The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 1201 - 1225 of 1467
From the enormous Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum project to grassroots gold and copper discoveries, the Kahiltna Terrane of Southwest Alaska is becoming a hot destination for mining companies seeking the mineral wealth of this rugged and underexplored region. The Kahiltna assemblage was formed when an arc of islands known as Wrangellia thrust up the ocean floor as it collided with North America. This bulldozed seabed created much of the spectacular mountains of the Alaska...
In the last month, several of Alaska's major metal mines reported strong operating numbers; one company released a preliminary economic assessment and three new mineral exploration companies acquired exploration interests in Alaska. While the functions of explorers and producers are quite different, the symbiotic relationship between the two ends of the mining cycle is unequivocal: exploration would not exist without production and production would eventually cease without...
THISTLE CREEK, Yukon Territory - The Bell Jet Ranger helicopter just landed, while the A-Star unloaded passengers before powering down its engines on the other side of the creek. A third, smaller copter whined as its rotors buffeted bystanders with gusts of dust and debris during takeoff. Meanwhile, a small plane soared overhead. Welcome to the Dawson Mining District of central Yukon in early August. Or as one wag joked: "JFK West!" Visitors prepared to tour Kaminak Gold Corp.'s mining exploration camp here as a three-man...
DAWSON, Yukon Territory - Hardrock mining explorers are capitalizing on unprecedented investor interest and going after paying gold, silver, copper-rich porphyry, lead-zinc and other metal deposits here with uncommon gusto this summer. A few years ago, a multimillion-dollar, single-season exploration program would have been a rare commodity in the Yukon. But this year, at least a half-dozen juniors have joined one major, Kinross Gold Corp., and the Yukon's only producer, Capstone Mining Corp., in forking over megabucks to...
Constantine Metal Resources Ltd.'s 7,500-meter drill program continues to unravel the complex geology of Glacier Creek Prospect at the Palmer copper-zinc-gold-silver project in Southeast Alaska. The South Wall and RW zones at Glacier Creek has been the focus of Constantine's drilling since the junior began exploring Palmer in 2006. With 32 holes drilled into the prospect through 2009, the junior released an initial inferred resource of 4.12 million metric tons grading 2.01...
Two seminal events related to the Alaska mining industry occurred in the past month. First, in late June, Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp. reported the commencement of production at it Kensington gold mine near Juneau. The mine has now joined the ranks of large-scale producers here in Alaska but only after lots of years and lots of dollars, capped by a trip to the U.S. Supreme Court! Hat's off to Coeur for its commitment to Alaska and for its desire to do this job right. Secondly,...
Though most of the gold fever sweeping northern Canada these days is focused on Yukon Territory's White Gold district to the west and near Agnico-Eagle Mines Ltd.'s new Meadowbank Mine to the east in Nunavut, a growing number of explorers are trekking to the territory in between. Mining companies are returning to the Northwest Territories as gold prices set records, including a recent high of US$1,260 per ounce. But most of these explorers are targeting known deposits or previously identified mineralization rather than...
As we contemplate manned space flights to Mars, it may be hard to believe that there are still vast areas of the earth's surface that we have yet to explore. Believe it. The world's knowledge of the geology of Canada's Far North is very limited. To fill this knowledge gap, Canada's federal government embarked in 2008 on an aggressive C$100 million, five-year geological mapping program known as Geo-mapping for Energy and Minerals, or GEM, that at its halfway mark this summer is beginning to yield significant dividends in the...
PEBBLE - Pebble Partnership CEO John Shively opened his June 21 presentation to the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce Make it Monday Forum with the query, "How many people here have heard of the Pebble Mine Project?" The room resonated with laughter in response to Shively's rhetorical question. Though everyone at the luncheon, like the majority of their fellow Alaskans, have been inundated with media coverage regarding Pebble, not even Shively knows what the final plan for the...
As the long-awaited summer solstice comes and goes, Alaska's mining industry is deep in the midst of its summer exploration, development and production programs. Mineral exploration programs are under way from far Southeast Alaska to the Brooks Range, from eastern Interior Alaska to the Seward Peninsula. The commodities being explored for, developed and mined are equally diverse and include gold, silver, copper, nickel, lead, zinc, platinum and palladium. Two new exploration...
Full Metal Minerals Ltd. currently has two drills turning at its Fortymile property in eastern Alaska near the Yukon Territory border and a drill program slated for August at its recently acquired Grizzly Butte copper-gold property in Alaska's Wrangellia Terrane. In addition to drilling these core assets, the Vancouver B.C.-based junior anticipates partner-funded exploration at several of its other properties spanning the state. "It is our objective to get pretty much all of...
Corvus Gold Inc., a Vancouver B.C.-based junior company being formed to explore International Tower Hill Ltd.'s early stage properties, will initially hold four projects in Alaska and the North Bullfrog project in Nevada. Under the terms of the proposed transaction, Tower Hill will retain all assets relating to the Livengood gold project in Alaska and about C$41 million in working capital. Corvus will get the five properties and about C$3 million in cash. The spin-out...
