The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 1 - 11 of 11
Usibelli Coal Mine has secured a sales contract for a second shipment of coal to Chile with Glencore Ltd. The ship was scheduled to begin loading approximately 45,000 metric tons on Dec. 21. This load, Usibelli said in a Dec. 20 press release coal is destined to be burned in a different company's power plant than the cargo shipped to Chile in August. "Preliminary indications are that the first customer will take an additional" cargo load of coal in January, Usibelli said. The company attributed the significant interest in...
Russia's diamond monopoly Alrosa, based in the Sakha Republic, has a new chief executive, the company announced in a release Dec. 17. Alexander Nichiporuk, previously Alrosa's chief operating officer, will take the reins from Vladimir Kalitin, who becomes a deputy chairman of the supervisory board. Alrosa produces nearly 100 percent of Russia's diamonds and accounts for around 20 percent of the world's rough diamonds. The reshuffle strengthens Moscow's control over the company, as Nichiporuk was President Vladimir Putin's...
The U.S. Forest Service has approved Coeur Alaska's plan for its Kensington underground gold mine in Southeast Alaska, releasing its record of decision Dec. 17 for the project's final supplemental environmental impact statement. The EIS includes four different plans that were evaluated for the mine, which is about 45 miles north-northwest of Juneau in the Tongass National Forest, including Coeur's first development plan that was permitted in 1997. Citing economic feasibility problems, Coeur changed its development plan and...
The world's largest mining hoax fades for long periods, without ever disappearing completely. Now the insider trading case against John Felderhof, former chief geologist of Bre-X Minerals, is back before the Ontario Superior Court, seven years after the scam was exposed and 31 months after it was adjourned amid deep acrimony between rival attorneys. Felderhof has been charged with unloading Bre-X shares worth C$84 million in 1996 based on information not disclosed to investors who were immersed in a share-buying frenzy,...
The name that is synonymous with diamonds wants no part of digging for the gems in the Northwest Territories. Tiffany & Co. unloaded its 14 percent holding on Aber Diamond, the co-owner of Diavik, Canada's second diamond mine. The U.S. jewelry retailer will, however, retain a sales agreement with Aber, except that a previously applied discount to open-market diamond prices has been scrapped. That leaves Aber free to sell all of its 40 percent share of Diavik diamonds at full market prices. Tiffany is expected to raise about...
The state of Alaska's attempts to export coal to Taiwan have become bogged down in a political scandal, with a prosecutor investigating Attorney General Gregg Renkes' role in the negotiations. The Anchorage Daily News alleged that Renkes owned stock and traded shares in KFx, the Denver-based company that is developing technology to remove moisture from sub-bituminous coal. Documents show that Renkes and Gov. Frank Murkowski pushed the participation of KFx to the Taiwanese government. Murkowski has appointed former federal...
An initial investment of $10 in a gold-silver property by Vancouver-based Rimfire Minerals might pay off handsomely in the long term. Rimfire purchased the Tide property in British Columbia from Newmont Exploration in 2001 for that nominal fee, and last year partnered with another Vancouver company, Serengeti Resources, to push forward a drilling and fieldwork program. Serengeti is earning a 51 percent interest in Tide by spending C$1.4 million on exploration. The results so far have been very promising. High-grade gold and...
An explosion in demand for nuclear energy in the face of chronically short supplies is sending long-time mining companies and a growing cadre of new players scurrying across North America in search of new uranium hot spots. Annual demand for uranium, used primarily for nuclear power generation, has climbed to more than 160 million pounds. Saskatchewan-based Cameco Corp., the world's largest uranium miner, estimates that even without the potential for higher demand due to rising oil and natural gas prices, global uranium...
Alaska's Red Dog zinc mine has received environmental certification under ISO 14001, becoming one of a handful of mines in North America to achieve this status. Malcolm Ting of the international inspection and certification agency SGS presented a banner to Teck Cominco and NANA Corp. representatives at an Alaska Support Industry Alliance event in Anchorage Dec. 10. When the banner flies at Red Dog, in the Arctic 90 miles north of Kotzebue, it will be the farthest north symbol of a certified mine. "It doesn't contain specific...
As its 2004 drilling program draws to a close, Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. is awaiting a revised independent estimate of the size of its Pebble gold-copper-molybdenum deposit in Southwest Alaska, Ronald W. Thiessen, the company's president and CEO announced in mid-December. Northern Dynasty said it spent C$33.5 million to drill 173 holes that include the new East Zone discovery holes, which intercepted substantial higher-grade gold-copper-molybdenum mineralization outside of the previous resource boundary. Earlier this...
What a difference a year makes ... along with a few things like rebounding metals prices, China's voracious appetite for minerals and investors' enduring love affair worldwide with gold. That's the assessment of Alaska officials after reviewing the state's annual report on mining industry activity in 2003, released in late October. The cumulative value of Alaska's mining industry in 2003 dipped slightly to $1.067 billion, down about $6 million from the $1.073 billion reported in 2002, according to the report, the 23rd in an...
