The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Exploration companies familiar with Alaska already know the Far North State is great place to look for critical minerals such as rare earth elements, platinum group metals, cobalt and tin. A new report published by the U.S. Geological Survey, however, indicates that Alaska may be richer in these and other minerals vital to the United States than previously realized. Working alongside the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys, USGS developed a new geospatial tool... Full story
The glimmer of gold and robust Coffee provided North of 60 mining explorers with a much needed pick-me-up in 2016. At the dawn of the year, Alaska and northern Canada’s mining sectors were being dragged down by a long and grueling bear market from five years of sinking metals prices that weighed heavily on the market value and sentiment of explorers. Unfortunately, these bearish conditions cut across both precious and base metals. Gold entered 2016 at US$1,082 per ounce, m... Full story
Endowed with some of the largest undeveloped mineral belts in the world, investment in public geoscience has shown the potential of Nunavut. The 2 million square kilometers (772,000 square miles) of the territory is geologically diverse and offers the potential for many commodities, including gold, diamonds, uranium, iron, base metals, nickel and platinum, making it an attractive destination for exploration. Although many new discoveries are yet to be made, existing mineral... Full story
Mineral exploration in Yukon began 2016 much like it finished 2015... Challenging equity market conditions and cautious investors meant junior exploration companies started the season conservatively. The industry got a boost early in the season with the mid-May announcement of Goldcorp’s (www.goldcorp.com) interest in Kaminak Gold’s (http://kaminak.com) Coffee property. By the time Kaminak shareholders approved the C$520 million deal in July, companies were raising money, expanding field programs and making deals across the... Full story
Like a gong proclaiming the end of the long and arduous bear market for North of 60 mining explorers, the May 12 news that Goldcorp Inc. would buy Kaminak Gold Corp. for roughly C$500 million reverberated from Yukon Territory throughout the North. While the rich lure of developing a mine at Kaminak's robust Coffee gold project lured Goldcorp to the Yukon, it was the exploration potential and the ability to permit and build a mine that convinced the producer to expand into the...
Under the direction of legendary mining explorer Ron Netolitzky, Skeena Resources Ltd. is investigating the gold and copper potential of three highly prospective properties in the Golden Triangle region of British Columbia - Spectrum, Snip and GJ. In April, Skeena published a maiden resource for Spectrum, a gold-copper project about 37 kilometers (23 miles) west of Imperial Metals' Red Chris Mine. The Central zone at Spectrum hosts 8.95 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 1.04 grams per metric ton (290,000 oun... Full story
When judging the health of global mineral exploration, British Columbia seems to be the perfect model. In 2015, roughly C$272 million was invested in discovering and delineating mineral deposits in B.C., down some C$66 million from 2014. This 19.5 percent drop is in lockstep with the decline in global mineral exploration budgets for the same period, according SNL Metals & Mining's World Exploration Trends report. Likewise, B.C. exploration decreased about 60 percent from the...
Over the past four years, Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. has been able to carry out roughly US$20 million of exploration at its Palmer copper- and zinc-rich volcanogenic massive sulfide project in Southeast Alaska. This steady exploration through the recent downturn in mining markets was made possible by a timely partnership with Dowa Metals & Mining Co. Ltd. At the onset of 2013, Dowa and Constantine inked a deal that provides the Tokyo-based smelting and mining company with the opportunity to earn a 49 percent stake in... Full story
Mineral exploration spending in Alaska hit an apex of US$365 million in 2011, but as venture capital for mining explorers dried these expenditures plummeted 78 percent to US$80 million in 2015. However, rising gold prices and a loosening of venture capital in 2016 seems to have marked an end to a painfully long bear market for mining explorers in Alaska. “After taking head shots for the past four years, the industry suddenly came to life over the past month, with new budgets,...
While many of Alaska's mining explorers were riding the brakes on their promising projects going into 2016, Royal Gold and Contango Ore put their figurative foot to the accelerator at the high-grade Tetlin gold project near Tok, an eastern Alaska community at a junction of highways that lead from Canada to Fairbanks and Anchorage. Neither of these companies are your prototypical mineral explorer. Texas-based Contango Ore came to Alaska seeking natural gas and discovered...
Skeena Resources Ltd. Dec. 12 released the final results from the 2016 drill program at its Spectrum-GJ and announced the start of s preliminary economic assessment for this newly expanded gold-copper property in the Golden Triangle of northwestern British Columbia. This year's program included 2,872 meters of drilling in eight holes at the Donnelly deposit on the GJ side of the property and 6,279 meters in 22 holes at the Central zone on the Spectrum side of the property. In 2015, Skeena cut a deal to buy full ownership of...
Mining's contribution to Alaska's economy starts with the hefty paychecks being issued to the some 4,350 miners that work in the state, according to recent study completed by the Alaska Miners Association and McDowell Group. The report, "The economic benefits of Alaska's mining industry," found that the average miner working in Alaska during 2016 received a whopping US$108,000 for the year, about double the average income across all sectors in the state. That is nearly US$470... Full story
Earlier in November, the Alaska Miners Association held its annual convention and trade show in Anchorage and as always, the well-attended convention overlapped with election Tuesday. While the lead up to, and results of, the national and state elections were hot topics throughout the week, one comment I heard from a colleague on the morning after the elections distilled the feelings of a lot of people at the conference. When asked what he thought of the election results, he...
