The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Anniversary celebrations, golden milestones and rising metals prices are providing Alaska's metal miners with plenty to cheer about in 2016. Roughly 1 million ounces of gold will be mined in Alaska this year, when you tally the amount of the precious metal produced at four of Alaska's large metal mines – Fort Knox, Pogo, Kensington and Greens Creek – and the placer aurum produced at the family-scale operations across the state. Fortunately for all these miners, gold shot up...
Over the past month, three of Alaska's large mines reported strong quarterly results; two projects in advanced permitting and pre-feasibility reported recent progress; and three exploration properties changed hands. The latter is a trend putting 2015 on course to be one of the most active years for new acquisitions in the past decade. Placer gold production has all but ceased for the year; however, output from Alaska's placer mines is not likely to be known with any certainty...
As a follow-up to last month's realization that once again "the game is afoot" in the mining industry, major gold producer Goldcorp recently presented some arresting statistics at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Metals, Mining and Steel Conference. The presentation showed gold discovery and production information for the global mining industry that indicated that peak gold discovery occurred in 1995, this despite three periods between 1995 and 2015 when exploration...
Over the past six years, Goldstrike Resources Ltd. have been finding zones rich in visible gold across its 570-square kilometer (220 square miles) Plateau property in Yukon Territory - discoveries that have piqued the interest of Newmont Gold Corp. In March, Newmont cut a C$53 million deal to earn up to a 75 percent stake in the expansive and gold-rich Plateau property by paying Goldstrike C$8 million and investing C$38.8 million to explore the gold property over the next decade. The agreement included a C$6 million private...
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...
A Swiss investment fund with ties to Russia-born billionaire Vladimir Iorich has put in a bid to buy the shuttered Mountain Pass rare earth element mine in California, raising red flags for U.S. lawmakers concerned about the United States’ dependence on foreign countries for REEs and other metals necessary to maintain the U.S. military’s high-tech arsenal. To help promote domestic production of these strategic metals and block foreign firms from buying rare earth mines on U.S....
The Lik zinc-lead-silver project in Northwest Alaska is under new ownership. Solitario Zinc Corp., the company that will now push Lik towards development, is the result of Solitario Exploration & Royalty Corp., a Colorado-based company, buying out Zazu Metals Corp., the company that has been advancing Lik over the past decade. Located some 14 miles from Red Dog, a mine that singlehandedly accounts for nearly 5 percent of the world's zinc production, Lik is situated in a...
After roughly two years of taxing negotiations, Teck Alaska and Northwest Arctic Borough have found middle ground on a tax structure that offers the municipality added funds to provide services to a sprawling remote borough without risking the viability of Red Dog during the lows of cyclical metals markets. Teck is the operator of Red Dog and Northwest Arctic Borough is a regional municipality that blankets 40,750 square miles of Northwest Alaska, a minerals rich expanse...
With roughly US$5 million of exploration being carried out on its projects in Alaska, British Columbia and Mexico this year, Millrock Resources Inc. is beginning to reap the benefits of the upswing in the mining sector. "During the industry downturn, Millrock moved boldly to grow its property portfolio," said Millrock President and CEO Greg Beischer. "Now that metal prices and investor sentiment have improved, we are ramping up exploration efforts significantly." This ramp up...
Kivalliq Energy Corp. May 8 said it has cut deals with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., a group that oversees Inuit land claims in Nunavut, and Commander Resources Ltd. to acquire the Baffin Gold property, a 408,982-hectare (1 million acres) land package that blankets the Foxe Fold greenstone belt on Baffin Island, Nunavut. BHP-Billiton, Falconbridge, Commander Resources and AngloGold Ashanti completed more than C$25 million of exploration on this property over a decade starting in 2001. This work includes drilling 158 holes at four...
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...
Colorado Resources Ltd. July 10 reported the start of 7,500-meter initial phase of drilling targeting the Inel zone at its KSP property in the Golden Triangle region of northwestern British Columbia. This drilling will focus on areas to the west and north of the area drilled at the Inel target last year. One hole drilled at Inel last year cut 52 meters averaging 4.93 grams per metric ton gold and 2.7 percent zinc; including a two-meter intercept with 89.1 g/t gold and 2.3 percent zinc. Colorado said that many of the 2016...
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,...
After nearly three decades of operation, Hecla Mining Company's Greens Creek Mine in Southeast Alaska continues to rank among the largest and lowest cost primary silver mines on Earth. On pace to produce between 7.5 and 8 million ounces of silver at a cost of around US$2.50/oz during 2017, Greens Creek is also the cash generating engine that powers Hecla. "Greens Creek continues to be the dominant source of revenue," said Hecla Mining CFO Lindsay Hall, during an Aug. 3...
