The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 151 - 175 of 313
Canadian Zinc Corp. May 5 reported that the first four drill holes of an ongoing underground drill program cut the high-grade zinc structure targeted at the Prairie Creek Mine in the Northwest Territories. The 6,000-meter drill program is testing for new areas of mineralization in proximity to the mine workings and aiming to convert a portion of the large inferred mineral resource at Prairie Creek to the indicated category for potential inclusion in an update of the...
Primarily associated with cans, cups and roofs, tin is not the flashiest metal on the market. Despite its lowly ranking, even among base metals, this lackluster commodity fetches around US$8.00 per pound - substantially more than copper, zinc, lead, or even nickel - and Alaska has plenty of it. Strongbow Exploration Inc., a company primarily focused on exploring for nickel in Northwest Territories, is working on a deal that would allow it to acquire two Alaska tin properties...
British Columbia Premier Christy Clark Jan. 26 unveiled C$9 million in new funding to support mining in the province. Clark said the funds will establish a Major Mines Permitting Office to improve coordination of major mine permits across government, add staff to conduct more inspections and permit reviews, and maintain improved turnaround times for notice of work permits. The base budget of the ministry will be increased by about C$6 million, including a portion to make...
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....
Thanks to recent progress in development of several major projects in 2014, the outlook for diamond mining in Northwest Territories is suddenly a lot brighter. This is especially good news for the territory's mining industry, which is largely dependent on the production of diamonds now and in the foreseeable future. This point was driven home most forcefully in "Measuring Success 2014: NWT Diamond Mines Continue to Create Benefits," a report recently released by the NWT & Nunavut Chamber of Mines. An update of a January 2013...
After ushering in devolution in concert with implementing the first phase of a well-reasoned mineral development strategy, the Northwest Territories is eager to attract new mineral resource investment in 2014 in hopes of building on an uptick in exploration activity in recent years. "The Canadian North is the next frontier in mining and mineral development and nowhere is this more evident than in the NWT," said NWT Industry, Tourism, and Investment Minister David Ramsay. Home to the third-richest diamond resources in the...
czn: TSX chairman, President and CEO: John Kearney Vice President, Exploration and coo: Alan Taylor Vice President, permitting and environmental affairs: David Harpley Canadian Zinc Corp. has permits in hand and the majority of the required infrastructure in place to put the Prairie Creek Mine into production, positioning this project to stream some 76 million pounds of zinc, along with 90 million pounds of lead and 2.2 million ounces of silver, per year into global markets. Located in the South Mackenzie Mountains of...
Chief Executive Officer: Richard Li Exploration Manager: Jelle De Bruyckere Selwyn Chihong Mining Ltd.., a Canadian subsidiary of Yunnan Chihong Zinc & Germanium Co. Ltd., is marching the Selwyn zinc-lead project in western Yukon Territory towards production. Yunnan Chihong Zinc & Germanium formed a joint venture with Selwyn Resources Ltd. on the project in 2009. The southern China-based mining and smelting company subsequently invested C$100 million to earn a 50 percent interest in Selwyn and then bought the other half of...
Mineral exploration activity held its own in Nunavut in 2013, despite a tough funding environment and stiff competition from other attractive mining jurisdictions around the world. Of the mineral projects edging closer to development in the territory, the Mary River iron project is likely the closest to startup. For the past two years, the venture, spearheaded by Baffinland Iron Mines Corp., has headlined mining news coming from the Qikiqtani, the territory's easternmost region. The Qikiqtani Region is Nunavut's largest...
Geo-political differences aside, the challenges facing those involved in mineral development in the North are remarkably similar. Whether lack of infrastructure, scarcity of skilled labor, or negative perceptions of mining, northern jurisdictions from Alaska to Greenland grapple daily with same aspects of issues created by their location in the Arctic. This uniformity of concerns brought together about 150 participants in the inaugural Northern Regions Mining Summit in Vancouver May 28-30. Facilitated by Alaska's Institute...
The languishing price of zinc has provided little incentive for investors to embrace companies seeking to explore and develop the next generation of mines that produce this essential metal. However, an expected 1.5 million metric tons of supply being lost to mine closures by 2016 is beginning to galvanize the zinc sector. "In the case of zinc, this is a metal that's been unloved for a long time. As a result there has been very little investment put into the industry. Due to th...
Led by a few key projects, mineral exploration activity held its own in Nunavut in 2013, despite a tough funding environment and stiff competition from other attractive mining jurisdictions around the world. Although the Far North territory has only one operating mine, at least eight mineral projects are currently hurtling through development and the permitting process on their way to production. Of these, two projects - one gold and one iron - have project certificates, and six projects are advancing through the...
Kivalliq, located northwest of Hudson Bay and sharing a border with the Northwest Territories and Manitoba, is the heart of Nunavut's gold country. This central region of the territory is also the home of Nunavut's sole operating mine, Meadowbank. The region's diverse geology hosts a number of mineral occurrences and deposits, particularly gold, uranium, nickel, platinum group elements, base metals, rare earth elements, and diamonds. In 2013, exploration activity in the Kivalliq Region primarily involved gold and uranium,...
