, compared with a mere 190 permits and 9 m...
Settlement of a legal spat has also ended a joint diamond exploration venture in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Ashton Mining of Canada and Pure Gold Minerals finally resolved a lawsuit that was launched in May 2002. They teamed up in 1993 to hunt for diamonds in the Slave geological area of the two territories, with Ashton holding 90 percent of about 540,000 acres and Pure Gold holding the balance. But the partnership crumbled with Pure Gold suing over an alleged reach of the joint venture. Under the settlement,...
A Canadian mining company is gambling C$5 million on a pilot project that it hopes will show how titanium and zircon can be produced from the tailings of Syncrude Canada's oil sands mining operation. Titanium Corp., based in Toronto, Ontario, will build and operate the world's first mineral sand processing facility at a government-sponsored research park in Regina, Saskatchewan. Titanium is a rare and super-hard metal that is extensively used in aircraft manufacturing as well as other industries and zircon is used in a...
The British Columbia Securities Commission has waved a warning flag as the province's mining sector shows signs of rebounding. With financings on the upswing and capital pouring into companies to resuscitate projects that have been stalled for the past decade, the regulator has told companies to ensure that their corporate and technical disclosures are up to standard. To that end, the commission is offering seminars to "help mining companies provide better continuous disclosure and reports that more accurately reflect their e...
