The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 1 - 13 of 13
As Barrick Gold Corp. announced completion of its multibillion-dollar acquisition of Placer Dome in mid-March, managers of the Donlin Creek project charged forward with work on several fronts at the southwestern Alaska gold deposit. Toronto-based Barrick launched a hostile takeover of Placer Dome on Halloween, but later won approval from Placer Dome's board for a $10.4 billion deal that created the world's biggest gold miner. The combined company owns 26 active mines and is the world's largest gold producer. It expects to...
Alaska vendors reaped a share of $110 million spent last year to keep the open pit Fort Knox gold mine humming night and day, according to Lorna Shaw, community affairs director of mine owner Fairbanks Gold Mining, a subsidiary of Kinross Gold Corp. The money went primarily to buy labor, power, and fuel, Shaw said, adding that even the small items are essential - items like toilet paper, for instance. "We've got 400 people out there," Shaw said. "Consumable paper products - that's a lot of toilet paper; it can shut us down,...
The people, the technology and the regulations have changed dramatically in the past 100 years or so since the Klondike Gold Rush, but placer mining in Canada's Yukon is still thriving. Mike McDougall, president of the Klondike Placer Miners Association, and Bill Lebarge from Yukon Geological Survey provided some insights into the state of the industry during a joint presentation to the Arctic International Mining Symposium in Fairbanks March 14. A total of 70,322 crude ounces of gold (2.2 million grams) was produced by...
NovaGold Resources is heading towards the Center of the Universe this year. No, the Vancouver-based junior won't be mining in outer space; it turns out that the Center of the Universe is in Alaska - which will come as no surprise to some residents of the 49th state. Astronomers may disagree about the accuracy of the name, but geologists believe that the Center of the Universe deposit could contain healthy reserves of copper, lead and zinc. NovaGold plans a 3,000-meter drill campaign at the deposit this year, as part of its...
Kinross Gold Corp., owner of the Fort Knox gold mine near Fairbanks, reported a 27 percent jump in proven and probable reserves at year-end 2005 to 24.7 million ounces of gold. The year-over-year increase from 19.4 million ounces in 2004 marks the fifth consecutive year of reserves growth. Digging its way out of an accounting tangle that began nearly two years ago, Kinross posted the reserves figures in February along with financial results for the first nine months of 2005. The third-largest primary gold producer in North...
In the early days of exploration at a property near the small town of Delta Junction in Interior Alaska, a bunch of geologists who'd had a few too many beers began jumping up and down. They may have been jumping for joy, imagining a rich gold vein beneath their feet, or more likely they were jumping to keep warm, as this region is one of the coldest on the planet in winter. Someone nicknamed the strange dance the Pogo dance, and the name stuck. Today in the same spot, Pogo mine is producing its first gold bars, a joint ventur...
I was reminded of the famous quotation by Friedrich Nietzsche last week when I had occasion to visit the recently completed Pogo mine near Delta. This impressively huge, modern facility will mine gold and pour bars for the next decade without spilling a drop of wastewater, while providing 230 or more quality jobs for the people of eastern Alaska. It is a tribute to how technology has combined with public policy to advance Alaska's economy without adversely impacting the...
Northern Dynasty Ltd., would-be developer of the Pebble project, is convinced that the huge copper-gold mineralization in southwestern Alaska can be accessed and brought to market in an environmentally benign manner that promises economic prosperity for the region. Part of its confidence stems from Hunter Dickinson Inc., the management team that guides the Canadian junior mining company. Hunter Dickinson has a track record of working to develop successful, modern copper-gold deposits. One such venture is the Kemess South Mine...
Two Alaskans prominent in the mining industry have spent years nurturing dreams of railroads. Both presented their visions at the Arctic International Mining Symposium in Fairbanks the week of March 13. Professor Paul Metz, a geologist at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, wants to see a rail link from Alaska to Canada. Steve Borell, executive director of the Alaska Miners Association, hopes that one day a railroad from the Brooks Range to Norton Sound will be built, providing access to the vast reserves of coal on the...
Stephen Hodgson, vice president of engineering for Northern Dynasty Mines Inc., says he often hears people who don't live in Alaska talk about the isolation of his company's Pebble mine prospect, but he doesn't consider Pebble to be isolated at all. "Pebble is probably one of the least isolated major copper projects in the world," he said. "We're at low elevation, about 815 feet above sea level, and only 85 miles from tidewater." Northern Dynasty's Pebble gold-copper-molybdenum deposit, near Iliamna in southwestern Alaska,...
Usibelli Coal Mine Inc. has seen the future, and the future - its Jumbo Dome project - is bigger and better than anything the company has mined in the past, says Steve Denton, Usibelli vice president of business development. Jumbo Dome promises to be an improvement over Two Bull Ridge, the mine that currently produces 90 percent of Usibelli's coal production, Denton told an audience at the Pac Com meeting Feb. 22 in Anchorage. Based on initial samples, the company thinks the moisture content of the Jumbo Dome coal is higher,...
Preparations for exploration and development activities ramped up again in the last month as budgets were approved and committed on projects extending from Southeast Alaska to the Seward Peninsula to Interior Alaska. Commodity and equity markets for the metals mining industry have remained strong in anticipation of continued high demand and restricted supplies. To put things into a global perspective, the Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org) recently published information about the growing demand for goods and services i...
Just because Alaska is nowhere near any of the world's kimberlite provinces, doesn't mean that geologist David Szumigala is giving up hope on finding diamonds in the state. "Thinking conventionally doesn't mean that you are right!" is Szumigala's approach to the problem. Without the presence of kimberlite, he had to draw up an alternative geological model that would explain how diamonds could theoretically be formed here. In what Szumigala calls his eclogite model, carbon-rich sediments get subducted (sucked down a trench)...
