The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 151 - 175 of 239
No one knows Alaska's Golden Zone better than Chuck Hawley. Since 1967, when he first saw the property near Denali Park while working for the U.S. Geological Survey, Hawley has devoted years of his life and a couple of million dollars to exploration at Golden Zone. He has worked with a string of companies, but now, at age 76, Hawley believes Vancouver, British Columbia-based Piper Capital might be the one to prove up the gold reserves that he is convinced are there. Hawley himself, a director emeritus of the Alaska Miners...
Some of Alaska's mines are taking full advantage of Gov. Frank Murkowski's Roads to Resources program. But for others, building a private road may be more economical than letting the state take care of the infrastructure. With public roads, mines not only have to deal with the issue of public access, they must also pay additional taxes and comply with numerous regulations that restrict the size and weight of vehicles. Northern Dynasty is weighing up the options for its Pebble project in southwest Alaska. The Vancouver-based c...
Skagway Ore Terminal, located at one of the most popular destinations in Alaska for cruise ships, could be modified to receive shipments of coal, according to a review commissioned by Vancouver-based Cash Minerals. The company hopes to develop a mine at its Division Mountain property in Canada's Yukon and ship the 1.2 million metric tons of coal per year through Skagway to Pacific Rim markets. Cash Minerals engaged Canadian consulting company Sandwell Engineering to conduct the review of the ore terminal. The review suggests...
Coeur Alaska has provided detailed information to the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation on measures taken to control erosion at the Kensington mine near Juneau. The company was cited by DEC Nov. 10 for violating the turbidity standard due to sediment discharges into Johnson Creek from construction activities at the mill site, upper bridge and topsoil stockpile areas. The problems were caused by heavy rainfall. Construction of the mine is also under scrutiny from the Corps of Engineers, which suspended its...
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has published a draft Environmental Impact Statement for navigation improvements to the DeLong Mountain Terminal, the port that serves the Red Dog Mine in Northwest Alaska. The public review period continues until Dec. 27. The corps' "tentatively recommended" plan is to construct a 1,450-foot-long trestle from shore to a new off-shore loading platform and a 3.5-mile channel from the loading platform to allow navigation by bulk freighters and tanker ships. Management of the project from the sta...
Mining programs at the University of Alaska Fairbanks stand to benefit from the recent creation of an enlarged College of Engineering and Mines, the Alaska Minerals Commission heard at its meeting in Fairbanks Sept. 28. John Aspnes, dean of the college, and Gang Chen, a professor of mining engineering, explained to the commission how UAF is doing its bit to overcome the mining industry's workforce shortage. When UAF's various science, engineering and mathematics departments came together to form the College of Engineering and...
Red Dog mine in Northwest Alaska's Arctic is just over half-way to its target of 100 percent NANA Corp. shareholder hire, and operator Teck Cominco is making every effort to increase that proportion. The world's largest zinc mine is on NANA land and working with the local community is an essential part of the business, General Manager Rob Scott told the Alaska Miners Association convention in Anchorage Nov. 4. In total Teck Cominco has hired more than 1,000 NANA shareholders at Red Dog since production began in 1989, which do...
The planned throughput for Vancouver-based NovaGold's Galore Creek project in Northwestern British Columbia has doubled to 65,000 tonnes per day, according to a pre-feasibility study published in October. The mine would still have a more than 20-year life. Annual production in the first six years would average over 300,000 ounces of gold, 2.31 million ounces of silver and 370 million pounds of copper. The study, which was prepared by independent engineering services company Hatch Ltd., estimates that after-tax annual cash...
The sound of drilling can be heard all over Alaska, on old properties as well as new ones. Nixon Fork, 35 miles northeast of McGrath in the Kuskokwim mineral belt, is one of the old ones. It is showing new potential, according to Bill Burnett and Paul Jones of Mystery Creek Resources, who hope to start mine development and production there in summer 2006. Mystery Creek Resources is a subsidiary of Ontario-based St. Andrew Goldfields. Much mining has been done at Nixon Fork over the years, since placer gold was first...
Hard rock mining's contribution to the Alaska economy is larger than it appears at first sight, when the "multiplier effect" is taken into account - the additional spending and services triggered by the mining activities. Anchorage-based consultancy Northern Economics has measured the wealth created by Alaska's three hard rock mines, Fort Knox, Greens Creek and Red Dog, and come up with some impressive figures. The consultancy compiled the data for 2004 using information provided by the companies, state agencies, and...
The stars may be in alignment at long last for a huge coal project that has been languishing for decades just 50 miles from Anchorage. Developer Bob Stiles has renewed confidence that a mine will be built to exploit the Beluga-Chuitna coal fields, as he said in a presentation to the Alaska Miners Association convention in Anchorage Nov. 4. (See related story on cover of Nov. 20 Petroleum News.) The deposit on the west side of Cook Inlet, 10 miles from the Native village of Tyonek, contains an estimated 1 billion tons of...
Alaska's Department of Natural Resources may not have seen the last of Bob Loeffler. When he resigned as director of the Division of Mining, Land and Water in November, it was the third time he had quit the department that he first joined in 1978. He kept returning because he likes the work, Loeffler told Mining News. This loyalty is much like his loyalty to Alaska: He came to the state in 1977 with the U.S. Geological Survey for one year and never left. The position of director has now been filled by the former deputy direct...
