The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. came out on the winning side of a Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling on a lawsuit brought by Southeast Alaska Conservation Council and others that challenged federal permits for road building on the company's Palmer zinc-copper-gold-silver-barite project near Haines, Alaska. "We believe the Ninth Circuit decided correctly on this matter and are pleased with the final decision," said Liz Cornejo, community liaison and advisor to Constantine...
Much like Mark Twain, who quipped, "The report of my death was an exaggeration," when informed of his obituary in an American newspaper, Politico's report of the untimely demise of the Pebble Mine project in Southwest Alaska was grossly overstated. On Aug. 22 Politico reported, "The Trump administration is planning to block the proposed Pebble Mine in Alaska early next week ... marking a surprise reversal that could be the death knell for the massive copper and gold project."...
Already known for its world-class copper, gold, molybdenum and silver endowment, the Pebble deposit in Southwest Alaska is also host to one of Earth's most significant accumulations of rhenium, a highly heat resistant and extremely rare metal that has been deemed critical to the economic and national security of the United States. While Pebble has long been known to host rhenium associated with the molybdenum minerals in the deposit, an official resource of this critical...
With the federal permitting process coming to a close, it is becoming increasingly likely that a mine developed at the world-class Pebble project in Southwest Alaska could become a significant domestic source of copper, gold and other metals demanded by America's manufacturing sectors. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the lead federal regulator for permitting the Pebble Mine under the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), published the final environmental impact statement...
The COVID-19 pandemic has led NANA Corp. and its mining partners, Teck Resources Ltd. and Ambler Metals LLC, to adjust their mineral exploration and mine development plans in order to meet the ever-evolving health and safety mandates to keep shareholders, employees and residents of Northwest Alaska as safe as possible. "Although the pandemic was unexpected, learning to adapt is nothing new for the region and Iñupiaq people. For 40 years, NANA shareholders have supported...
The U.S. Department of Interior issued two decisions that mark a major milestone along the path of permitting a road to the incredibly rich and strategically important Ambler Mining District in Northwest Alaska. On July 23, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the National Park Service (NPS) with the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, issued a record of decision that authorizes a right-of-way for the proposed 211-mile-long road...
After 13 years as the top executive at Ucore Rare Metals Inc., Jim McKenzie is stepping down from his role as president and CEO of the rare earth exploration and technology company to pursue other business interests. Under McKenzie's leadership, Ucore established a rare earths deposit at its Bokan Mountain project in Southeast Alaska and has pursued new technologies to separate the rare earths, a technology that is key to establishing a REE sector in North America. "Building a...
The price of oil and gold heading in opposite directions in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic could mark a tipping point that steers Alaska's economy on a new trajectory more rapidly than policymakers and prognosticators previously envisioned. As lawmakers focus their attention on slowing the spread of novel coronavirus in Alaska and re-opening the state for business as quickly and safely possible, the largest revenue stream to state coffers plummeted to subzero territory....
Ucore Rare Metals Inc. Feb. 10 announced that the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority (AIDEA) has reaffirmed its interest in funding the Alaska Strategic Metals Complex, a rare earth element separation facility that Ucore Rare Metals is planning to develop near Ketchikan, Alaska, and an eventual mine at the nearby Bokan Mountain REE project. Created by the Alaska Legislature in 1967, AIDEA is the development finance arm of the state of Alaska. This authority...
Alaska mines produced roughly $3.13 billion worth of non-fuel minerals last year, down roughly 9 percent from the US$3.44 billion in 2018, according to Mineral Commodity Summaries 2020, an annual report published by the U.S. Geological Survey on Feb. 6 – the earliest comprehensive source of world mineral production data. The drop in Alaska mine production value is largely due to lower output from the two largest gold mines in the state – Fort Knox and Pogo. According to ear...
It was the vast petroleum reserves lying under what is now the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. (ASRC) region and the need to build a roughly 800-mile pipeline to deliver oil to global markets that prompted the need to settle aboriginal land claims in Alaska and led to the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, commonly referred to as ANCSA. Signed into law by U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1971 ANCSA involved a unique plan to organize Alaska Natives into 12 regional...
With more than half of Alaska's entire population living within its region, Cook Inlet Region Inc., more commonly known as CIRI, is the most metropolitan of the 12 landholding Alaska Native regional corporations. While CIRI has leveraged its urban position with retail developments such as Tikahtnu Commons, an enormous retail and entertainment center on the outskirts of Anchorage, the Southcentral Alaska regional corporation also has oil and gas, renewable energy and mining...
With two Australian companies making major investments and several exploration companies from Down Under chomping at the bit to get into the field, 2020 is shaping up to be the best year for Alaska's mining sector in a decade. When you add up the investments South32 Ltd. plans to make in the Ambler Mining District and other exploration projects; Northern Star Resources Ltd.'s spending at the Pogo gold mine; and the exploration dollars at least five other Aussie companies are...
