The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 1 - 15 of 15
It's widely understood that Canada is Alaska's third-largest market with exports of $242 million in 2004. But our next-door neighbor is an even bigger source of goods and services imported to the state, $289 million last year. That's right. Canada accounted for 2,600 direct jobs in Alaska in 2004, while direct and indirect employment generated by Canadian enterprises totaled 7,500 positions in the state with a $330 million payroll. These are among findings of a new report, "Canada's Impact on Alaska," prepared for the...
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...
As expected, results from the summer field programs have begun to roll in from all over the state. Discoveries from base and precious metals properties were reported in September and several properties previously explored in the Carter administration were rediscovered and are turning out promising results. Metals prices remain robust with gold pushing the $475 per ounce mark. While Alaska's mining industry is still trying to catch its breath from this year, many companies...
Higher prices for precious and base metals, gemstones, coal and other minerals are luring explorers back to the Yukon Territory, and this resurgence in mining activity has government officials grappling with ways to encourage the miners to stay. The number and variety of mining exploration projects under way this year bodes wells for the territory's future and for government's chances of re-awakening what many call a sleeping giant - Yukon's mining industry. "Yukon is coming back," says Ivan Jacobsen, a stockbroker at Canacco...
Cash Minerals Ltd. launched a 6,000-meter drill program at its Lumina uranium property in the Wernecke Mountains of east-central Yukon Territory earlier in October in response to outstanding results of a summer 2005 exploration program. The summer work confirmed uranium mineralization at Lumina ranging up to 7.67 percent (153.4 pounds per ton) over 1.4 kilometers. Cash Minerals President and CEO Basil Botha said Oct. 12 the company was so "impressed and enthusiastic" with an average grade of 1.22 percent (24.4 pounds per...
Whether the Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. Pebble project in Southwest Alaska is economic to develop is a question for others, but Pebble field geologist Richard Moses is certain of one thing: The rocks at and around the Pebble prospect are the richest he has seen in his long career. Questions of economic viability rest on a host of educated assumptions regarding factors such as market values of copper, gold and molybdenum over the life of the mine; the cost of transportation and transportation infrastructure to the remote...
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...
For those who thought radicals wore their baseball caps with the bills firmly cocked to the right, a leak out of the U.S. House of Representatives Resources Committee proved that the green men and women of the environmental movement can be radical too. Draft legislation was circulated in September proposing, in part, to sell off units of the national park system. The environmentalists' response made it clear that such a move would be equivalent to plunging a dagger through...
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,...
A Homer electric cooperative is eyeing the closed Healy Clean Coal Plant as a future source of power. The $300 million state-owned plant, located 78 miles southwest of Fairbanks, was built in the mid 1990s to tap the Usibelli Coal Mine and demonstrate environmentally conscious coal-burning technology. The state shut down the plant after the Golden Valley Electric Association, which tested the facility, refused to operate or buy it, saying the plant was "fatally flawed." Now Homer Electric Association Inc. is hoping the...
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...