The story of Illinois Creek gold mine has a moral (or two) and a happy ending. So for Bob Loeffler it was the perfect note on which to end his employment at Alaska's Department of Natural Resources, where he was director of the Division of Mining, Land and Water from 1999 until early November this year. Loeffler resigned with DNR Commissioner Tom Irwin and other officials because of a disagreement over Gov. Frank Murkowski's gas pipeline plans. Earlier this fall Loeffler visited Illinois Creek mine, on state land 50 miles...
A strike at Teck Cominco's Trail smelter that left zinc concentrate from Red Dog mine stockpiled in Vancouver has ended after almost three months. Trail, in southeast British Columbia, is one of the world's largest fully integrated zinc and lead smelting and refining complexes. It closed in mid-July because of the strike by United Steelworkers. Senior Teck Cominco managers discussed this and other issues at an investors and analysts' day in Vancouver Sept. 26. Two local unions of the United Steelworkers, representing 1,140 sm...
Rock Creek will be one of Alaska's most straightforward mining projects, if all goes according to plan for Vancouver-based NovaGold Resources. The company is developing what will be its first producing mine eight miles outside Nome, and the local power utility will provide the required five to seven megawatts. The open pit mine is expected to produce 100,000 ounces of gold annually and capital costs are estimated at $55 million to $60 million. "Infrastructure is excellent, certainly by Alaska standards, the road goes right...
The Grace property in British Columbia appears so far not to contain any significant gold or copper, but its surface could still be extremely valuable to Vancouver-based NovaGold Resources. In a pre-feasibility level study for the Galore Creek mine that NovaGold expected to make public in late October, part of the 2,400-hectare Grace property may be a potential location for tailings disposal facilities. Another Vancouver company, Pioneer Metals, which owns the sub-surface rights, has upped the ante by commencing legal action...
Canada's mining industry could face a labor shortfall of more than 27,000 workers over the next 10 years - and that is the best case scenario, with no industry growth over the period, according to a report by the Mining Industry Training and Adjustment Council. "Prospecting the Future: Meeting Human Resources Challenges in the Canadian Minerals and Metals Industry" is an analysis of the situation that was published Aug. 24. In the worst case, with high growth in Canadian mining, the workforce shortage could reach almost...
Coeur d'Alene's Kensington gold mine near Juneau will generate $1.9 million in mining license taxes, $3.4 million in corporate income taxes and $6.3 million in local property taxes over its 10-year life, the State of Alaska estimates in its motion to intervene in federal litigation over one of the project's permits. The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, the Sierra Club and Lynn Canal Conservation filed the lawsuit against the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the U.S. Forest Service. The environmentalists object to Coeur...
An Alaska miner who takes extraordinary care of the land he leases 250 miles north of Fairbanks has won a national award from the Bureau of Land Management. "Diamond" Jim Olmstead has received the agency's 2005 National Sustainable Mineral Development Award in the small operator category. Olmstead has been mining gold on Gold Creek, off the Dalton Highway, since 1996, where his one-person summer operation has progressed from a suction dredge to a small Case 450 tractor with a trommel and associated water pumps. "The award...
The State of Alaska's Department of Environmental Conservation is confident that it will effectively assume primacy over National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permitting, the Alaska Minerals Commission heard at its meeting in Fairbanks Sept. 28. Senate Bill 110, signed into law by Gov. Frank Murkowski in August, calls for the state's application for primacy to be filed with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency by June 30, 2006. The permitting process should be quicker once DEC takes over, according to Lynn Kent,...
The indigenous Koryak people called this place Levtyrinyvayam, meaning "there is something in the creek." That something was a modest-looking grey metal, unusually heavy, but lacking the instant allure of the gold that could be found elsewhere in the region. Soviet geologists would later confirm that it was platinum, and the deposit became the first in the Russian Far East's Koryak region to be developed after the break-up of the USSR. Today KoryakGeoldobycha, KGD, boasts more than a decade of placer mining at this site near...
Competition for mining employees is intensifying in Alaska, with mines from the Lower 48 advertising their signing bonuses in Fairbanks, while the Pogo project tries to counter their offers with even bigger ones. State legislators heard about this and other mining issues at the "Gold and Gas in the Interior" meeting at the Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly Chambers Aug. 22. Two Nevada companies advertised $2,000 signing bonuses in the Fairbanks newspaper in July, and a mine in Montana is offering a $4,000 signing bonus,...
Kensington General Manager Tim Arnold has at last been able to update his presentation to report on real construction. Until now the talk was all about planned timelines, but with all the permits in the bag for Coeur d'Alene's gold project near Juneau, things are happening. Since work began in late June, logging on the mill and camp sites has been completed, the widening of the main access road is well under way and the temporary dock facility has been installed. "I'm not actually a construction guy," Arnold told the...
Alaska Gov. Frank Murkowski appointed Bartly Coiley, Usibelli Coal Mine's environmental affairs manager, to the Alaska Minerals Commission in August. Coiley fills the seat vacated by another Usibelli employee, Charles Boddy. The commission makes recommendation to the governor and Legislature on ways to mitigate the constraints on development of minerals, including coal, in the state. There are 11 members of the commission, five of whom are appointed by the governor, three by the president of the Senate and three by the...
A century after copper mining began in Prince William Sound southeast of Anchorage a team of scientists is analyzing the region's environment to find out if metals are having an adverse effect. Not all the results are in yet, but in some places water quality is lower than it should be, LeeAnn Munk said in a presentation to the Alaska Miners Association in Anchorage Sept. 14. Munk, an assistant professor of geological sciences at the University of Alaska Anchorage, has a doctorate from Ohio State in environmental geochemistry...
