The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 176 - 200 of 239
The last week of May was no ordinary week in Yukon, Canada's most westerly territory. It was Mining and Geology week, and the historic wooden buildings in downtown Dawson City were plastered with brand new white and gold banners. "This Business Supports Placer Mining. Placer Mining Supports This Business," they proclaimed. But the geologists, engineers and biologists spending their days listening to talks at the Palace Grand Theatre and their evenings living it up at Diamond Tooth Gertie's music hall and casino were not in...
KoryakGeoldobycha's reputation depends on making a success of Aginskoye mine. Bystrinsky Mining Co., headed by the ebullient Andrei Kozlov, is firing on all cylinders to achieve the first gold pour at the mine by the end of the year. KGD has built a 127-kilometer road northwest from the village of Milkovo to the mine. The contractors who are working at the mine live in the old Soviet exploration camp, but brand new, comfortable housing has been built on site and the old camp will be demolished. It was hoped that the mine...
The Kamchatka peninsula in Russia's Far East was off-limits to mining in the Soviet era. Exploration took place, but no mines were built because Kamchatka - a short hop across the Bering Sea from Alaska - was home to numerous military bases. After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, a group of geologists and investors formed a company, KoryakGeoldobycha, KGD, hoping to take advantage of the region's vast mineral potential. But they had to fight to prevent some of it from being closed again: this time because of the creation o...
The UK's Trans-Siberian Gold is blazing a trail as one of the first foreign mining companies to operate in the Kamchatka region of Russia. Trans-Siberian is developing the Asacha and Rodnikova gold deposits, just outside the city of Petropavlovsk-Kamchatsky, and plans to have a producing hard rock mine by the end of 2006. The process hasn't gone altogether smoothly, but Trans-Siberian is determined to proceed, unlike Kinross Gold, which departed Kamchatka when faced with environmentalists' roadblocks. After four years of...
Where has never been a diamond mine in Alaska, but that may change if Golconda Resources has anything to do with it. The Calgary-based junior, in partnership with Shear Minerals and Shulin Lake Mining, is exploring for diamonds at the Shulin Lake property in central Alaska. Diamonds have been found across the border in Nunavut and Northwest Territories. But in Canada, diamonds are brought to the surface in kimberlite pipes, igneous structures that rise due to their high temperature and the extremely high pressures that exist...
Chief Ranger Pat Murphy has a dream. Restore the bunkhouse at the historic Independence Mine, north of Anchorage. Bring visitors to stay there overnight and watch old movies in the building's 90-seat theatre on the first floor. In the morning, take them to the mess hall and serve a huge miners' breakfast, loaded with calories. Then give them an underground tour of a mine that was one of Alaska's largest gold producers before World War II. Murphy is the kind of active guy who is likely to achieve his dream. Driving around the...
If Lucky Shot lives up to its name, it could net Vancouver, British Columbia-based junior Full Metal Minerals millions of dollars. But the chances are slim. Less than 1 percent of exploration projects eventually develop into operating mines, according to Full Metal's vice president, Rob McLeod. Still, McLeod hopes that this or one of his company's other Alaska projects will be as lucrative as Pierina in Peru, which his cousin Catherine McLeod-Seltzer discovered and sold to Barrick Gold for a not-so-small fortune. The Lucky...
One of British Columbia's largest advanced exploration projects has taken a leap forward this summer, with the camp at Galore Creek expanding from 75 people to 175 people. Vancouver-based NovaGold Resources, well-known in Alaska with its Donlin Creek and Rock Creek projects, now has seven core drillings rigs and two geotechnical rigs in operation at Galore Creek. The 74,000-acre property is located within the historic Sitkine Gold Belt of northwest British Columbia, about 90 miles east of Wrangell, Alaska. "The program has...
There was hardly time to pour the champagne before putting on the hard hats. Within days of receiving their final permit in late June, Coeur d'Alene was moving equipment to start work on construction of the Kensington gold mine near Juneau. The first task is to make sure the ecology is taken care of, according to Tim Arnold, Coeur Alaska's vice president and general manager of the project. Coeur is currently mobilizing all the clearing and grubbing equipment and installing silt fences for sediment control. Next on the list...
Anyone who owns mining claims - from grizzled old prospectors to multinational companies - struggles to make a profit. So one particular kind of prospect may be particularly attractive to them: having people pay for the privilege of mining on the claims, with the search itself often turning out to be more rewarding than the discovery of a tiny gold nugget or a pinch of fines. Recreational miners come in all shapes and sizes, and they're bringing new life to land that might otherwise have been abandoned. To make the most of...
Part of the fun of recreational mining is being outdoors in a beautiful landscape. At Crow Creek mine near Girdwood, 38 miles south of Anchorage, the mountain backdrop is enhanced by the presence of wooden buildings and rusty pieces of equipment that have been preserved from the mining operation that began here in 1898. The Toohey family, who own the mine, have lived here for more than 30 years with no electricity, telephone or running water. From May to September they welcome recreational miners for a $5 fee, or $10 if you...
An ambitious plan by Canadian junior Cash Minerals could bring 1.2 million tonnes of coal per year to Southeast Alaska's Skagway Ore Terminal for export to Pacific Rim markets. Cash has begun talks with the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority, the contractual owner of the ore terminal, about the logistics that would be involved in using the facility. The coal would be mined over a 20-year period at Cash's Division Mountain deposit in Yukon. The Skagway Ore Terminal was constructed in the 1960s by the White...
