The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North

Articles from the August 30, 2009 edition


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  • Miners explore SW Alaska properties

    Shane Lasley, Mining News|Updated Aug 30, 2009

    Full Metal Minerals Ltd. and Kinross Gold Corp. struck a deal with Calista Corp., an Alaska Native regional corporation, to acquire 100 percent of mineral rights to the Russian and Horn Mountain complexes in the Kuskokwim region of Southwest Alaska. The Russian and Horn Mountain gold-silver targets are located about 25 miles, or 40 kilometers, southwest of the 29-million-ounce Donlin Creek gold deposit being developed by joint venture partners Barrick Gold Corp. and NovaGold...

  • Alaska explorers hit potential pay dirt

    Curt Freeman, For Mining News|Updated Aug 30, 2009

    They say when it rains, it pours, and that is just what is happening with news from field programs all over Alaska. Results from summer 2009 programs are pouring in from the Brooks Range to Prince of Wales Island, from Eastern Interior Alaska to Southwestern Alaska. Commodities of interest range from the expected gold, silver, copper, lead and zinc to the nearly unpronounceable, including praseodymium, dysprosium, terbium, thulium, lutetium and yttrium. Go ahead, drop a...

  • Self-interest can serve public interest

    J. P. Tangen, For Mining News|Updated Aug 30, 2009

    When it comes to comprehending social forces that frame our society, it sometimes occurs that good people take irrational positions for strange reasons, despite unequivocal evidence that it is contrary to their own best interests. This irony contributes to the difficulty in understanding why so-called "public interest" activists, whether litigious or simply vocal participants on the political radar choose to dedicate their time and energy to destructive objectives. The simplistic observation by Adam Smith about provisioners...

  • Mongolia: A country of contrasts

    John Wood, For Mining News|Updated Aug 30, 2009

    No, no….stop, stop, stop" muttered Ken Yockey from the front seat of the land cruiser as we zoomed past a lumbering fully loaded end dump truck on the inside shoulder of the narrow road; while trying to keep up with our companion land cruiser,which was zooming past the same truck on the outside! Visions of Mad Max and the Blues Brothers flashed through my mind. Charles Howard, wedged inside the front seat of that land cruiser, was thinking he had finally found drivers like those in Johannesburg, South Africa, while Sabre...

  • Suit worries natural resources industry

    Shane Lasley, Mining News|Updated Aug 30, 2009

    Alaska's resource development community is responding en masse to a civil suit filed by environmental law firm Trustees for Alaska that contends permits issued by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources for exploration of the Pebble deposit in Southwest Alaska violate the Alaska Constitution. The lawsuit - filed July 29 in Alaska Superior Court in Anchorage on behalf of Nunamta Aulukestai, Jack Hobson, and former Alaska First Lady Bella Hammond, among others - claims the...

  • Drills are tapping Sunshine at Livengood

    Shane Lasley, Mining News|Updated Aug 30, 2009

    LIVENGOOD - From the surface, there is nothing outstanding about the low-lying hills that cover International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.'s gold project. The birch and black spruce-covered terrain is typical of the vast expanse of Alaska's Interior. But the Vancouver-based junior has unveiled a multimillion-ounce gold deposit here, lying in the shadows of the appropriately named Money Knob. The rapidly expanding deposit has, at last official count, 288 million metric tons of ore...

  • Junior clears obstacles to Nico Project

    Rose Ragsdale, For Mining News|Updated Aug 30, 2009

    Fortune Minerals Ltd. is taking the lemons it has encountered in developing the Nico Project in Northwest Territories and making lemonade. The London, Ont.-based junior recently reported substantial progress in overcoming major obstacles to building a vertically integrated mining operation at Nico, which is located 160 kilometers, or 99 miles, northwest of Yellowknife. Fortune Minerals discovered Nico, the largest known IOCG (Olympic Dam-type) deposit in Canada, in 1996. The deposit contains proven and probable mineral...

  • Seabridge refines vision for KSM Project

    Rose Ragsdale, For Mining News|Updated Aug 30, 2009

    Seabridge Gold Inc. is inching closer to production of one of the world's five-largest undeveloped gold deposits, the KSM Project located in the Iskut-Stikine region about 65 kilometers, or 40 miles, northwest of Stewart, B.C. The aggressive junior envisions building a huge open-pit copper-gold mine in this highly prolific mountainous terrain, known as the "Golden Triangle" of northern British Columbia. Toronto-based Seabridge has pursued development of the project, which also boasts significant silver and molybdenum resource...

  • Recession drives miners into mergers

    Rose Ragsdale, For Mining News|Updated Aug 30, 2009

    The recession is taking its toll among mining companies with properties in Alaska and northwestern Canada as mergers and acquisitions surged in this sector during the second quarter, in step with a global industry trend. Companies across the exploration and development spectrum from mining giants to the smallest juniors closed on deals with firms that are struggling to survive the recent cash crunch as independent entities. The Wall Street Journal reported in early August that according to data provider Dealogic, value of...

  • JV partners plan exploration at Niblack

    Shane Lasley, Mining News|Updated Aug 30, 2009

    Hunter Dickinson has joined forces with CBR Gold Corp. to resume exploration of the Niblack copper-gold-silver-zinc project on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. Heatherdale Resources Ltd., a privately owned subsidiary of Hunter Dickinson, has agreed to spend US$15 million over the next three years to advance the Niblack project in exchange for a 51 percent stake in the precious-metals-rich volcanic massive sulfide deposit. "We are very pleased to be initiating a...

  • Corps gives go-ahead for Kensington Mine

    Shane Lasley, North of 60 Mining News|Updated Aug 30, 2009

    The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Aug. 14 re-issued a long-disputed tailings permit to Coeur Alaska for the Kensington Mine. Modifications to the permit extend its expiration to 2014, offsetting the four years it was tied up in litigation. A letter from the Region 10 acting deputy regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency in July advising the Corps to "re-evaluate the circumstances and conditions of the permit in view of new information," raised many qu...

  • Wanted: More Far North infrastructure

    Rose Ragsdale, For Mining News|Updated Aug 30, 2009

    While many business organizations promote infrastructure development in the communities they serve, few of them craft as detailed a visualization of their wish lists as a map created recently by the NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines. Chamber members drew a full-color representation of where they would like to see roads, ports, power plants and railroads built that would maximize economic development in Canada's Far North, including Yukon Territory. "It's a discussion document," Chamber General Manager Mike Vaydik told Mining...

  • Explorer hunts for Bonanza mother lode

    Shane Lasley, Mining News|Updated Aug 30, 2009

    DAWSON CITY, Yukon Territory - Modern-day prospector Shawn Ryan is hot on the trail of what he believes could be the monster lode source of the 6 million ounces of placer gold recovered from historic Bonanza Creek of Klondike Gold Rush fame. For more than a century, geologists and prospectors have searched for the source rock that dumped a golden treasure into the creek and lured tens of thousands of men into the Yukon at the turn of the 19th century. The lack of an obvious...