The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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RG: TSX-V/RMIOF:NASDAQ OTC/D4R:FE President and Director: Anastasios (Tom) Drivas Chief Financial Officer: Michael D'Amico, CA Vice President, Exploration and Geologist: Thomas Skimming, P. Eng. Romios Gold Resources Inc. focused its 2012 exploration activities Romios on its gold-copper properties located in northern British Columbia. Following up on extensive 2010 and 2011 programs at its Trek, Newmont Lake and the Dirk properties, Romios undertook a C$1.4 million exploration campaign in June on the Newmont Lake Project...
An employment forecast published by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development in October pegged the state's mining sector job growth from 2010 to 2020 at 19 percent. That is second only to health care, at 31 percent, and outpacing the 12 percent average growth across all Alaska industries. Expansion of current operations coupled with prospects of building mines at the world-class Livengood and Donlin gold deposits were cited as drivers behind adding new miners t...
Over a year ago, Natural Resource Holdings published a report entitled "How Rare are One Million Ounce Gold Deposits?" At that time, the publisher ranked 296 gold deposits that have more than 1 million ounces of gold in all resources categories. The same firm recently published a follow-up report titled, "Global Gold Mines & Deposits 2012 Ranking." The report ranks gold deposits above 1 million ounces, whose numbers have increased to 439 deposits with total resources of...
Under the chairmanship of historian and entrepreneurial billionaire Thomas Kaplan, there is little chance NovaGold Resources Ltd. will be among those of which Spanish philosopher George Santayana warned when he wrote, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Kaplan, though, does not need to exercise his bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees in history from Oxford University to see the wisdom of marching Donlin Gold - a 40-million-ounce gold deposit...
In a long overdue step to bring Alaska into the 21st Century, state and federal agencies met in late June to discuss collaborative funding strategies for Alaska's Statewide Digital Mapping Initiative, an enterprise designed to create Alaska's first high-quality digital topographic map. The roundtable was convened by Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and the Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, U.S. Department of Interior. Alaska remains the only state in the United States...
An early June shakeup at the upper echelon of Barrick Gold Corp. management, including the sacking of CEO Aaron Regent, calls to question the future of the 40 million-ounce Donlin Gold project in Southwest Alaska. Regent, who had served as Barrick president and CEO since 2009, was replaced by executive vice president and CFO Jamie Sokalsky. Barrick founder and Chairman Peter Munk cited lackluster share performance when announcing the changes to the top executive office. "We...
One year after donning the mantle of chief executive officer at International Tower Hill Mines Ltd., James Komadina abruptly vacated the position recently. The unexpected departure comes less than a week after Tower Hill filed its first-quarter 2012 financial results, revealing a budget overrun of C$46.9 million on Komadina's watch. The vacuum created in the upper echelon of Tower Hill management has pulled in company founder Jeff Pontius to help steer the company through...
For the past 18 months, Golden Predator Corp. has been working fast and furiously to get a handle on the gold resource it has steadily uncovered at its flagship Brewery Creek Project located about 55 kilometers (34 miles) east of Dawson City in central Yukon Territory. On Dec. 1, the aggressive junior reported that it was working toward a near-term production decision even as increasingly impressive 2011 drill results continued to surface. Six months later, Golden Predator Chairman and CEO William M. Sheriff, M.Sc., is busy...
The winds of change are once again blowing across Alaska's mineral industry, not only because the industry is gearing up for another busy summer season, but also because the mining investment climate has turned from cautiously optimistic to decidedly undecided. The sea change occurred steadily and without a lot of fanfare between mid-January and mid-March. As is always the case, good projects continue to advance with those that are drilling and adding resources or moving throu...
Worries about the ongoing sovereign debt crisis in Europe, uncertainty about where the U.S. economy is headed and a slowing of growth in China is prompting miners to favor gold over industrial and luxury minerals such as nickel and diamonds. Some 62 percent of mining executives from 802 global mineral exploration and development companies said they expect gold prices to increase by at least 20 percent over the next two years when responding to questions about future...
The Fraser Institute's "Survey of Mining Companies, 2011/2012" was recently released to the public. This annual survey of exploration and mining companies gauges the pros and cons of working in various countries around the world. This year's results came from over 800 mineral industry companies working in 93 jurisdictions and representing cumulative 2011 exploration expenditures of over US$6.3 billion. The perception of Alaska from the companies that work here was about the...
More than 30,000 people attended the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada Convention held in Toronto March 4 - 7, breaking last year's attendance record of 27,714 participants from 120 countries. The annual convention, currently in its 80th year, attracts investors, analysts, mining executives, geologists, prospectors and international government delegations from all over the world and represents a tremendous networking and educational opportunity for the industry. The gathering's Trade Show and Investors...
British Columbia, Yukon Territory and Alaska - the headliners of the Association for Mining Exploration British Columbia's annual Mineral Exploration Roundup - tallied more than C$1 billion of mineral exploration spending and some C$12.7 billion in mine production in 2011. "We are going to talk in the next three sessions about the wrinkly parts of western North America - B.C., Yukon and Alaska. The geological phenomena that has created these mountain chains that we have in...