The annual Fraser Institute "Report on Mining Companies, 2009-2010" was recently released to a thundering silence. Several oddball items may help explain the lackluster response, but Alaska fared well in the survey of 333 companies working in 72 jurisdictions worldwide. Alaska ranked 18th out of 72 under the policy potential index, which measures the regulatory attractiveness of a jurisdiction. Not unreasonably, Alaska was beaten by some mining heavyweights like Chile, Quebec,...
When the financial storm of late 2008 wreaked havoc on global markets, Millrock Resources Inc. refrained from splurging its precious cash on expensive drill campaigns. But it didn't it sit idly by waiting for better economic times either. Instead, the Vancouver, B.C.-based junior invested its wealth of geological experience in identifying promising grassroots gold and copper projects. Millrock also formed key alliances with financially stable miners wanting to invest in projec...
As Alaska's mining industry moves into the frenetic summer exploration and development season, the rest of the world is being buffeted by wild financial and commodity "mood swings" that are affecting the metals markets. The big markets shake the little markets and the little markets shake Alaska. Perfect example: the World Gold Council recently reported that China's growing middle class is expected to double its demand for gold for jewelry and investment purposes over the...
Eager to discover whether Rio Tinto Ltd. subsidiary Kennecott Exploration Inc. will exercise its right to buy back a 60 percent stake in the Whistler gold-copper project, Kiska Metals Corp. has launched a 15-hole drill campaign and corresponding 3-D-induced polarization survey to explore the larger potential of the 173-square-mile, or 448-square-kilometer, central Alaska property. The largest portion of the drill program, which began in mid-March, is testing targets within...
As investors clamor for bigger stakes in exploration projects in the White Gold District of Yukon Territory, one astute explorer is shifting part of its focus farther south and eastward. In early April, Northern Tiger Resources Inc., a spin-out of Firestone Ventures Inc. in 2008, reported optioning the 3Ace Property - located about 270 kilometers, or 167.4 miles, north of Watson Lake in southeast Yukon Territory - from longtime Yukon prospector Alex McMillan. The junior formalized terms outlined in a March 5 letter of...
The expansion of North America's infrastructure ended about 500 miles short of reaching the westernmost shores of the United States, leaving more than 350,000 square miles of Alaska without surface transportation or affordable energy. A vast amount of mineral wealth is locked up in this Texas-sized expanse of western Alaska. In its 2010 report, the Alaska Minerals Commission informed state lawmakers that, "Mining is one of few Alaska industries with near-term growth...
I recently attended the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention in Toronto where a buoyant, project-hungry crowd of 22,000 created enough of its own hot air to start the Greenland Icecap melting. In a clear case of anthropogenic global warming, representatives of companies, governments and agencies rolled out their projects in efforts to see and be seen. Alaska was well represented at the conference and should see some new investment interest coming from...
No discussion of opening Canada's Far North to mineral resource development could get far without the focus turning to Nunavut, the nation's newest and least-explored territory. At one-fifth the size of Canada, Nunavut contains 1,994,000 million square kilometers, or 770,000 square miles, (nearly three times the size of Texas). Much of the territory is underlain by Archean-aged rocks similar to those found in the most productive geology in Ontario, Quebec, South Africa, Australia, and Brazil. But much of this geology is...
While the White Gold Project continues to grab headlines, at least four other substantial gold projects in central Yukon Territory are quietly striding toward potential development. Yukon officials say it's all part of the plan. The gold projects reporting recent advancements include Victoria Gold Corp.'s Eagle gold project, Atac Resources Ltd.'s Rau Gold Project, Northern Tiger Resources Inc.'s Sonora Gulch Project, and Northern Freegold Resources Inc.'s Freegold Mountain Project. Global mining hot spot Yukon Energy, Mines...
The Alaska Miners Association recently released an economic benefits summary of the Alaska mining industry. This summary indicated that in 2009 the Alaska mining industry provided 3,300 direct jobs along with 5,200 indirect jobs in 120 communities in Alaska with a combined payroll of US$320 million. Average industry jobs came in at US$83,000 per year, which is 85 percent higher than the average Alaska wage and second only to wages in the oil and gas industry. The industry...
As the price of gold soars to all-time highs and physical demand climbs in the face of a weakening U.S. dollar, gold companies are embracing new approaches and shifting focus from pure gold deposits to polymetallic, or gold-containing, base-metal deposits in the quest to augment diminishing reserves. The scarcity of world-class gold deposits is already taking its toll on the industry's bottom line. Since 2001, the number of gold discoveries has trended downward, and global output has shrunk nearly 5 percent per year. This...
Geologically, Alaska is a terrane wreck, with multiple tectonic plates dumping their mineral payloads over the landscape. Geologists are still sifting through the wreckage in many places across the state to determine which mineral deposits were dumped by which terranes and when - a task not always easily accomplished as pileups have resulted, in many cases, from multiple mineralization events happening in the same geographical regions over time. A terrane is a series of...
Mineral exploration activity in British Columbia fell 58 percent to $154 million in 2009 from C$367 million a year earlier, but one B.C. government official said the outcome still was the sixth-highest for exploration spending in the past 20 years and the province has reason for optimism. "Despite a difficult economic climate in 2009, the mining industry is helping lead the provincial economic recovery," said Randy Hawes, B.C. Minister of State for Mining. Hawes made the announcements during a keynote address at the opening...