Scotiabank's Commodity Price Index, having lost steam in late 2013, is expected to bottom out this spring and rally in the second half of 2014 on stronger global growth, Scotiabank Vice President, Economics Patricia M. Mohr told an overflow crowd attending the 2014 Nunavut Mining Symposium in April. Mohr, a commodities market specialist at the Toronto-based international bank, again opened the 17th annual gathering, held April 7-10 in Iqaluit, NU, the northern territory's capital. She said growth in the global manufacturing...
When it comes to policies that attract mining investments, Alaska, British Columbia and the Canadian territories all lost ground compared to their global competition, according to the Fraser Institute's Survey of Mining Companies 2013. The 690 mining executives that completed the annual survey, however, consider these northern neighbors among the top-20 places in the world in terms of "pure mineral potential." The policy perception index (formerly referred to as the policy...
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 Government of Yukon released a final land use plan for the Peel River Watershed region Jan. 21, sparking sharp criticism in recent weeks from the major stakeholders in the agreement and at least one appeal. In unveiling the plan, Yukon Premier Darrell Pasloski touted the "balanced approach" the government took to protect the natural environment while respecting all sectors of the territory's economy. Roughly the size of Ireland, the Peel River Watershed sprawls over 77,000 square kilometers (30,000 square miles) of...
With devolution around the corner and a well-reasoned mineral development strategy in place, government and industry officials in Northwest Territories are making a concerted effort to alert the world to the mineral resource and investment opportunities to be found in Canada's Far North, especially in the jurisdiction that boasts the third-richest diamond resources in the world. In addition to three operating diamond mines and the sole tungsten producer in the West, NWT currently has six well-advanced mine projects working...
Northwest Territories continued to benefit in 2013 from a recent surge of exploration interest. A vast expanse of mountains, forests and tundra that is roughly two-thirds the size of Alaska, the territory covers 1.17 million square kilometers (431,162 square miles). "We have, in the North, what the world wants - what emerging markets need," Northwest Territories Premier Robert "Bob" McLeod told an audience at a Prospects North gathering in Yellowknife Sept. 11. "We are the third-largest diamond producer in the world. In...
There is a reason why Nunavut has one of the fastest-growing economies in Canada: mining. With one operating gold mine at Meadowbank, two huge projects on the verge of startup at Hope Bay and Mary River, five projects advancing through the environmental assessment process at Meliadine, Back River, Hackett River, and the Izok corridor as well as exploration activities continuing across all three regions of the territory in 2013, there's little wonder that Nunavut's "time has come." "Mining has the best potential to create...
CZN: TSX Chairman, President and CEO: John Kearney VICE PRESIDENT, EXPLORATION: Alan Taylor Vice President, Permitting and Environmental Affairs: David Harpley Canadian Zinc Corp. focused in 2013 on the Prairie Creek Mine, an advanced-staged, partially developed zinc-lead-silver property located in the Northwest Territories. Prairie Creek is an underground operation that will utilize multiple mining methods to access readily available ore. The company has the majority of the required infrastructure in place, including a...
Before we take a peek at what is happening across Alaska, I'd like to summarize a superb presentation on the world's exploration industry presented by MinEx Consulting's Richard Shodde at a mining conference in South Africa. He pointed out that since 1990 there has been a very strong correlation between gold price and exploration expenditures. While not earth-shattering in itself, he took the conclusion one step farther: analyst predictions for the gold price through 2020 are...
Canadian Zinc Corp. in recent weeks has reported significant progress in wading through the final regulatory and financial obstacles that could potentially bar its path to bringing the Prairie Creek Mine Project into production. Prairie Creek Mine is an advanced-staged zinc-lead-silver project located 500 kilometers (310 miles) west of Yellowknife in southwestern Northwest Territories. Canadian Zinc is working to develop a 1,000-metric-ton-per-day underground mining operation at Prairie Creek using multiple methods to access...
Further proof that the mining industry is undergoing fundamental changes can be found in "Mine: A Confidence Crisis," the 10th edition of PricewaterhouseCoopers's annual report on the global mining industry. This recently released report indicates that in 2012 the top 40 global mining companies saw net profits plummet 49 percent to US$68 billion. To make matters worse, after a 25 percent decline in average mining stock value in 2011 and a slower but still downward trend in 201...
Among the dozen or so companies that are advancing mineral-rich deposits in Nunavut this year, none has more going on inside and outside of the territory this summer than Glencore Xstrata plc. Xstrata plc, owner of the Hackett River silver-zinc project located in western Nunavut, merged with Glencore International plc in late May to become one of the world's largest mining and trading companies. The US$30 billion deal created a mega-entity that employs nearly 200,000 people in 50 countries around the globe to generate full...
