The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 201 - 225 of 298
Trilogy Metals Inc. Oct. 27 provided an update from its 2016 summer field program at the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in the Ambler mining district of Northwest Alaska. "We are pleased to announce another highly successful and safe field season at our high grade Arctic deposit. We had zero loss time incidents, no environmental incidents and maintained a high percentage of local NANA shareholder hire," said Trilogy President and CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse. NANA is the Alaska Native regional corporation in Northwest Alaska and...
The owners of Alaska’s five large metal mines – Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo, Hecla Mining Company, Kinross Gold Corp, Teck Resources Ltd. and Coeur Mining Inc. – accounted for nearly half the US$92 million of exploration spending in the state during 2014 and similar investments by these companies is providing solid footing for the Far North state’s mineral exploration sector this year. Avalon Development President Curt Freeman said he is seeing more mining majors shopping for d...
What does a name say about a company? Management of NovaCopper Inc. feels that its corporate moniker does not say enough about the diversity of metals present in the high-grade deposits encompassed by its Upper Kobuk Minerals Projects in the Ambler mining district of Northwest Alaska. Arctic, the most advanced UKMP deposit, actually hosts more zinc than it does copper. And, while copper remains the dominant metal in terms of value, zinc supply shortages are closing the price...
Mineral exploration spending in Alaska will likely struggle to top US$80 million for 2014, a dramatic fall from the US$365.1 million pinnacle reached in 2011. "The din of mineral industry activity that is normally a part of the summer months in Alaska is decidedly muted this year as the global mining industry attempts to lift itself off the bottom of a plus-18-month-long slump," Avalon Development President Curt Freeman opined in a June column written for Mining News. Unlike 2...
Over the past month, three of Alaska's large mines reported strong quarterly results; two projects in advanced permitting and pre-feasibility reported recent progress; and three exploration properties changed hands. The latter is a trend putting 2015 on course to be one of the most active years for new acquisitions in the past decade. Placer gold production has all but ceased for the year; however, output from Alaska's placer mines is not likely to be known with any certainty...
Most of Alaska is now enjoying a warm, early spring, allowing field programs to get off to an quicker start this year. While budgets are still tight, interest in Alaska projects has steadily increased as the mining and metals markets slowly recover from a four-year slowdown. Current estimates for 2016 exploration expenditures are looking like they will end up in the US$50 million to US$60 million range, down from the US$75 million range of last year but less precipitous than...
As a follow-up to last month's realization that once again "the game is afoot" in the mining industry, major gold producer Goldcorp recently presented some arresting statistics at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Metals, Mining and Steel Conference. The presentation showed gold discovery and production information for the global mining industry that indicated that peak gold discovery occurred in 1995, this despite three periods between 1995 and 2015 when exploration...
NovaCopper Inc. June 22 said the Bornite Camp is being prepared for the 2016 field program at the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects located in Northwest Alaska. The majority of this year's project budget of US$5.5 million is planned to be spent on roughly 3,000 meters of drilling at the Arctic project. The program will include drilling for geotechnical, hydrological, waste rock characterization and metallurgical studies as well as further resource definition. The company is also planning a series of environmental studies that...
Although there is plenty of Alaska mining industry news this month, the big dog in the pen is the dramatic and unexpected run-up in the price of gold, which moved from a low of $1,078 per ounce to a high of $1,246/oz., most of which occurred after Feb. 1. Although profit-taking and other factors have caused the price to back off a bit, the move was both dramatic and unexpected. As you might guess, the ether is full of talking heads telling us why it went up, why it either won'...
NovaCopper Inc. Feb. 8 reported that it has budgeted US$5.5 million for its 2016 program at the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in northwestern Alaska. Like the 2015 program, which was similar in size and scope, this year's work will focus primarily on collecting data to inform a prefeasibility study for Arctic, a volcanogenic massive sulfide deposit that is rich in copper, zinc, silver and gold. This year's program is expected to include additional drilling at Arctic;...
As the curtain rings down on 2015, the sound of clapping and cheering can already be heard from the mining industry as it anticipates the end of a largely depressing year which started out looking like the long-awaited industry recovery was going to happen but in the end, did not. The uncertainty brought on by this year's unsettling events was front and center in a recent round-table discussion hosted by Northern Miner, sponsored by PearTree Securities and entitled "New...
Over the past month Alaska's mining industry has suffered a perfect storm of manmade and natural issues that read like something from a pulp fiction novel. On the man-made side of the ledger, gold, silver, copper, and lead prices have all hit 5-year lows and zinc prices continue to slide lower. Mining equity markets are still in severe decline, making it extremely challenging for junior exploration companies to raise the risk capital necessary to explore their Alaska...
I recently returned from the Geological Society of Nevada's once-every-five-years Symposium in Reno and was surprised to learn a number of things regarding Alaska, despite the symposium's tight focus on the Great Basin of the western United States. First off, mineral exploration guru Brent Cook presented information suggesting we have reached and are "bumping along" the bottom of the current metals market slump. Reminded me of an overloaded fixed-wing aircraft bumping down the...