Environmentalists and indigenous groups have long been calling for a clean-up of the acid mine drainage at the former Tulsequah Chief zinc-copper-silver-gold mine in British Columbia, just across the border from Juneau. Vancouver-based Redfern Resources wants to do a full clean-up of the site, but only if it can reopen the mine. So mine critics find themselves in the dilemma of opposing the very process that could solve some of the environmental troubles. The mine has been polluting the Taku and Tulsequah rivers with acid...
The last week of May was no ordinary week in Yukon, Canada's most westerly territory. It was Mining and Geology week, and the historic wooden buildings in downtown Dawson City were plastered with brand new white and gold banners. "This Business Supports Placer Mining. Placer Mining Supports This Business," they proclaimed. But the geologists, engineers and biologists spending their days listening to talks at the Palace Grand Theatre and their evenings living it up at Diamond Tooth Gertie's music hall and casino were not in...
Members of the Tlicho First Nation in Canada's Northwest Territories have played a significant role in the clean-up effort at Colomac mine, participants in the Northern Latitudes Reclamation Workshop heard in May. Colomac is a former open pit gold mine that was operated by Washington state-based Royal Oak Mines until 1997. The company went bankrupt shortly afterwards due to the low price of gold and the Canadian government was left with the bill for reclamation, which could be up to C$50 million. Tlicho families have lived in...
Most people would expect to find Blue, Canadian, Fosters and Moosehead in their local saloon - not up in the hills that surround northern Canada's rugged Dempster Highway. But here at Brewery Creek mine, Yukon, those are some of the names of the eight small open pits that produced more than a few jugs of gold for Vancouver-based Viceroy Resource Corp. between 1996 and 2002. Brewery Creek was one of the northernmost heap leach mines in the world, and it has been the site of numerous successful technological innovations in...
Sawson City, Yukon epitomizes the romance of the Gold Rush, so it was a little surprising that the first field trip arranged as part of this year's Northern Latitudes Reclamation Workshop was to an extremely unglamorous site: the former asbestos mine at Clinton Creek. Quite apart from the lack of allure of its toxic ore, the mine probably doesn't see too many visitors. To reach it from Dawson you have to cross the Yukon on a ferry, drive for almost an hour up the winding Top of the World highway, drive for another hour down...
Reclaiming a mine site is very different from operating a mine, and the staff involved in the reclamation may have limited experience in this kind of work. At the former Faro lead-zinc mine in Canada's Yukon, geotechnical training has been provided so that staff understand more about the purpose of their work and the kinds of specific problems to look out for. Jim Cassie, a geotechnical engineer with BGC Engineering in Calgary, explained the training at the Northern Latitudes Reclamation Workshop in May. Numerous owners...
The right way to do mine reclamation is to start planning it before the mine opens, and long before it closes. That's exactly what is happening at the site of De Beers' proposed Snap Lake diamond mine in Canada's Northwest Territories. The company's board recently approved the project and production is scheduled to start in 2006. Snap Lake will be De Beers' first diamond mine outside Africa and Canada's first fully underground diamond mine. The construction cost will be an estimated C$636 million. "I forget that sometimes, wh...
A geologist with 30 years' experience in Alaska has been appointed mining section chief at the Department of Natural Resources. Tom Crafford, 54, will report to Bob Loeffler, director of the Division of Mining, Land and Water, beginning June 1. Crafford has recently been working as a consultant out of Anchorage in partnership with his wife Liz, who is also a geologist. He will have to give up his private clients now that he is employed by the state. Explaining in an interview with Mining News why he applied for the state job...
There aren't many places in the United States where you drive on the left side of the road, but Usibelli coal mine is one of them. When you arrive at the gates to the mine in Healy, Alaska, you have to switch to the left because that makes it easier for the drivers of the 150-ton Caterpillar 785 haul trucks to get a clear view of the road. And when you are passing by a 150-ton truck loaded with coal, at the wheel of a small car, avoiding a head-on collision is a priority. In such a case it certainly isn't the truck that...
Explorers from Canada, Washington, Arizona - and Alaska too - have staked claims in the vicinity of the massive Pebble gold-copper deposit. These juniors hope to emulate the success of Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty and take a project to the development stage. As some of their representatives told a mining and sustainable resources conference in Newhalen, Southwest Alaska, in April, the explorers are seeking harmonious relations with the local community as well as valuable minerals. Full Metal Minerals, another Vancouver...
The air miners breathe, the noise they hear, the equipment they use and the substances they consume all pose safety risks. The industry has learned this the hard way, with tens of thousands of mining fatalities in the 20th century, but today safety regulations are stringent and there is a plethora of measures that can be taken to prevent injuries and ill-health. To discuss what's being done at mines around Alaska, the U.S. Department of Labor's Mine Safety and Health Administration held its Spring Thaw informational seminar...
Red Dog's unenviable position at the top of the Environmental Protection Agency's national Toxics Release Inventory doesn't mean that the world's largest zinc mine is a dangerous polluter, according to the state of Alaska. The Teck Cominco-operated mine in the Arctic, near Kotzebue, released 487.4 million pounds of toxic chemicals in 2003, the newly published TRI reported. The TRI does not indicate whether, or to what degree, the public has been exposed to toxic chemicals, the EPA points out. Greens Creek polymetallic mine...
Idaho-based Coeur d'Alene Mines received its 12 state of Alaska permits for the proposed Kensington underground gold mine in May, and the company expects federal permits to be issued by the end of the second quarter of this year. The targeted construction startup date at the Juneau site is July 1, with production to begin in late 2006. Kensington is designed to produce 100,000 ounces of gold annually, with a mine life of approximately 10 years. "We are confident this project will demonstrate Coeur's leading approach to sound...