It is still early days in the exploration play for gold in eastern Yukon Territory, but a score of companies got a jump on competitors in 2011 by targeting promising occurrences of gold and pathfinder elements in a frenzy of unprecedented claim staking and reconnaissance. The early explorers rushed to the region following a report by Atac Resources Ltd. in September 2010 that it discovered unusual mineralization in the rocky eastern ridges of its 1,600-square-kilometer (618 square miles) Rackla Project. Atac posted high-grade...
I was tempted to make a few 2012 predictions now that 2011 is nearly gone, but I decided not to when I came across the following lines and was struck by how closely they mimic our current mining climate: "On a more local level, several old Alaska properties have been rejuvenated by new players to the Alaska mineral scene. Reserve announcements have touched off renewed land acquisitions and property negotiations. Contracts for technical personnel, drill rigs, helicopters and...
NovaGold Resource Inc. has made tectonic shifts in its leadership and corporate structure. Shedding all of its assets except for the Donlin Gold project in Southwest Alaska, the restructured company is singularly focused on bringing this 40-million-ounce gold deposit into production by the end of the decade. Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse - who founded NovaGold and guided the exploration company through 15 years of trials and triumphs - is relinquishing NovaGold's top executive office...
Whether it is multimillion-ounce gold discoveries, copper deposits that measure in the billions of pounds or massive ore-bodies of 20 percent zinc, Alaska is renowned for its mammoth deposits. The prospect of finding another Donlin, Pebble or Red Dog continues to draw explorers to this vast and underexplored corner of the United States. In the Survey of Mining Companies: 2010/2011, conducted by the Fraser Institute, top executives from 494 mining and mineral exploration...
With a 20-million-ounce gold discovery embellishing their résumés, International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. co-founders Jeff Pontius and Russell Myers have taken the helm of Corvus Gold Inc., a junior formed in 2010 to explore Tower Hill's non-Livengood assets. During the initial year after the spin-out, Pontius continued to guide Tower Hill and its Livengood project into the transition from advanced exploration to early development and Myers turned his attention to getting C...
While NovaGold Resources Inc.'s ultimate goal is to become a 1-million-ounce-per-year gold producer, the Vancouver B.C.-based junior is taking a fresh look at the enormous reserves of copper waiting to be mined at its Galore Creek project in British Columbia and its Ambler project in Northwest Alaska. "Management believes the recently completed economic analyses of Galore Creek and Ambler clearly demonstrate that NovaGold's copper assets are considerably undervalued having reg...
RG: TSX-V/RMIOF:NASDAQ OTC/D4R:FE President and Director: Anastasios (Tom) Drivas Chief Financial Officer: Michael D'Amico, CA Vice President, Exploration and Geologist: Thomas Skimming, P. Eng. Romios Gold Resources Inc. is a Canadian exploration company actively engaged in precious and base metal exploration in British Columbia and Quebec with a primary focus on gold, copper, silver and molybdenum. Romios has acquired nine strategically located gold-copper properties between Nova Gold/Teck Cominco's and Barrick Gold's...
SK: TSX-V Executive Co-chairman: Robert V. Matthews, C.A. Executive Co-chairman and CEO: Clifford A. Grandison Chief Operating Officer: James (Jim) Sparling, P.Geo, MBA Skyline is a junior mineral exploration company currently focused on its principal asset, the Iskut Property in the heart of the Golden Triangle of northwestern British Columbia. The Iskut Property is adjacent to the historic Snip Gold Mine initially operated by Cominco Ltd., then Homestake Canada Mining Co. During its operation, from 1991 to 1999, the Snip...
As termination dust settles over Alaska, the diversity of mineral exploration, development and production news this month covers the entire spectrum of mining industry activities. The last of the seasonal early-stage exploration projects are reporting in, a major producing company has entered the state for the first time, Alaska finished its first off-shore mineral lease process in more than a decade, several projects reported on resource definition and feasibility studies, a gold deposit was sold, a ballot initiative aimed...
Preliminary estimates released by NovaGold Resources Inc. in early September plants an anticipated US$7 billion price tag on building the facilities needed to mine the 38-million-ounce Donlin Creek gold deposit. That is about US$2.5 billion more than was calculated for a feasibility study completed in 2009. Though the preliminary capital costs seem staggering, both NovaGold and its equal partner in Donlin Gold, Barrick Gold Corp., seem confident the feasibility study...
A recent article in the Newsletter of the Society of Economic Geologists discussed ways of addressing an arresting trend in the mining industry that affects Alaska's mining future. Authors N. Stephen Enders of the Colorado School of Mines and Cliff Saunders of Too Serious Unlimited, showed that the discovery rate for gold has been dropping steadily since 1999, while the gold mined by operating mines worldwide has remained essentially unchanged at about 80 million ounces per year. The low for ounces discovered coincided with...
Every year about this time, I notice new ways to gauge just how busy the Alaska mining industry is. This year, it is the silence. Not the amazing silence of a mountaintop in the Alaska Range but the virtual and literal silence being practiced by the people who make up the industry. In an age where communications options are abundant and the opportunity to be "connected" is a 24-7 reality, people in the Alaska mining industry go silent in the depths of summer, primarily...
