The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 351 - 375 of 391
Kutcho Creek is another copper-zinc project in the mineral-dense region of northern British Columbia that is rapidly headed toward development. Among the numerous mines and mining development projects in the area are NovaGold's Galore Creek and bcMetals' Red Chris. The 100 percent-owned Kutcho Project is the sole major asset of Western Keltic Mines Inc. which has spent about C$25 million in the past three years at the property. Well into a C$4.8 million field and construction program this season, the Vancouver-based junior...
If Newmont Mining Corp., the world's second largest gold producer, succeeds in its $1.52 billion takeover of Vancouver, B.C.-based Miramar Mining Corp., the major will gain control of one of the largest undeveloped gold projects in North America. Miramar owns the Hope Bay Project in Nunavut Territory, which has a 10.7 million-ounce gold resource about 99 miles north of the Arctic Circle and about 434 miles northeast of Yellowknife, NWT. Miramar planned to start construction this year and achieve annual output up to 600,000...
Gold Crest Mines Inc., a Spokane, Wash.-based junior gold exploration company, reported promising results Oct. 8 from its 2007 exploration drilling campaign at the Kisa Project in the Kuskokwim Mineral Belt of southwest Alaska. Organized a little over a year ago by a group of mining industry veterans, Gold Crest has a wholly owned Alaska subsidiary, Kisa Gold Mining Inc. It is KGMI that began exploring about 93,500 acres in three different and distinct areas of Alaska in late 2006. KGMI has established 14 claim groups in two...
The results from Alaska's summer field campaigns continue to pour in from all over the state, while field crews wind down their summer work and kick off their winter programs. If the results released this month are any indication of what is yet to come, 2008 is fixing to be one heck of a year! Western Alaska NovaGold Resources announced that initial testing of their crushing circuit had commenced at their commissioning Rock Creek gold mine near Nome. The operation is...
A U.S. District Court judge in Anchorage has dismissed NovaGold's lawsuit against Barrick Gold over the Donlin Creek project where the two companies are joint venture partners. Vancouver-based NovaGold had asserted that Toronto-based Barrick, the world's largest gold producer, breached the terms of the companies' Mining Venture Agreement. Judge Timothy Burgess ruled that Barrick has until Nov. 12, 2007 - the date stipulated in the MVA - to fulfill its obligations on the project, and the company's success or failure cannot be...
Alaska's commissioner for the Department of Natural Resources, Tom Irwin, has rejected a petition to designate the Chuitna River watershed as unsuitable for coal mining. The petition was filed by non-profit law firm Trustees for Alaska on behalf of a group of people including the Chuitna Citizens NO-COALition, the Alaska Center for the Environment and Alaskans for Responsible Mining, who had hoped to block the planned Chuitna coal project that is being developed in the area. The petition includes lands exempt from the...
A recent piece in the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner newspaper indicated that the U.S. Department of Labor has determined that mining employment has hit a 4-year low in Alaska. I'm not sure who the Department of Labor was talking to but the world I live in happens to be drastically short of qualified manpower with no immediate relief anywhere in sight that might affect this demand surplus and supply shortfall. When you ask mining companies what they are up to, the most common resp...
The exploration season has started but not before a bevy of new corporate competitors have entered the Alaska mineral scene and not before a number of past producing mines have been dragged into the 21st century. During the last month, three new companies have acquired properties in Alaska and two old Alaska producers have been brought out of mothballs to have new exploration done on them. This month's commodities of interest include gold, copper, lead, zinc, silver, uranium,...
As summer approaches, Niblack Mining Co. is assembling everything it will need from people to permits to tunnel 6,000 feet into the heart of Lookout Mountain on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. The Vancouver, B.C.-based junior wants to explore at depth zones believed to be rich in copper, gold, zinc, silver and other marketable minerals. Niblack Mining hired Henry Bogert as operations manager for the project in March. Juneau resident Bogert is a longtime mining and civil engineer with degrees from Montana Tech and...
The problem of bringing power to NovaGold's remote Donlin Creek project in southwest Alaska is one of the main bones of contention in the Vancouver-based junior's never-ending battle with its joint venture partner, Barrick Gold. Toronto-based Barrick, the operator at Donlin Creek, envisions a combination of diesel and wind power for the proposed gold mine. NovaGold's management believes the logistics of transporting huge quantities of diesel fuel upriver are too challenging and expensive, and wants to put in a power line...
Vancouver-based NovaGold Resources got some encouraging news on all three of its major projects recently. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers reissued its permit for Rock Creek; Galore Creek received its British Columbia Environmental Assessment Certificate; and Donlin Creek expanded its resources by an impressive amount. But progress has come at a cost: the company had a net loss of $30.5 million in 2006, compared with a net loss of $5.8 million in 2005. Most of the additional expenditures - $21 million - went to fighting off...
Exploration spending in British Columbia hit a record high of C$265 million in 2006, a figure that the province's mining minister, Bill Bennett was proud to announce at the recent Mineral Exploration Roundup in Vancouver. Unfortunately for Bennett, he probably won't be invited to boast about the industry's successes next year, since he was forced to resign in early February after sending an obscenity-laced email to a gun club member. "British Columbians want good jobs, and they also, frankly, want the tax revenues that come...
