The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 76 - 100 of 239
Kinross Gold, the owner of Alaska's Fort Knox mine, will expand its operations in Russia and elsewhere in the world if a friendly acquisition of Bema Gold goes ahead. The boards of directors of the two Canadian companies unanimously approved the U.S. $3.1 billion transaction in early November, and they are now awaiting a vote by Bema shareholders, scheduled for January. Two-thirds of the smaller company's shareholders must give their approval of the deal for it to go ahead. After the acquisition, the remodeled Kinross would...
Vancouver-based junior Cash Minerals received good and bad news from the completion of a feasibility study on its Division Mountain coal project in the Yukon, 56 miles northwest of Whitehorse. The good news: a mine is technically and economically feasible. The bad: exporting the coal would be uneconomic, so the product would have to be sold to a 50-megawatt mine-mouth power station - also still on the drawing board. An open pit mine could produce 240,000 metric tons of unwashed coal per year for 20 years, according to the...
Members of the public, particularly Native Alaskans, have made a wide variety of comments about the Chuitna coal project that is being proposed for the Cook Inlet area. Following a series of scoping meetings this summer, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency published a summary of public responses in October. The responses will be used to help prepare a supplemental environmental impact statement, which should be published in draft form by spring 2007. A plan to develop the Beluga coal field, 45 miles west of Anchorage,...
Out of an average 157,800 tons of rock, with the assistance of 30 tons of explosives, 6.7 tons of lime and 20,506 gallons of diesel fuel, Fort Knox mine produces 900 ounces of gold per day. Trucks with giant tires that cost $10,000 each carry 150 tons of ore to the crusher every three minutes. The ore comes out of a pit that is 1,100 feet deep and will be a mile long and half a mile wide by the time mining comes to an end in 2010. The mine operates 24/7, 365 days a year and its electricity bill is $1.9 million per month....
Two Vancouver-based mining companies are forging ahead with gold projects in Nunavut, and if all goes according to plan they could both be in production by 2008. Cumberland Resources and Miramar Mining have seen their stock prices leap from under $2 a year ago to around $5 today thanks to endorsement from the Nunavut Impact Review Board. The mainly indigenous residents of Canada's far northern territory have expressed enthusiasm for new mining projects, as long as stringent environmental conditions are adhered to. After...
In the race to develop new mines in British Columbia, Calgary-based Copper Fox Metals is jostling its way to the front of the pack. In August the company started the environmental assessment process for its Schaft Creek copper-gold-molybdenum-silver project, filing a preliminary report with the provincial government. In September Copper Fox completed $5 million in expenditures at the property, enabling it to acquire a 70 percent ownership share from Teck Cominco, in accordance with an option agreement signed in 2002. A group...
If a company has explored a property for three years and not found any economic mineralization, it will often cut its losses and find a new place to go. The RDN property in northwest British Columbia is in its third consecutive year of exploration. Assay results from this season's drilling could determine whether or not two Vancouver-based companies, Rimfire Minerals and Northgate Minerals, invest any more of their time and money here. Rimfire is a junior mining company with exploration properties in Alaska, the Yukon,...
Nothing's been built yet, but Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty has already opened the floodgates to a torrent of discussion of the enormous dams the company proposes for the Pebble project. One of the tailings dams would reach an ultimate height of 740 feet and would be at least 4.3 miles long. The largest dam in North America, the Grand Coulee Dam in Washington, is 550 feet tall and almost a mile long. Northern Dynasty had already come under fire before it submitted the proposal for five dams to Alaska's Department of...
A century ago, gold fever rampaged across Alaska and miners could be found everywhere from the beaches of Nome to the mountains of Juneau. Today there's been another outbreak of the symptoms. Explorers' boots are again trudging through some of the most inaccessible parts of the state, following in the footsteps of their pioneer predecessors. One such location is Woewodski Island in southeast Alaska, where enterprising local people have teamed up to finance the search for valuable minerals. Woewodski Island is a 45-minute...
Construction costs for Alaska's Pogo gold mine near Fairbanks have risen again to $378 million, Japan's Sumitomo Metal Mining said in a release Aug. 23. Sumitomo owns a 51 percent stake in Pogo and the operator is Vancouver-based Teck Cominco. The original construction cost estimate in May 2004 was $280 million. The latest estimate in October 2005 was $357 million. Some of the increases were due to rising material prices, including oil and steel. Additional investment of $21 million is now required to install a third filter...
A senior executive from Hunter Dickinson, the company that owns Alaska's Pebble prospect, has moved to St. Andrew Goldfields as president and chief operating officer. Keith Minty started his new position Sept. 15 with Ontario-based St. Andrew, which owns Nixon Fork mine near McGrath, Alaska. Nixon Fork is a small underground gold mine that recently received permits to restart operations. Minty takes over as president from Glenn Laing, who retains his position as chief executive officer of St. Andrew. Since 2004 Minty has...
As the mine permitting process gets ever more rigorous, advances in technology are helping companies comply with environmental requirements. Clean water is usually at the top of the list when it comes to mining concerns, and membrane treatment systems are the wave of the future, according to G. Paul Schuitt of Anchorage-based GPS Environmental, which represents several water and wastewater equipment manufacturers. Membrane treatment systems are fairly new to the industry, having arrived in the past 10 years, Schuitt said in a...