With a mild winter for most of Alaska behind us and an early spring in progress over much of the state, spring fever has once again laid its grip on the mining industry. A number of exploration and development programs are slated for the summer season, suggesting the mining industry has finally started to rise from the three-year miasma that has gripped it worldwide. A couple of macro-scale items also are pointing toward a more robust industry. The U. S. Geological Survey's...
Amid the volatile metals markets that have become the norm in the past year, miners, developers, explorers, prospectors and investors met in Vancouver at the end of January for the annual Cordilleran Roundup mining convention. The mood was decidely positive, and having seen a lot of "whistling in the cemetary" at this convention in the past, I know the difference between false bravado and contagious optimism. Perhaps it was the stabilization of copper prices after a nine month...
NovaCopper Inc. plans to invest roughly US$20 million over the next two to three years on finalizing a feasibility study for its Arctic deposit, the next step toward the exploration company's vision of developing mines at the world-class copper projects found in the Ambler Mining District of Northwest Alaska. Arctic is the most advanced of the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, a venture formed by NovaCopper and NANA Corp., the Alaska Native regional corporation that represents the...
Several events have dramatically affected Alaska's mining industry in recent weeks, underscoring critical links between Alaska and the global economy. First came bad news for newly-elected Gov. Bill Walker: The plunge in world oil prices pushed Alaska's coming-year budget projections about $3.5 billion into the red. The ripple effect of this was a slashing of everything not required and one of the cuts, temporarily at least, was state funding of the Ambler District Road....
As the year winds down, financial information has begun to trickle in quantifying just how tough 2014 was on the mining industry. Industry analyst SNL Metals & Mining announced that the total estimated global budget for nonferrous metals exploration dropped another 25 percent in 2014, to US$11.36 billion, from US$15.19 billion in 2013. Perhaps even more arresting is the precipitous fall in just the past two years from an all-time high of US$21.5 billion in nonferrous metal exp...
At the same time as the EPA is pushing forward on its planned precedent-setting, pre-emptive, pre-permit veto of the Pebble project and the tailings dam failure at the Mount Polley mine in British Columbia, former Gold Fields Ltd. Chief Geologist Rael Lipson published an eye-opening summary of where porphyry copper-gold projects like Pebble, Mt. Polley and dozens of others around the world fit into the future of gold production. The article, appearing in the July 2014...
As is normally the case in high summer in Alaska, news has started to trickle out of the hills on projects where new work is being conducted, and several properties have changed hands or are in the process of changing hands as mining deals are negotiated and announced across the state. Alaska mines are enjoying slight upticks in metals prices, but recent price volatility has left producers cautious about making long-term capital investments in new or existing projects. Regardl...
Alaska's natural gas is increasingly replacing diesel as the fuel of choice for mines and mining projects across the Far North State and Yukon Territory. At roughly 37 trillion cubic feet, Alaska is awash in natural gas; however, some 35 tcf of these known reserves are isolated in the Arctic oil and gas fields of the North Slope. The balance, located in the Cook Inlet basin that stretches southwest from Anchorage, has been developed primarily to serve consumers in the...
NovaCopper Inc.'s 2013 exploration program has added another 2.6 billion pounds of copper to the resource at the Bornite project in the Ambler mining district, swelling the size of this Northwest Alaska deposit to 6 billion lbs. of the red metal. Bornite is one of many deposits and prospects that make up the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, a long-term partnership forged between NovaCopper and NANA Regional Corp. in 2011. The alliance combines Bornite and a number of other...
The over-all mood at the recent Cordilleran Roundup mining convention in Vancouver, B.C. was more restrained than in previous years, but also more realistic due in large part to the prolonged downturn in risk capital mining markets. It seems the industry has transitioned from the denial stage accompanying the declines of 2013 to an acceptance and determination stage that always precedes a return to market vitality. In a recent public release by financial giant Ernst and...
If you believe what you see in the press, Alaska's mineral industry was recently given a Christmas gift that trumps even the high-grade anthracite coal that most Alaskans were dreaming of during the last 40-below cold snap. The Alaska Dispatch reported on a recent presentation at the fall 2013 meeting of the American Geophysical Union titled, "Critical Metals in Western Arctic Ocean Ferromanganese Mineral Deposits," by James Hein, a senior scientist at the U.S. Geological...
I recently attended the 119th Annual Meeting of the Northwest Mining Association in Reno and came away feeling better about Alaska than when I arrived. Alaska Miners Association Director Deantha Crockett chaired and spoke in a session that covered everything from small mining operations and new exploration discoveries to advanced exploration projects and operating mines. The 8 a.m. session was surprisingly well-attended, despite the fact that the hotel was host to 1,000 explor...
