The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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From the enormous Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum project to grassroots gold and copper discoveries, the Kahiltna Terrane of Southwest Alaska is becoming a hot destination for mining companies seeking the mineral wealth of this rugged and underexplored region. The Kahiltna assemblage was formed when an arc of islands known as Wrangellia thrust up the ocean floor as it collided with North America. This bulldozed seabed created much of the spectacular mountains of the Alaska...
Alaska's mining industry captured the attention, not only of Alaskans but also the country during the past year when a controversy over the proposed Pebble Project in Southwest Alaska bubbled to the surface. Supporters and opponents of a ballot initiative aimed at blocking the mining venture squared off in a vocal and often strident campaign that made headlines nationwide. Alaska Miners Association director Steve Borell cited the contest over development the world-class...
Government and industry officials agree that mining exploration and development in recent years have brought substantial positive change to Nunavut, Canada's newest and least explored territory. Ongoing and new exploration, however, are rapidly advancing understanding of this vast Arctic land's mineral potential. "In this industry, it seems that all of the best and worst of times were compressed into less than two years (between 2008 and 2010)," said Peter Taptuna, minister of Economic Development & Transportation for the Gov...
As the Pebble Limited Partnership approaches the completion of an extensive feasibility study for the Pebble Project, it is investigating the Southwest Alaska property beyond the bounds of the 80.6 billion pounds of copper, 107.4 million ounces of gold and 5.6 billion pounds of molybdenum known to exist in the massive deposit. "Until the latter part of last year, we hadn't drilled a hole outside the Pebble deposit proper - other than geotechnical or engineering drill holes,...
FVL: TSX-V President and CEO: Kristina Walcott Chief Financial Officer: Gordon Steblin Vice President, Exploration: Michael Gross Weighed down with about C$11 million in debt in mid-2009, it appeared Freegold Ventures Ltd. would become another casualty of the market collapse. Stepping into the leadership role, former Freegold Vice President of Corporate Development Kristina Walcott leveraged the value of the company's four gold assets in Alaska and Idaho. Over the course of a few short months, the new president and CEO...
Now that the word is out about Atac Resources Ltd.'s impressive gold discoveries at the Rau Project in central Yukon Territory, the financial market is taking to the early-stage exploration effort with the enthusiasm of a bear in a beehive. Atac recently reported impressive results from drilling and prospecting the Osiris and Isis targets on the Sten claim block near the eastern edge of the 185-kilometer-, or 115-mile-long Rau Project. Meanwhile, investors have fueled a run-up in Atac's stock price to about $7 a share from...
Dozens of small explorers mounted exploration campaigns in 2010 in and around the historic Stewart Gold Camp in northwestern British Columbia, and as assays trickle in from samples and core sent to labs this spring and summer, many of them are reporting encouraging results. The Stewart Gold Camp, located about 20 miles, or 35 kilometers, from the B.C./Alaska border, is an emerging, world-class mining district that continues to offer discovery opportunities for major gold-copper and precious metal polymetallic deposits. The...
PEBBLE - Pebble Partnership CEO John Shively opened his June 21 presentation to the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce Make it Monday Forum with the query, "How many people here have heard of the Pebble Mine Project?" The room resonated with laughter in response to Shively's rhetorical question. Though everyone at the luncheon, like the majority of their fellow Alaskans, have been inundated with media coverage regarding Pebble, not even Shively knows what the final plan for the...
The annual Fraser Institute "Report on Mining Companies, 2009-2010" was recently released to a thundering silence. Several oddball items may help explain the lackluster response, but Alaska fared well in the survey of 333 companies working in 72 jurisdictions worldwide. Alaska ranked 18th out of 72 under the policy potential index, which measures the regulatory attractiveness of a jurisdiction. Not unreasonably, Alaska was beaten by some mining heavyweights like Chile, Quebec,...
I recently attended the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention in Toronto where a buoyant, project-hungry crowd of 22,000 created enough of its own hot air to start the Greenland Icecap melting. In a clear case of anthropogenic global warming, representatives of companies, governments and agencies rolled out their projects in efforts to see and be seen. Alaska was well represented at the conference and should see some new investment interest coming from...
No discussion of opening Canada's Far North to mineral resource development could get far without the focus turning to Nunavut, the nation's newest and least-explored territory. At one-fifth the size of Canada, Nunavut contains 1,994,000 million square kilometers, or 770,000 square miles, (nearly three times the size of Texas). Much of the territory is underlain by Archean-aged rocks similar to those found in the most productive geology in Ontario, Quebec, South Africa, Australia, and Brazil. But much of this geology is...
The Alaska Miners Association recently released an economic benefits summary of the Alaska mining industry. This summary indicated that in 2009 the Alaska mining industry provided 3,300 direct jobs along with 5,200 indirect jobs in 120 communities in Alaska with a combined payroll of US$320 million. Average industry jobs came in at US$83,000 per year, which is 85 percent higher than the average Alaska wage and second only to wages in the oil and gas industry. The industry...