Goldstrike Resources Ltd. Oct. 4 announced the successful completion of the 2017 exploration program at Plateau, a Yukon gold property the company is advancing in conjunction with Newmont Mining Corp. In March, Newmont cut a C$53 million deal to earn up to a 75 percent stake in the expansive and gold-rich Plateau property by paying Goldstrike C$8 million and investing C$38.8 million to explore the gold property over the next decade. The agreement included a C$6 million private placement financing under which the gold-focused...
Millrock Resources Inc. Aug. 30 announced the start of the 2017 field program at Willoughby and Oweegee Dome projects in the Golden Triangle region of northwestern British Columbia. This program is being carried out by Millrock and funded by Sojourn Exploration Inc. (formerly Sojourn Ventures Inc.), which has options to acquire full ownership of Willoughby and Oweegee Dome from Millrock. Willoughby has a long exploration history, including two phases of drilling. Stationed...
Healthy price gains for zinc and copper this year, and gold rocketing through the US$1,300-per-ounce threshold on Aug. 28, is good news for Alaska's mining sector. Together, zinc and gold account for more than 80 percent of the value of metals mined in Alaska - silver and lead account for most of the balance. Copper, on the other hand, is set up to play an important role for the future of mining in the state. Gold rockets above $1,300 Entering 2017 at US$1,151/oz, gold made...
Kivalliq Energy Corp. July 25 reported the start of a summer exploration program at the Baffin Gold property in Nunavut. This C$775,000 program will include ground-truthing, geological mapping, prospecting, and rock and till sampling. In May, Kivalliq announced that it had signed agreements with Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., a group that oversees Inuit land claims in Nunavut, and Commander Resources Ltd. to acquire the Baffin Gold property, a 408,982-hectare (1 million acres) land...
Aben Resources Ltd. Oct. 5 reported the completion of a property-wide reconnaissance and surface sampling program on its 23,000-hectare (56,800 acres) Forrest Kerr gold project in the Golden Triangle region of northwestern British Columbia. The program included the collection of 360 soil, 11 silt, and 35 rock samples to confirm historic high-grade zones and extend existing multi-element soil anomalies. The company believes the sampling will better define known mineralized...
On March 28, 2016, six days after the U. S. Supreme Court rendered its unanimous opinion in the matter of "Sturgeon v. Frost," I offered testimony before the U.S. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee on behalf of the Alaska Miners Association. My testimony concerned six specific statutory recommendations for resolving many of the ongoing issues Alaskans are laboring under as the result of wrong-headed interpretations by the four major federal land-managing agencies...
Long, grueling, arduous, treacherous and painful are among the many adjectives, and sometimes expletives, used to describe the mining sector's nearly four-year bear market that is showing signs it is ready to hibernate. While Alaska's metal mines have not emerged from this enduring downturn unscathed, the sector remains largely intact and ready to ride metals prices higher. Together, Alaska's mines produced roughly US$2.76 billion of precious and base metals during 2015, down...
On Jan. 12, 2006, the first ore from high-grade underground gold reserves was fed into the mill at the Pogo Mine located near the community of Delta Junction in Alaska's Interior region. Ten years, four floods, two fires and some 3.1 million ounces of gold later, the operation is seen as an example of mining done right. Pogo General Manager Chris Kennedy shared a decade of travails and triumphs, and the lessons learned, during a presentation at the Jan. 21 Resource...
From an expanding ownership interest in one of the largest producing zinc mines on the planet to grassroots gold exploration, NANA Regional Corp. is delving into all phases of mining across the 24.3 million acres of extremely minerals-rich land in Northwest Alaska. During the past 26 years, this Alaska Native regional corporation and the more than 13,800 Iñupiat shareholders whose forebears settled the northwest corner of Alaska thousands of years ago have enjoyed some...
The "National Strategic and Critical Minerals Production Act of 2015," legislation aimed at streamlining the lengthy process of permitting a mine in the United States, passed the U. S. House of Representative Oct. 22. National Mining Association President and CEO Hal Quinn said this bill, introduced by U. S. Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nevada, "will bring the U.S. mine permitting system into the 21st century and help boost the country's economy and manufacturing renaissance." By...
Nunavut's landmass, including the internal waters and offshore lands as legislated by the Nunavut Act, occupies about the size of Greenland or Saudi Arabia. As a proportion of Canada it accounts for roughly one-fifth of the land mass and the territory could contain an equal share of its natural resources. At least half of Nunavut is not properly mapped at a detailed scale in comparison to the rest of the country. However, the federal and territorial government is investing in geological mapping. This allows Nunavut to compete...