The Usibelli coal mine in Healy, Alaska, is shipping coal to a power plant in Mejillones, Chile. The panamax vessel MV Coral Sapphire departed Seward Aug. 18 loaded with 73,000 metric tons of Alaska coal. There is an option for the customer to order a second shipment of the same size during the last quarter of 2006. Since 1985, Usibelli has exported more than 13 million tons of coal to several Pacific Rim customers - primarily South Korea. Test shipments to Chile began in 2004 and since then Usibelli has exported more than 25...
Drop by Galore Creek camp this summer and you're sure to be well fed. A lively bunch of young people load up their plates with steak, shrimp, potatoes, salads and cakes, refueling after another rainy day in the field. The only slight problem for the casual visitor is getting here. There is no way into this temporary town up in the mountains of British Columbia other than by helicopter. From Wrangell in southeast Alaska a group from the Alaska Miners Association took a five-seater plane to Bob Quinn airstrip across the border...
Barrick's Eskay Creek mine in British Columbia isn't a bad place to work underground. The miners are well paid and happy to be doing their jobs alone, without a boss looking over their shoulder all the time. They consider the search for gold an adventure. And compared with being above ground, where grizzly bears prowl around in summer and up to 60 feet of snow falls in winter, the mine's dark tunnels begin to look like rather a comfortable environment. The sharp-angled roofs of the mine buildings weren't enough to protect...
If there are any NovaGold shareholders left who aren't aware that the Vancouver-based junior is in a dispute with Barrick, the world's number one gold producer, they must be living on the moon. Facing a hostile takeover bid from Toronto-based Barrick, the management of NovaGold filed lawsuits against the major recently in Alaska and British Columbia, alleging that Barrick is misrepresenting the facts about NovaGold's properties to its shareholders. Even if NovaGold doesn't win either of the cases, their existence will almost...
Alaska legislators didn't get much of a break this summer. After sitting through two special sessions in Juneau to debate a new oil tax and a proposed gas pipeline, followed by some hard-fought primary elections, members of the House and Senate Resources Committee convened again Aug. 31 for a hearing about Kensington mine. Several legislators participated in the Anchorage meeting by telephone, keen to find out what was going on after the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals issued an injunction in late August against work on...
A former State of Alaska employee has submitted a proposal to the Board of Fisheries requesting it to designate the waters in the vicinity of the planned Pebble mine as a fish refuge. George Matz, who is now retired, but worked for the state for about 11 years as an analyst, is concerned that Gov. Frank Murkowski's policies have removed some of the checks and balances that would ensure fish are protected when a mine is developed. The seven-member Board of Fisheries is part of the Department of Fish and Game. The board...
The board of directors of Vancouver-based NovaGold Resources has unanimously recommended that shareholders reject the unsolicited takeover bid by Toronto-based Barrick Gold. At the same time, in mid-August, NovaGold filed a lawsuit against Barrick in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The lawsuit claims that in making a competing bid for Pioneer Metals, Barrick misused confidential information belonging to NovaGold. NovaGold was already entangled in a lawsuit brought by Vancouver-based Pioneer over the Grace property adja...
The president and CEO of Idaho-based Coeur d'Alene Mines has been in Alaska to thank Gov. Frank Murkowski and his administration for their help in staving off a lawsuit that had been threatening the Kensington project near Juneau. Dennis Wheeler attended a press conference with Murkowski in Anchorage Aug. 7 and promised that his company would proceed with construction of the gold mine. U.S. District Judge James Singleton dismissed a lawsuit in early August that had been brought by the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council,...
In its application for water rights for the Pebble project, Vancouver-based Northern Dynasty reveals details of its environmental baseline studies and proposed mine facilities. Northern Dynasty filed the application with the state of Alaska's Department of Natural Resources in mid-July, providing three hefty folders of information regarding the North Fork Koktuli, the South Fork Koktuli and the Upper Talarik Creek watersheds in the Bristol Bay area. The state will likely request additional material from Northern Dynasty...
Afeasibility study published in July has confirmed that Vancouver-based Sherwood Copper's Minto copper-gold-silver project in the Yukon could be economic for at least six years. That is the initial projected mine life, but Sherwood is continuing its exploration program to expand the current resources. A key component of the project is the plan to retrofit Alaska's Skagway Ore Terminal to receive shipments of concentrate. Sherwood acquired Minto from ASARCO last year and gave the open pit project a new lease of life,...
Arctic Slope Regional Corp. and multinational BHP Billiton signed a series of agreements in July providing BHP Billiton an exclusive right to explore and possibly develop the coal-bearing land held by ASRC in northwestern Alaska. The Western Arctic region includes a number of known low-sulfur bituminous coal-bearing areas. ASRC holds land and mineral rights in the region as a result of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. BHP Billiton will begin an exploration program on ASRC lands north of the Brooks Range in...
In a significant, but not altogether surprising move, Toronto-based Barrick Gold has made a hostile takeover bid for Vancouver-based NovaGold Resources, the owner of several assets in Alaska and British Columbia. At the same time, Barrick and Vancouver-based Pioneer Metals announced an agreement for Barrick, the world's largest gold producer, to acquire Pioneer. The deals are all related because NovaGold was in the midst of a hostile takeover bid for Pioneer. Pioneer owns claims that could be crucial to the development of Nov...
Alaskans are taking their first look at proposals to develop the coal resources in the Cook Inlet area, as project developers attempt to complete the NEPA process for the second time. A previous design for the Chuitna coal project was evaluated in an environmental impact statement and permitted in the early 1990s, but it never got off the drawing board. Since then there have been substantive changes in the project design and in the regulatory requirements, so a new EIS will be prepared. Public scoping meetings to discuss the...