The mining company that’s been working Southeast Alaska’s rare earths project is enthusiastic about President-elect Donald Trump’s support for an independent U.S. strategic metals industry, which Ucore Rare Metals’ top executive says will favorably impact its plans for a domestic Strategic Metals Complex. According to Jim McKenzie, president and CEO of Ucore, China controls more than 90 percent of the global mining and production of rare earths ore and exhibits “near complete control over each subsequent stage of the suppl...
Strong metals prices and a pro-jobs businessman who vows to inject “new American metal into the spine of this country” preparing to set up his office in the White House bodes well for Alaska’s mining sector going into 2017. While a renaissance of Alaska’s mining sector may not be at the top of President-elect Donald Trump’s to-do list, pouring coal on the fire of America’s economic engine – both literally and figuratively – is. The figurative coal important to Alaskan miners...
AuRico Metals Inc. Dec. 23 announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire all of the issued and outstanding securities of Kiska Metals Corp. Under the terms of the agreement, Kiska shareholders will receive 0.0667 AuRico common shares and C1.6 cents in cash for each Kiska share held. Based on AuRico's Dec. 22 closing share price, this values the Kiska shares at roughly C7.8 cents each, or roughly a 95 percent premium to Kiska shares on Dec. 22. The total value of this arrangement is about C$9.6 million....
With C$2.5 million in the bank and roughly two dozen mineral exploration projects it has generated in Alaska, British Columbia, New Mexico and Mexico, Millrock Resources Inc. is prepared for a stellar 2017 as metals prices rise and a bullish sentiment returns to mining markets. "While we will not under-estimate the work ahead, we continue to carry forward into 2017 with a spirit of optimism," Millrock President and CEO Greg Beischer said. "The cycle seems to have changed, and...
According to the United States Geological Survey’s annual report, “Mineral Commodity Summaries 2017,” the value of non-fuel minerals produced in the United States and Alaska during 2016 remained at similar levels to 2015. Alaska mines produced roughly US$3.09 billion worth of minerals, excluding petroleum and coal, marking the seventh year straight that output from Alaska mines have topped US$3 billion. Gold and zinc account for roughly 80 percent of Alaska’s mineral productio...
Dolly Varden Silver Corp. Feb. 16 announced a C$3.5 million budget for its 2017 exploration program at the Dolly Varden silver property in northern British Columbia. This program is expected to include roughly 5,000 meters of drilling, with two-thirds allocated for resource expansion and the balance for testing outlying targets. The company also plans to carry out mapping, geophysical and geochemical surveys at the main Dolly Varden silver-zinc-lead project and the adjacent Big Bulk copper-gold project. To help finance this...
Alaska fell from favor with the 350 mining executives who responded to the Fraser Institute’s Survey of Mining Companies 2016, published on Feb. 28. This group of miners, explorers and consultants ranked the Far North State as the 14th best jurisdiction on Earth to seek and develop a mine. To gather information for its report, the Fraser Institute asks mining executives to rank the mineral potential and mining policies of mining jurisdictions around the globe. The C...
CopperBank Resources Corp. March 7 said it has hired DOWL, an Alaska-based engineering firm, to provide initial infrastructure planning for Pyramid, an advanced exploration project on the Alaska Peninsula that hosts 172.8 million metric tons of inferred resources, averaging 0.35 percent (1.34 billion pounds) copper, 0.02 percent (74.4 million lbs) molybdenum and 0.09 grams per metric tons (488,000 ounces) gold. “Three very important components of any copper project of merit are geology, location and access to i...
With the opening late last month of a public comment period for the environmental impact statement on the proposed Ambler Mining District Industrial Access Project, I am cautiously optimistic that this time, Sisyphus will get the boulder up the hill. As a lowly graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks back in 1979, I helped a crew from Anaconda Minerals color township-size blocks on a huge paper map of the Brooks Range. At the time, Anaconda and numerous other...
The year just past was many things for the mining industry, but one of the bright spots came from the Mine Safety and Health Administration, an agency not known for awarding happy faces or gold stars. In 2016, the mining industry experienced only 25 deaths in U.S. mines, the lowest level ever recorded. This, despite the industry having more than 330,000 miners working in 13,000 mines across the country. The leading cause of death in both coal and metal/nonmetal mines was...
While the mineral exploration season in Interior Alaska typically runs from the time the ground dries in the spring, usually mid-May, until snow and cold weather make logistics too cumbersome and expensive in October, an increasing number of explorers are carrying out successful winter programs in this especially frigid region of the Far North State. Without a doubt, mounting a successful exploration program in temperatures cold enough to make metal brittle and with only...
As the Alaska mining industry prepares for and kicks off exploration, development and production activities for 2017, the question on everyone’s lips at the recent Cordilleran Roundup mining convention in Vancouver, B. C., was the same: “Have we seen the bottom of this down cycle?” While signs of life were seen for short periods during the 2008 to 2015 period, the reality was an overall downward spiral of commodities prices and global demand. However, in a recent editi...
