The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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For the fourth year running, Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nevada, has put forward the legislation aimed at streamlining the process for permitting strategic and critical minerals in the United States. "Critical and strategic minerals are essential to the technologies that make our daily lives and economy work. Unfortunately, when it comes to mining strategic and critical minerals domestically, duplicative regulations, bureaucratic inefficiency, and lack of coordination between federal...
Alaska's rich mineral endowment helped propel the Last Frontier into the top ten on the Fraser Institute's Survey of Mining Companies 2017. 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 Canada-based think-tank compiles this data into the "Investment Attractiveness Index", a measure that weighs mining executives' perceptions of both the mineral...
Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. Feb. 27 said it has initiated a metallurgical test program to determine if a marketable barite concentrate can be produced as a co-product from the Palmer copper-zinc-gold-silver project in Southeast Alaska. In a report published earlier this year, the U.S. Geological Survey named barite among 23 minerals considered "critical" to the economic and national security of the United States. Palmer hosts a volcanogenic massive sulfide (VMS) deposit...
Before color televisions hit the markets in the 1960s, rare earths where a curious group of elements that had the distinction of occupying their own separate section at the bottom of the periodic table but had very few practical applications. Over the ensuing 50 years, however, this group of 15 lanthanides plus yttrium and scandium have been discovered to possess unique properties that make them key ingredients in a wide range of modern products such as terabyte hard-drives...
Graphite is among the 23 metals and minerals the U.S. Geological Survey deemed critical to "the national economy and national security of the United States" in a December report, "Critical Mineral Resources of the United States – Economic and Environmental Geology and Prospects for Future Supply." One of the reasons the USGS considers graphite critical is the growing demand of this mineral as anode material in the lithium-ion batteries that power electric vehicles and a r...
The permitting process for the world-class Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum mine in Southwest Alaska is officially underway. With this monumental milestone comes the first real look at the new Pebble Mine plan, an engineering feat that the Pebble Partnership believes strikes a balance between environmental footprint and sound economics. "There is a sweet spot in which you can drive down the footprint size and still reach a rate-of-return that makes sense," Pebble Partnership CEO...
Ucore Rare Metals Inc. Dec. 22 said President Donald Trump's executive order to ensure reliable supplies of critical minerals is a fundamental policy shift that is important to the company and its Bokan Mountain rare earth elements project in Southeast Alaska. The executive order signed by Trump on Dec. 20 instructs federal agencies to identify and publish a list of critical minerals, and develop a strategy to reduce the United States' reliance on other countries to supply...
Graphite One Resources Inc. Dec. 21 said a U.S. Geological Survey report on critical minerals of the United States and an executive order to develop a federal critical mineral's strategy highlights the importance of the company's Graphite Creek project in western Alaska. The USGS report lists graphite among the 23 metals and minerals critical to "the national economy and national security of the United States." Additionally, Graphite is one of just four critical minerals on...
The Trump Administration's focus on securing domestic sources of critical minerals could help re-invigorate mineral exploration and mine development in Alaska. At least 15 of the 23 critical minerals identified by the U.S. Geological Survey – antimony, barite, beryllium, cobalt, fluorspar, gallium, germanium, graphite, indium, platinum group elements, rare earth elements, rhenium, tantalum, tellurium, tin and vanadium – are found across the Far North state. Working alo...
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, March 28 held a hearing before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources to examine the United States' increasing dependence on foreign sources of minerals and the opportunities we have to rebuild and improve the domestic supply chain. The hearing touched on numerous issues, including permitting delays, which create a significant obstacle to economically viable domestic mineral production. Referring to data recently published by...
CopperBank Resources Corp. sees the need for copper rising sharply as the world shifts to renewable energy sources and believes its Pyramid porphyry copper-gold-molybdenum project on the Alaska Peninsula ideally suited to help fill that demand. CopperBank was founded by self-proclaimed "realistic environmentalist" Gianni Kovacevic, who drove a Tesla Model S sedan across North America last year to raise awareness about the symbiotic relationship between the mining and green...
