The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Mineral exploration activity in Nunavut intensified in 2021 as mining companies mounted larger and more extensive programs in response to stronger capital markets, government infrastructure initiatives, and the easing of restrictions imposed to curb effects of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Spanning 2 million square kilometers (about 782,000 square miles), the territory has 25 communities and about 39,353 residents, of whom 84% are Inuit. Nunavut has no roads, and all but one...
Assays are pending, the unofficial slogan of the 2021 mineral exploration season across Alaska and Canada's North, is a phrase that continues to echo in a void left by the lack of drill results going into the new year. "'Assays pending' has become one of the least popular phrases around the industry this year, given the painfully slow turnaround time at the labs," Tectonic Metals Inc. President and CEO Tony Reda penned in a year-end update on the Vancouver, British Columbia-ba...
Mineral exploration activity in Northwest Territories showed signs of revival in 2021, coming on the heels of the slowest year in recent memory. Excited by renewed interest in gold deposits in and around the capital city of Yellowknife and other hot spots after the pandemic-related restrictions of 2020, juniors joined longtime explorers Nighthawk Gold Corp. and Gold Terra Resource Corp. (formerly TerraX Minerals) in hunting for the yellow metal across the 1.14...
Mining exploration and production activity soared in Yukon Territory in 2021 thanks to high metals prices, pro-industry government policies, and mounting successes in the field. Bouncing back from some of the most challenging working conditions in modern history due to the COVID-19 pandemic, placer and hardrock miners stepped up the pace of their activities, posting record production numbers and promising exploration results. With the rollout of COVID vaccines and the prospect...
Pioneer Alaskans swore that Alaska's economy would be destroyed if "the Natives" secured control of any lands in Alaska. However, they did not realize how practical and pragmatic Alaska Natives have had to be to survive and thrive in their Arctic homeland. Whatever tool was needed to survive, Alaska Natives created it with the minimal materials at hand-skin, wood, stone, jade, copper, seashells, mud, plants, flint, obsidian, snow, and ice. With the settlement of Alaska Native...
NorZinc Ltd. appears headed into the home stretch in its decades-long marathon to bring to production the Prairie Creek zinc mine project in southern Northwest Territories. The junior, formerly Canadian Zinc Corp., Oct. 21 reported completion of an updated preliminary economic assessment of the zinc, lead, and silver mineralization that it hopes to mine and mill at a rate of 2,400 metric tons per day. NorZinc said the PEA lays the groundwork for a new feasibility study for...
Drill results from mineral exploration programs in Canada's Yukon Territory this year are beginning to roll in as numerous companies wind down 2021 field operations in what some describe as one of the busiest mining seasons in years. Coming on the heels of an eight-year capital market down-cycle, plus a 2020 season burdened with operating restrictions due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the current season is bringing more upbeat challenges to Canada's Far North typically associated...
Blackwolf Copper and Gold Ltd., Oct. 18 announced that initial reconnaissance exploration at the company's Cantoo property just north of Hyder, Alaska, and Stewart, British Columbia, identified encouraging quartz vein structures and sulfide mineralization. Specifically, a large, shallow-dipping, gold-bearing structure estimated at over 30 meters wide. Cantoo, located on the Alaskan side of the Golden Triangle, immediately west of the Premier Gold project, and south of the...
Canada is positioning itself as the "global supplier of choice" for the critical minerals and metals essential to tomorrow's technologies, especially the almost unfathomable quantities of raw materials that will be required by a world transitioning to low-carbon energy and electric vehicles. "Demand for minerals and metals continues to grow with an increasing focus on critical minerals – vital in aerospace, healthcare, telecommunications and an array of clean technologies such...
Mineral exploration activity is heating up this summer in Nunavut after a yearlong hiatus sparked by restrictions and cautionary moves driven by the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020. For the northern Canadian territory's two mine operators and a handful of advanced- and early-stage explorers, the outlook for 2021 programs is much brighter. In mid-June, the Government of Nunavut gave Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. the green light to allow its workers living in the Kivalliq region of...
Extremely hard and with the highest melting point of all the metals, tungsten's toughness is legendary. Like many of the other metals that have found their way onto critical mineral lists in Canada, Europe, and the United States, this durable metal is vulnerable to Chinese control. "World tungsten supply was dominated by production in China and exports from China," the U.S. Geological Survey inked in its 2021 mineral commodities report. It is estimated that mines in China...
White Gold Corp., one of the most active mineral exploration companies in Canada's North in recent years, is taking a closer look at Nolan, a property found in Yukon's fabled Sixtymile area near the Alaska border. Here, eager prospectors have pulled gold from the region's creeks and streams since the precious metal was first discovered in the region in 1884. White Gold is betting throngs of prospectors who scoured the area during the past 136 years left a lot of gold behind. T...
