The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Over the past month, the world has been awash in year-end 2013 mining news, ranging from exploration and production statistics to economic impact numbers and mining favorability polls. The Alaska highlights from this wad of info include the results from the annual Fraser Institute political jurisdiction favorability survey where Alaska placed first in the world out of 112 jurisdictions for mineral potential. However, Alaska plummeted to 21st place on the survey's Policy Percep...
As a result of its timely partnership with Dowa Metals & Mining Co. Ltd., Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. has launched the largest single-season exploration program ever carried out the Palmer volcanogenic massive sulfide project near Haines in Southeast Alaska. At US$6.2-million, this year's exploration expenditures at the precious metals enriched copper-zinc project also ranks among the largest programs expected to be carried out in the 49th state during 2014. "The Palmer...
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...
Alaska's natural gas is increasingly replacing diesel as the fuel of choice for mines and mining projects across the Far North State and Yukon Territory. At roughly 37 trillion cubic feet, Alaska is awash in natural gas; however, some 35 tcf of these known reserves are isolated in the Arctic oil and gas fields of the North Slope. The balance, located in the Cook Inlet basin that stretches southwest from Anchorage, has been developed primarily to serve consumers in the...
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...
A group of presenters at the first annual Northern Regions Summit held in Vancouver May 28-30 addressed the nature of "social licenses to operate" and how mining companies should go about getting and keeping them. The dialogue, at the same time, allowed Alaska's Institute of the North, the summit organizer, to showcase young aboriginal leaders from Far North communities in Alaska and Canada. Jason Prno, Ph. D., a researcher and consultant from Waterloo, Ont., moderated a panel discussion titled, "Emerging Leaders Dialogue -...
At the recent Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada meeting in Toronto, Dr. Richard Schodde, managing director of MinEx Consulting, presented some key factors which affect the time span between a mineral discovery and start-up of commercial mining. The study reviewed about 3,500 nonferrous metal deposits discovered between 1950 and 2013. Dr. Schodde's findings suggest that only 45 percent of all discoveries made since 1950 have turned into mines. The rate is...
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...
All exploration in the Kitikmeot region of Nunavut in 2013 was carried out in search of gold and base metals. Mid-tier and major companies conducted most of the work, with mineral exploration and deposit appraisal expenditures totaling an estimated C$121 million in the northern territory's westernmost region. MMG Resources Inc. continued work at its Izok Corridor and Hood zinc-copper projects. The Izok Corridor project includes the High Lake and Izok Lake volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits. Exploration on the Izok Corridor...
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,...
FAIRBANKS - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency endeavor to use a presumed authority under Section 404(c) of the federal Clean Water Act to pre-emptively ban the permits required to develop the Pebble Mine cast a dark shadow over the Arctic International Mining Symposium, a mining convention held in Fairbanks every other year. "We have a federal government that, as far as I am concerned, contains people that are intent on shutting down our state's economy," Pebble Partner...
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...
The Bokan Mountain and Niblack mineral projects are attracting substantial support from Alaska lawmakers. This vote of confidence may result in a financial boost needed to develop the Prince of Wales Island deposits into mines during an otherwise tight financial market. "In southern Southeast (Alaska), we are working on legislation right now to create hundreds of new jobs at Niblack and Bokan," Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell said during an April 10 keynote address at the Arctic Inte...
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...
NovaCopper Inc.'s 2013 exploration program has added another 2.6 billion pounds of copper to the resource at the Bornite project in the Ambler mining district, swelling the size of this Northwest Alaska deposit to 6 billion lbs. of the red metal. Bornite is one of many deposits and prospects that make up the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, a long-term partnership forged between NovaCopper and NANA Regional Corp. in 2011. The alliance combines Bornite and a number of other...
The Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada bestowed its prestigious "Viola R. MacMillan Award" on Capstone Mining Corp., owner and operator of the Minto Mine in central Yukon Territory at its annual convention in Toronto on March 3. The award is named in honor of the PDAC's longest-serving president and is given to a person or company demonstrating leadership in management and financing for the exploration and development of mineral resources. Capstone, a Vancouver-based base metals miner focused on copper, won the...
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...
British Columbia Premier Christy Clark ordered a review of the Canadian province's environmental assessment process in January, saying the current system has become too cumbersome. Clark provided few details when she announced the initiative at the Mineral Exploration Roundup in Vancouver Jan. 27. She said environmental reviews of major projects are crucial, and while the current process is rigorous and transparent, the B.C. environmental assessment office can "do better." "In my view, it is better to do the hard and...
Contango ORE Inc. co-founder Brad Juneau ventured to Alaska seeking natural gas; today, his Texas-based company is sitting on a gold-copper-silver deposit at its Tetlin project with an initial 1.1 million-ounce gold-equivalent resource and a 760,000-acre land package with enough "blue sky" potential to keep a mineral exploration company busy for decades. Following five years of systematic exploration, Contango ORE Jan. 23 reported an indicated resource of 5.97 million metric...
If you believe what you see in the press, Alaska's mineral industry was recently given a Christmas gift that trumps even the high-grade anthracite coal that most Alaskans were dreaming of during the last 40-below cold snap. The Alaska Dispatch reported on a recent presentation at the fall 2013 meeting of the American Geophysical Union titled, "Critical Metals in Western Arctic Ocean Ferromanganese Mineral Deposits," by James Hein, a senior scientist at the U.S. Geological...
Like 2013, this year is expected to be another banner year for mining in British Columbia. An increasingly important industry in Canada's westernmost province, mining takes up a very small portion of British Columbia's vast 944,735 square kilometers (364,764 square miles) land mass - less than one percent - but the industry makes a tremendous impact on the province's economy. Today, British Columbia has 19 operating mines (nine coal and 10 metal). By comparison in 2001, the province had 15 operating mines (seven coal and...
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...
Like most mining jurisdictions worldwide, Yukon Territory encountered numerous challenges in 2013, including the prolonged drought in the capital markets. But the territory still managed to attract investment in more than 100 mineral exploration projects, most of which were follow-ups to campaigns in earlier seasons. The Yukon Geological Survey, in its annual exploration overview to be released Jan. 26, estimates exploration expenditures throughout the territory in 2013 to total about C$45 million, down dramatically from...
I recently attended the 119th Annual Meeting of the Northwest Mining Association in Reno and came away feeling better about Alaska than when I arrived. Alaska Miners Association Director Deantha Crockett chaired and spoke in a session that covered everything from small mining operations and new exploration discoveries to advanced exploration projects and operating mines. The 8 a.m. session was surprisingly well-attended, despite the fact that the hotel was host to 1,000 explor...