Geologically, Alaska is a terrane wreck, with multiple tectonic plates dumping their mineral payloads over the landscape. Geologists are still sifting through the wreckage in many places across the state to determine which mineral deposits were dumped by which terranes and when - a task not always easily accomplished as pileups have resulted, in many cases, from multiple mineralization events happening in the same geographical regions over time. A terrane is a series of...
Left leaderless and weighed down with about C$11 million in debt in mid-2009, it appeared Freegold Ventures Ltd. would become another casualty of the market collapse of 2008. Many believe this surely would have been the case if not for the tenacity of Kristina Walcott, then the company's vice president of corporate development. Stepping into the leadership role at Freegold, Walcott leveraged the value of the company's four gold assets in Alaska and Idaho. Over the course of a...
As the active exploration season winds down in Alaska, both good news and bad is afoot and both sets of news turn out to be the same data. Double speak you say? Read on and judge for yourself. Halifax-based Metals Economics Group announced some preliminary numbers relating to worldwide mineral industry exploration for 2009. The group estimates that worldwide exploration spending will drop to US$8.4 billion in 2009, a 40 percent decrease from the US$14 billion spent in 2008....
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...
Last month we talked about economic impacts of the Alaska mining industry. This month, the world mineral exploration industry is in our crosshairs. Halifax-based Metals Economics Group reported that 2008 worldwide nonferrous mineral exploration reached $13.2 billion, more than 2.5 times the previous peak exploration spending level reached in 1997. Add uranium exploration expenditures, and the total expands to $14.4 billion. Exploration spending would have been even higher...
There are some new stats out from the State of Alaska that I thought you might like to see. For 2008, the Alaska mining industry accounted for 3,500 direct jobs and 5,500 indirect jobs. The industry doled out US$350 million in payroll with the average salary totaling US$82,600 per year, which is 90 percent higher than the statewide average for all sectors. Mining salaries were higher than all other sectors, except for the oil and gas sector. The industry paid US$105 million in...
The Northwest Territories has four operating mines: three diamond producers and one long-running tungsten operation. Exploration and development activity was brisk in 2008 with the most advanced projects located in the Slave Province. Here's a look at mining companies active during 2008 in the Northwest Territories: Producing mines BHP Billiton Diamonds Inc. (80 percent) and partners C. Fipke (10 percent) and S. Blusson (10 percent) produced about 3.5 million carats of rough diamonds at the Ekati diamond mine in 2008, making...
The plummet in base metal prices in 2008 will be felt across Alaska and Northwest Canada's mining sectors. Miners of the far north reaches of North America enjoyed a bounty when base metal prices reached record values in 2007, carrying into 2008. The escalation of base metal prices was driven by expanding markets in China and India, as well as a building, retail and technology boom in the West. Mines producing the industrial metals enjoyed unprecedented returns from the ore sh...
Alaska saw robust mining activity in 2008 across the full spectrum of the industry, from small placer operations to major producers, and from exploration programs to advanced development projects. Here is a look at companies reporting significant progress during the year. Placer mining Silverado Gold Mines Ltd. has recovered 26,879 ounces of placer gold from channel and bench deposits in the Nolan Valley through 2007. The largest nugget recovered from the property, located about 280 miles north of Fairbanks, weighed 41.35...
As 2008 winds inexorably to a close, I found myself looking for words adequate to describe what will go down in history as one of the most memorable years in many a moon. Words like tumultuous, unpredictable, singular, turbulent, chaotic, confusing, and unsettling hardly do justice to the past year's events. As usual, the mining industry played its small but vital role in the scheme of world events. The first half of the year brought stratospheric commodity prices, while the...
Let me start this month's mining update by saying I am not a chartist nor do I believe economic cycles are controlled by cosmic forces known only to the mystics. That said, I do believe in cycles because I have lived and worked through more cycles in the mining industry than I care to remember. So a couple of observations seem in order as we plummet down the slope off another peak into what looks to be a pretty deep, chilly valley. First off, what goes up, must come down with...
The game is afoot all across Alaska with the drills turning to the right on projects all across the state. The operating mines turned in strong first-quarter results and several new acquisitions, joint ventures and new players were announced in the last month. Western Alaska Teck Cominco American announced first quarter results from its Red Dog Mine. In the first quarter, the mine produced 138,500 metric tons of zinc in concentrate. Zinc ore grade increased to 21.3 percent while mill recoveries remained steady at 83.8...
Liberty Star Uranium and Metals Corp. April 10 said it has received interest from "more than one large global mining company" in becoming a joint venture partner to explore the 113,000-acre Big Chunk property that borders the northern and western edges of the Pebble Property in Southwest Alaska. The Tucson, Arizona-based junior said expressions of interest came within two days of a March 26 announcement that Liberty Star is seeking a partner to explore the property. "It is early in the process and the company has no way of ju...