From a world-class graphite deposit in the Northwest to rare earths on the Southeast Panhandle, Alaska has the potential to offer a sustainable and secure supply to meet the coming explosive demand for the minerals and metals crucial to the renewable energy and electric vehicle sectors in North America and around the globe. International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank Group, estimates that this shift to low-carbon energy and electric mobility will create nearly...
Far to the north lies the second largest of Canada's three territories, simply named the Northwest Territories, and within this vast region of more than 400,000 square miles lies its only city, the capital called Yellowknife. Yellowknife, and most of the region of the Northwest Territories, lies within what is known as the Canadian Shield, a large area of Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rock, meaning it dates to the earliest part of Earth's history. Scoured down to stone...
Strong metal prices and an infusion of cash from notable resource investors helped to salvage much of a 2020 mineral exploration season in Alaska that became lethargic with disruptions, delays, and shelving of field programs infected by the COVID-19 pandemic early in the year. At its onset, 2020 was looking like it would be the best year for Alaska's mining sector in a decade. Australia-based mining companies were slated to invest nearly US$100 million in mineral exploration...
For many mining companies eyeing prospects in Canada's far north, 2020 presented insurmountable challenges. But for the few explorers and producers focused on Northwest Territories, the year proved to be quite productive, even as a global coronavirus pandemic added expensive restrictions to already costly campaigns. Rigorous restrictions imposed by local and federal officials to quell potential outbreaks of the disease at mining camps and prevent its spread to local...
As 2020, arguably the most calamitous year for northern mining in decades, drew to a close, the Government of Northwest Territories took the unusual step of topping up its annual mining incentives program with an additional C$100,000. In August, the territorial government awarded C$1 million in these grants to 19 junior mining companies and prospectors who proposed mineral exploration programs during the 2020-2021 field season. Normally awarded in the spring, the incentives...
Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd. viewed the start of gold production from its Amaruq and Meliadine mines in Nunavut during 2019 as an inflection point that marked a new era for the company's endeavors in this geologically blessed, politically attractive, and stable northern Canadian Territory jurisdiction. The Toronto-based gold miner, however, did not envision this new era starting with a global pandemic that would suspend operations at its new mines and change the modus operandi at...
Cans, cups, roofs, and foil hats are likely the first things that come to mind when thinking about tin – none of which conjure images of a metal that should be considered critical to a modern country like the United States. According to a study carried out by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, however, tin is the metal expected that be most impacted by new technologies. Commissioned by Rio Tinto, the MIT study found that tin beat out more likely technology metals candidate...
As the price of silver hovered around US$25 per ounce in 2020, Alexco Resource Corp. took the final lap in its race to production at its Keno Hill Silver Project in central Yukon Territory. One of the mining industry's few primary silver producers, Alexco set its sights in June on commissioning its renewed Keno Hill mine and mill in the fourth quarter and shipping silver-rich concentrates to market by year's end. This operation culminates more than a decade of exploration by...
America's supply of tungsten, an extremely durable metal that is vital to a broad range of American industrial sectors, is at high-risk. A recent U.S. Geological Survey assessment to identify which mineral commodities are most at risk to supply disruptions ranked tungsten near the top of the list – alongside rare earth elements, cobalt and graphite, platinum group metals and tungsten. Like many of its neighbors at the top of the mineral commodity supply risk list, much of the...
Resting on the eastern fringe of the Misty Fjords National Monument, at the head of Portland Canal, the Southeast Alaska mining town of Hyder survives through a symbiotic relationship with Stewart, a British Columbia mining town that lies just two miles (3.2 kilometers) to the east. Persisting for over a century as a town that identifies more closely with its Canadian neighbor than distant Alaska towns, Hyder found its lifeline being nearly cut off by the coronavirus...
Ten years ago, Yukon Territory witnessed a minor stampede of mineral explorers, hoping to cash in on new gold discoveries in the White Gold District south of Dawson City. A decade later, gold hunters are again targeting prospects across the northern Canadian territory, drawn by the recent successful startup of a new gold mine at Victoria Gold Corp.'s Dublin Gulch Property east of Dawson City in central Yukon as well as discoveries of other rich aurum deposits in Yukon....
N'tsi Tatay, more widely known as the Windy Craggy Project, is one of North America's largest resources of cobalt with excellent copper, zinc, gold, and silver grades hosted in an Upper Triassic Besshi-style volcanogenic massive sulphide. It is located in the northwestern corner of British Columbia within a regional scale volcano-sedimentary basin, termed Alta Basin, which is a mineralized belt that has the potential for future discoveries. Other known sulphide prospects...
More than a century-old silver discovery turned settlement may see a revitalization with recent exploration efforts at the Keno Hill District. Lying within the traditional land of the First Nation of Na-Cho Nyäk Dun, the Keno Hill Mining District comprises almost 90 square miles (235 square kilometers) characterized by numerous mineral occurrences in more than 35 mines with a history of production. According to the Yukon government records, between 1913 and 1989 the district...
