The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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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...
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...
Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. March 20 announced several senior management changes, including the appointment of Ammar Al-Joundi as the company's new president. Al-Joundi, a former chief financial officer of Agnico Eagle, most recently served as CFO and senior executive vice-president of Barrick Gold Corp. from July 2012 until February of this year. With Al-Joundi serving as president, Sean Boyd's title will change to vice-chairman and CEO. Al-Joundi will report to Boyd and assist him and the senior management team in setting and...
American billionaires John Paulson, Seth Klarman and Thomas Kaplan have taken a keen interest in Alaska's next generation of gold and copper mines. While it is natural for hedge fund managers such as Paulson and Klarman, and resource investors such as Kaplan, to hold mining stocks in their portfolios, this trio holds major positions in three of the top Alaska-focused mineral exploration and development companies. In fact, the companies founded and managed by these...
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...
With roughly US$150 million of working capital, Novagold Resources Inc. is among a rare few non-producing mining companies that has no need to squeeze money out of a market reluctant to dole funds to the mining sector. This has allowed management to focus on the task at hand - moving the 39-million-ounce Donlin Gold project through permitting to a development decision. "Our healthy financial position, with more than US$165 million in cash and term deposits, gives us...
Plummeting oil prices have put Alaska residents and Alaska miners in the same boat. Suddenly, it's less expensive to top off the tank of an SUV or a haul truck, but the state budget, fueled by oil revenue, is teetering on the edge of an estimated $3.5 billion deficit. That's $10 million a day for 2015. "We know Alaska is experiencing a significant drop in revenue - the price of oil has dropped more than 50 percent over the past six months," Alaska's new governor, Bill Walker,...
In an industry eager for even a scintilla of good news, a recent report from industry analyst SNL Metals & Mining recently gave the good-news-starved industry a bit of hope. SNL's article, titled, "Too early to start celebrating a recovery in the sector," indicated that although the downward trend in mineral exploration has not broken yet, the market has stopped down-grading mining equities, with a modest gain in market capitalization since its most recent low in mid-2013....
Rockhaven Resources Ltd.'s Klaza Project located at the end of the Nansen Road in central Yukon Territory may be coming into its own as an exciting precious metals property. After three years of exploration, the junior has amassed 460 claims, enough to comprise 90-square kilometers (35 square miles) within a highly prospective area of the Dawson Range. In addition, Rockhaven, a company spawned by the folks at Strategic Metals Ltd. and Archer, Cathro & Associates Limited, has gradually stepped out from its first drilling in...
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...
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. Some Alaska projects are moving forward but most field budgets are small with commensurately reduced goals attached. Larger mining companies, many under new management, are rapidly shedding non-core assets while revising budgets and timeframes for...
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...
GFMS formerly known as Gold Fields Mineral Services) recently announced their outlook for gold prices in the coming months, estimating average 2014 gold prices in the US$1,225 per ounce range. The price forecast is 13 percent less than the 2013 average of US$1,411/oz. Physical demand, including official sector purchases, came in at an all-time high of 4,957 metric tons in 2013, a 15 percent increase over 2012 and some 703 metric tons higher than the supply of new gold and...
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...
The ongoing scarcity of venture capital available to junior companies coupled with a retreat in metals prices has landed a one-two blow that sent mineral exploration spending in Alaska plunging for the second straight year. A handful of big-budget projects scattered across Alaska, though, is softening the hit to exploration spending across the Far North State during 2013. Mineral exploration expenditures in Alaska, which were a meager US$23.8 million in 2001, topped US$365...
With roughly C$216.6 million in the bank at the end of the third quarter, Novagold Resources Inc. is well-positioned to complete permitting at its Donlin Gold project in Alaska and continue exploration at its Galore Creek copper-gold project in British Columbia. "These are turbulent times in the business, but we have got the cash to see us through the permitting," Novagold President Greg Lang told attendees at the Denver Gold Forum. Ahead of the financial tempest that is battering most of the titanic gold producers and...