Resolution Minerals Ltd. (formerly Northern Cobalt Ltd.) Dec. 16 announced that it has formally entered into an option to joint venture Millrock Resources Inc.'s 64North gold project in Alaska. Previously known as the Goodpaster project, 64North includes nine claim blocks – West Pogo, Shaw, Eagle, LMS-X, South Pogo, East Pogo, North Pogo, Last Chance and Divide – covering roughly 160,000 acres in the Goodpaster Mining District, a gold-rich area of Interior Alaska anchored by...
Development of the rich mineral resource in Alaska's Ambler Mining District took another major leap forward with the Dec. 19 announcement that Australia-based South32 Ltd. is investing US$145 million to become a 50 percent joint venture partner in Trilogy Metals Inc.'s Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects (UKMP). This Northwest Alaska project covers a more than 70-mile (115 kilometers) stretch of Earth's crust that is uncommonly rich in a variety of precious, base and critical...
From helmet mounted radios to laser guided missiles, rare earth elements (REE) are an essential ingredient to the advanced hardware used by the U.S. military. These high-tech metals, however, are not produced in America, forcing the Pentagon to depend primarily on China for its supply. As part of a joint armed forces effort to establish a domestic source of rare earths, the U.S. Army is looking to invest in the processing facilities needed to ensure a reliable supply of these...
SPARKS, Nev. – The notoriously long timeline for permitting a mine in the United States may soon be shortened. This reprieve is not from the various renditions of mine permit reform that has been introduced to Congress over the past decade but from an agency in Washington D.C. that most people have never heard of – the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council (FPISC). Alexander Herrgott, executive director of FPISC, drew the nervous laughter he was expecting when he...
An abnormally long fall has allowed the Alaska mining industry to extend seasonal work well into mid-October, creating a lot of new information about project work conducted around the state. Exploration efforts, in particular, benefitted from this additional field time. Based on information available to date, 2019 exploration expenditures are expected to be in the $135-140 million range, well ahead of the $120-125 million exploration spending tracked for 2018. In addition,...
Ucore Rare Metals Inc. Oct. 15 announced that 38,500 metric tons of critical minerals have been added to the resource for its Bokan Dotson-Ridge rare earth project in Southeast Alaska. The new metals added as co-products to the REEs already defined at Bokan include niobium, zirconium, beryllium, hafnium, titanium and vanadium. Using a cut-off grade of 0.4 percent for the rare earths, the Bokan deposit hosts 4.79 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 460 parts per...
Alaska Gov. Michael Dunleavy and Alaska's entire delegation in Washington D.C. welcomed the Trump administration's plan to exempt the Tongass National Forest from the 2001 Roadless Rule, which would lift impediments to forestry, mining and other activities across Southeast Alaska. "Today's announcement on the roadless rule is further proof that Alaska's economic outlook is looking brighter every day," Dunleavy said on the U.S. Forest Service Oct. 15 announcement that it is...
In a recent letter to the White House, Alaska Governor Michael Dunleavy has requested that U.S. President Donald Trump consider designating the Graphite Creek mine project and associated processing facility as a high-priority infrastructure project under Executive Order 13766, signed by Trump shortly after he took office in 2017. "Graphite Creek is the largest deposit of graphite in the nation, and would be a superior domestic supply of this critical mineral, which is...
While mining activity remained strong in the Northwest Territories in 2019, industry and government officials alike worried that the robust sector, driven largely by production at three diamond mines, has entered a prolonged downward slide. The near-term economic outlook for the territory, which covers 1.3 million square kilometers in Canada's central Arctic region, continues to be bleak as its diamond mines that have now passed peak production and replacement projects are in...
Twenty years ago, Canada created the territory of Nunavut, carving out the easternmost part of the Northwest Territories to form the country's northernmost jurisdiction. A vast land of lakes and tundra sprawled across the North from the Hudson Bay to the Arctic Ocean and east to Baffin Bay and the coastal waters of Greenland, Nunavut is home to only about 38,000 people, of whom 85 percent are indigenous Inuit who have lived in this frozen land for millennia. Since 1999,...
Each July for the past four decades I have traveled to the Rocky Mountain Mineral Law Foundation’s Annual Institute for the purpose of maintaining my credentials as a lawyer and to keep abreast of developments in the mining industry. Each year I come away with new information and a better insight into matters of interest to me and my clients. One cannot practice mining law for very long without realizing that there is a mountain of statutes and regulations that impact the i...
If you pay any attention to the popular press, it is difficult to avoid critical references to President Trump. He has become the effigy for everything from political division to global iconoclasm. However, as is the case with so many national issues; the impact of the intense debates inside the Beltway have only an attenuated resonance on the Last Frontier. The on-going controversy between elitist progressive governance and populistic resistance surfaced with the 2016 electio...