Western Alaska Copper & Gold Oct. 17 reported results from the 2016 drill program at its Round Top copper-molybdenum project in the Illinois Creek Mining District of western Alaska. The goal of this program, which included the first drilling since Anaconda Minerals Co. tested the property in 1981, was to verify historical holes drilled at the east lobe of the Round Top deposit and then step out to test targets identified by recent soil geochemistry and high resolution...
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...
Is the impasse between Pebble Limited Partnership and U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over the potential development of the world-class Pebble copper deposit in Southwest Alaska about to be resolved? Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd., currently the sole owner of the Pebble Partnership, believes the standoff will likely be over by January if an ongoing lawsuit between Pebble and the EPA runs its full course, and possibly sooner if the parties come to an agreement outside of...
Alaska’s mining sector is in a global competition for mining investment, making it critical for the state to tout its strengths and address its weakness if it wants to attract the capital needed to expand the industry. During a presentation at the Alaska Miners Association fall convention, Doug Silver, a portfolio manager for Orion Mine Finance, provided an international financier’s perspective of Alaska mining sector’s strengths and where it could be doing better. “I have th...
Despite protests by Alaska miners and government, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has pushed ahead with a management plan that will place roughly 74 percent of BLM-administered lands in Alaska’s Eastern Interior region off limits to mining for decades to come. BLM is responsible for the management of 6.5 million acres in the federal government’s Eastern Interior planning area, a roughly 30-million-acre, triangle-shaped expanse of eastern Alaska that stretches from the Yuk...
After eight years of increasing federal regulations, United States miners are encouraged that President Donald Trump, Congress and the American people have formed a trifecta that will support policies aimed at streamline permitting and encourage growth in the mining sector. A poll conducted for NMA earlier this month indicates that the U.S. mining sector and the American populace at large have similar priorities for the Trump administration and 115th Congress. "When they cast...
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...
After eight years of battling anti-mining policies being promulgated by the Obama Administration, the National Mining Association is cautiously optimistic about the positive change in the tone and substance of U.S. resource development policies since Donald Trump has moved into the White House. “The November election ushered in a surprisingly swift and dramatic change, particularly in the way people in Washington D.C. view natural resources,” NMA President and CEO Hal Quinn said during a June 28 keynote speech at the Res...
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 winter programs winding down and summer efforts rapidly ramping up, it is becoming clear that 2017 will be a much more vigorous year for the Alaska mining industry than the 2013 to 2016 period. For example, my internal estimates are already pushing $75 million for exploration activity alone and a significant number of projects that have announced exploration plans have not yet announced budgets for 2017, so that number is likely to rise. Compare this to estimates of less...
American miners hailed President Donald Trump’s plans to slash the red tape holding back infrastructure projects in the United States as positive step in repairing the United States’ deteriorating roads, rails, ports, and airports – a move that could also bolster the industrial sector that would supply the sand, gravel, concrete, zinc, copper and other mined materials needed for the President’s proposed US$1 trillion infrastructure enterprise. “President Trump’s welcome ini...
U.S. House Subcommittee on Energy and Mineral Resources sought input on how to foster a more robust domestic mining sector during a July 20 hearing, "Seeking Innovative Solutions for the Future of Hardrock Mining." "Hardrock mining on federal land in the United States has a storied past, a challenging present and multiple needs for reform," Subcommittee Chairman Paul Gosar, R-Arizona, said. "From rocks to roads, rare earths to green technologies, and iron ore to wind farms,...
A former high ranking United States Army executive charged with acquiring and developing world-class equipment for U.S. soldiers under the Obama and Bush administrations warns that the lack of a domestic source for rare earth elements, or REEs, will be the Achilles heel of American military superiority. "Every one of the current and next round of super and unimaginable US weapons relies on REEs, an exotic assortment of 17 metals and elements, that are neither mined nor...
Alaska is rich in mineral potential but poor in the critical infrastructure needed to fully realize this potential, that was the message Alaska Division of Geological and Geological Surveys Director Steve Masterman delivered to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. During a March 30 hearing, Masterman informed member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that Alaska could be the answer to the United States growing dependence on foreign suppliers for minerals....