Asubstantial amount of exploration activity continued apace in Yukon Territory this season despite the truncated budgets that forced most mining companies to juggle their projects and priorities. Some exploration companies found creative ways to raise capital, turning out their pockets to return to Yukon in 2013 to explore for Carlin-style gold mineralization in the east-central region of the territory, for more gold-bearing structures in the White Gold and Klondike districts to the west and for other styles and types of...
DV: TSX-V President and CEO: Ron Nichols Chairman: John King Burns Vice President, Exploration: Paul McGuigan Dolly Varden Silver Corp. is developing the historic Dolly Varden Silver Mines property located about 26 kilometers (17 miles) from Alice Arm, B.C., in northwestern British Columbia. In 2012, the junior attracted a C$3.2 million strategic investment from silver producer Hecla Mining Co. in exchange for a 19.9 percent equity interest in the company. During the first half of 2013, the junior defined a comprehensive...
A substantial amount of mining activity continued apace in Yukon Territory this season even though most mining companies are shying away from the anorexic capital markets. Many exploration companies raised funds in other ways, turning out their pockets to return to Yukon in 2013 to explore for Carlin-style gold mineralization in the east-central region of the territory, for more gold-bearing structures in the White Gold and Klondike districts to the west and for other styles and types of mineralization elsewhere in the territ...
Novagold Resources Inc. is well-equipped, not only to ride out the financial tempest that is battering most of the titanic gold producers and junior exploration companies, but to take advantage of the inclement market conditions that are forcing others to take shelter. "Notwithstanding the share price and the continued market conditions challenging mining equities, we find ourselves in a better position as a company than we had hoped," Novagold President Greg Lang informed...
The annual Cordilleran Roundup Mining Convention is held in Vancouver at the end of January each year, and this year's convention was unlike any of the nearly 20 such conventions I have attended. The norm for this convention is a sort of anticipatory excitement that permeates every facet of the event. Mineral exploration is the focus of this gathering, and explorationists are by and large optimistic people. While there was no lack of optimism at the 2013 convention, if you...
Alaska miners are on the cusp of topping 1 million ounces of gold produced, an annual milestone that has not been achieved since Gold Rush pioneers recovered copious amounts of alluvial aurum at the turn of the 20th Century. "When you think about what a million ounces of production means, it is all the more amazing that it was first accomplished by placer miners and a few lode miners, a few shovelfuls at a time, more than a century ago!" Curt Freeman, a well-known Alaska...
A reporter recently asked Greg Johnson, the newly appointed president and CEO of Prophecy Platinum Corp., if he was committed enough to his new role as head honcho of the company's emerging Wellgreen Project in southwestern Yukon Territory to stick around for five years. Johnson, one of the original architects of NovaGold Resources Inc. which built the world-class Donlin gold deposit in Alaska from a few million ounces into a 30-million-ounce-plus resource, chuckled before he responded. "With the caliber of asset that we have...
Ending a streak of robust growth, mineral exploration spending in Alaska during 2012 took a downward turn from the record US$300 million spent a year earlier. "More advanced-stage projects that added ounces or pounds to their resource base had a better go of it than early-stage exploration projects which have taken a hard right cross to the jaw!" Curt Freeman, a well-known Alaska geologist and president of Fairbanks-based Avalon Development, observed in September. This blow de...
NG: TSX / NG: NYSE-MKT Chairman: Thomas Kaplan President and CEO: Gregory Lang Senior Vice President and COO: Gil Leathley Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, founder of NovaGold Resources Inc., handed the company's top executive office over to Greg Lang, who assumed the role of president and CEO in early January. This shift in leadership marks the final stages of NovaGold's transition from a premier Alaska and Northwest Canada exploration company to a mine developer focused on advancing its 50 percent interest in the 40-million-ounce...