Alaska's Donlin Creek gold project is still several years from becoming an operating mine, but it has already made a huge impact on the lives of people in the surrounding rural communities. Since making a commitment in 1996 to employ as many Native corporation shareholders as possible, operator Barrick Gold achieved a shareholder hire rate of 92 percent in 2005, with a turnover rate of just 10 percent, down from 318 percent at the start of the project. Donlin Creek is a joint venture between NovaGold Resources and Barrick, wi...
As 2006 comes rapidly to a close, a glance backward in time seems appropriate. The Alaska Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys recently released its annual summary of mining in Alaska for 2005 (yes, 2005). This report reveals that the gross value of Alaska's mineral industry in 2005 was $1.8 billion. This was the 10th straight year the value exceeded $1 billion and was the highest value ever recorded for the industry. Zinc accounted for 61.5 percent of the total mineral production, followed by gold (13.6 percent),...
Mining companies spent an all-time record $103.9 million on exploration in Alaska in 2005, a big jump from the $70.8 million that was spent the previous year, and a long way from the relatively modest $27.6 million in 2003. At least 16 projects had exploration expenditures of $1 million or more. The companies employed 303 people in exploration projects in 2005, up from 184 in 2004 and 88 in 2003, according to the state's Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys. These impressive figures in Alaska reflected the story...
NovaGold Resources took on Barrick, the world's largest gold producer, and won, but equally tenacious opposition from some residents of Nome has cast a shadow over the Vancouver-based junior's first mine construction project. Just after Barrick withdrew from its hostile takeover bid with just 14.8 percent of NovaGold's shares tendered, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers announced that it was suspending its 404 permit for Rock Creek mine in the wake of a lawsuit. The permit authorized the placement of approximately 13.7 million...
Two Canadian mining companies traded accusations in November as they hurtled toward the latest deadline in Barrick's hostile takeover bid for NovaGold. The world's largest gold producer upped its offer from $14.50 per share to $16 per share and announced it would take up all shares tendered by Nov. 21, regardless of whether it obtained the minimum 50.1 percent of NovaGold that it originally hoped for. NovaGold would have liked to see a "white knight" ride in and rescue it from Barrick's advances with a shinier offer. That...
Normally at this time of year the mining industry's seasonal peak of activity is over and the paucity of news coming from the bush is a function of the dwindling volume of work going on out there. While there has been the anticipated lull in mining results released to the public in the last month, I can almost hear the deep, slow collective inhalation of breath being taken by the industry as it catches its second wind and launches an unusually diverse series of fall and winter programs. These efforts span the gamut from...
By most years' standards, the last month has been a barn burner for mining news. By 2006 standards it hardly measures on the Mining Industry Care-O-Meter, a highly subjective, totally unscientific measurement of what is happening in Alaska's mineral industry. In the last month we have seen the state's largest primary gold deposit resources increase to a mind-boggling 32 million ounces, we've seen one new mine begin commercial construction, we've seen one mine under construction receive a partial injunction against part of...
Drop by Galore Creek camp this summer and you're sure to be well fed. A lively bunch of young people load up their plates with steak, shrimp, potatoes, salads and cakes, refueling after another rainy day in the field. The only slight problem for the casual visitor is getting here. There is no way into this temporary town up in the mountains of British Columbia other than by helicopter. From Wrangell in southeast Alaska a group from the Alaska Miners Association took a five-seater plane to Bob Quinn airstrip across the border...
Barrick's Eskay Creek mine in British Columbia isn't a bad place to work underground. The miners are well paid and happy to be doing their jobs alone, without a boss looking over their shoulder all the time. They consider the search for gold an adventure. And compared with being above ground, where grizzly bears prowl around in summer and up to 60 feet of snow falls in winter, the mine's dark tunnels begin to look like rather a comfortable environment. The sharp-angled roofs of the mine buildings weren't enough to protect...
If there are any NovaGold shareholders left who aren't aware that the Vancouver-based junior is in a dispute with Barrick, the world's number one gold producer, they must be living on the moon. Facing a hostile takeover bid from Toronto-based Barrick, the management of NovaGold filed lawsuits against the major recently in Alaska and British Columbia, alleging that Barrick is misrepresenting the facts about NovaGold's properties to its shareholders. Even if NovaGold doesn't win either of the cases, their existence will almost...
The board of directors of Vancouver-based NovaGold Resources has unanimously recommended that shareholders reject the unsolicited takeover bid by Toronto-based Barrick Gold. At the same time, in mid-August, NovaGold filed a lawsuit against Barrick in the Supreme Court of British Columbia. The lawsuit claims that in making a competing bid for Pioneer Metals, Barrick misused confidential information belonging to NovaGold. NovaGold was already entangled in a lawsuit brought by Vancouver-based Pioneer over the Grace property adja...
Hang on to your hat, the data is beginning to roll in from Alaskan field programs and there are some hum dingers in this month's data and several others will be showing up next month. What's a "hum dinger"? How about an Alaska gold project at the center of a $1.5 billion corporate takeover by the world's largest gold producer? Or how about 75 feet grading more than 2 ounces of gold per ton? Or maybe silver production costs of a negative $2.28 per ounce? But wait, there's more...
The British Columbia Environmental Assessment Office is seeking public comment on an application for an environmental assessment certificate filed by NovaGold Canada Inc. in May. The Vancouver, B.C.-based junior mining company proposes to construct and operate a $1.1 billion open-pit mine operation at its Galore Creek Project in northwestern British Columbia east of the Alaska Panhandle. NovaGold Canada is 100 percent owned by NovaGold Resources Inc, which is also developing the Donlin Creek and Rock Creek mining projects in...
