The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Avidian Gold Corp. June 1 said it has signed a binding letter of intent to acquire the Fish Creek gold property near Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine in Alaska from Keltic Enterprises Inc. Situated about four miles east of the area currently being mined at Fort Knox and immediately west of Kinross' Gil deposit, Fish Creek consists of 1,032 acres of state mineral lease lands. Avidian already owns Amanita, 3,608-acre property on state lands boarding the south side of the...
Freegold Ventures Ltd. April 6 announced that winter drilling at Golden Summit has encountered what appears to be an extension of the vein system that fed ore to the historic Cleary Hill Mine, which produced 281,000 ounces of gold from ore averaging 1.3 oz per ton before the operation was shuttered during World War II. The first hole of the winter program, GSDL2001, cut 188 meters averaging 3.69 grams per metric ton gold from a depth of 360 meters. The bottom 20 meters of...
COVID-19 has not affected gold output at Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine but did contribute to higher production costs at the open-pit operation in Alaska during the first quarter of this year. During the first three months of 2020, Fort Knox produced 51,667 ounces of gold, which is slightly less than the 53,183 oz of produced during the previous quarter but a roughly 37% jump over the 37,613 oz of gold produced at the Interior Alaska mine during the first quarter of...
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....
White Rock Minerals Ltd. April 5 said that despite the market uncertainty and travel restrictions related to COVID-19, it intends to carry out at least a limited drill program to expand zinc mineralization and test a new gold discovery on its Red Mountain property in Alaska. "As an exploration company, we understand what it is like to operate in uncertain times with uncertain outcomes," said White Rock Minerals Managing Director Matt Gill. "Work is still progressing, and we...
An employee at Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox gold mine near Fairbanks, Alaska has tested positive for COVID-19. Mine management was informed of the positive test on April 9 and informed the other worker at the open-pit gold operation. Fairbanks Gold Mining Inc., the Kinross subsidiary that operates the mine said the employee that tested positive is doing well and has not developed any serious symptoms at this time and is self-isolating at home. The infected employee has not...
Kinross Gold Corp. April 1 continues to implement comprehensive and proactive measures to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the implementation of more than 140 best practice measures at the Fort Knox Mine in Alaska. These new measures that allow employees to practice "social distancing" or "physical distancing" include: • Staggering shift start times and allowing 10 minutes to clock in and out. • Reducing the number of employees on buses at a time and staggering sea...
A true northern pioneer far from his Eastern European home, 'Wise' Mike Stepovich, settles in a new land and leaves behind a historic legacy in Alaska's Golden Heart City. The history of Fairbanks is not unlike many other gold rush settlements, rife with rugged explorers, savvy tycoons and luckless vagabonds. So, the melting pot of happenstance plays its hand again and begets a fascinating tale of a frontier city and a man far from home. It is hard to say whether Stepovich...
Amidst the scramble to prepare for an imminent pandemic that is roiling mining and metals markets, the three large mines in Interior Alaska have taken the time to look after the members of their community most vulnerable to COVID-19. On March 12, Kinross Fort Knox Mine, Northern Star Resources Ltd. Pogo Mine and Usibelli Coal Mine collectively donated $21,000 to support an emergency funding request received from the North Star Council on Aging for the Fairbanks Senior Center....
Crashing markets, quarantines, closed offices and cancelled events are reverberating across the North of 60 Mining sector in the wake of the World Health Organization declaring the coronavirus strain officially known as COVID-19 a global pandemic. At first, the effects of COVID-19 on mining in Alaska and across Canada's North was being felt mainly by the precipitous drop in the share price of mining companies doing business here – a plunge that is being further fueled by a S...
Rau, an intriguing precious and base metals property at the western end of the 185-kilometer- (115 miles) long Rackla Gold property in the Yukon, will continue to be the primary focus of ATAC Resources Ltd.'s exploration efforts in 2020. Last week, the company published the results from an updated preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for Tiger, a carbonate replacement gold deposit that is the most advanced project on the 660-square kilometer (255 square miles) Rau property....
At just over 200,000 ounces, the 2019 gold production at Fort Knox Mine is the lowest in the 24-year history of this open pit operation a few miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska. The good news is there are indications that gold output will trend higher during 2020. In its end of 2019 results, released on Feb. 12, Kinross Gold Corp. reported a nearly 22 percent drop in gold produced at its Fort Knox mine during 2019, when compared to the previous year. This operation about 25...
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...
White Rock Minerals Ltd. Jan.28 announced the discovery of a large gold anomaly at Red Mountain, an expansive Alaska mineral exploration project better known for the zinc-rich volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits found there. Two VMS deposits on the Red Mountain property – Dry Creek and West Tundra Flats (WTF) – host 9.1 million metric tons of Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee- (JORC) compliant inferred resource averaging 5.8 percent (1.17 billion pounds) zinc; 2.6 perc...
North of 60 Mining News is proud to introduce 20 questions for 2020. Over the course of this series, Mining News will interview mining and political leaders from Alaska, British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon. Each interview will include 20 questions on mining, markets and doing business across Alaska and Canada's North. For the inaugural 20 questions for 2020, Mining News talks with Contango ORE Inc. CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, a longtime mining executive...
Avidian Gold Corp. Jan. 16 provided highlights from the 2019 exploration programs on its Amanita and Golden Zone properties in Alaska. The 3,608-acre Amanita property is on state land boarding the south side of Kinross Gold Corp.'s Kinross Mine. Exploration by Avidian and others have identified one or more oxide gold resources within the Tonsina Trend, a structural corridor on the Amanita property that extends northeast onto the Fort Knox property. Highlights from previous...
Freegold Ventures Ltd. Jan. 16 announced results from the late-season 2019 drill program at Shorty Creek, a porphyry gold-copper project about 75 miles northwest of Fairbanks. The five-hole (1,542 meters) program was funded by a wholly owned subsidiary of South32 Ltd., which entered into an option agreement with Freegold Ventures to acquire 70 percent interest in Shorty Creek for US$30 million, less any money the Australia-based major invests in exploring the promising...
In November 1996, a little over 23 years ago, I began writing quarterly mining news summaries for the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG). Shortly after that, I began writing monthly summaries for this publication's ancestor, Mining News Alaska, and have continued both monthly, quarterly and annual mining news summaries ever since. With this summary, I have written my last Alaska update for North of 60 Mining News. When I wrote my first summary, Greens Creek was milling only...
As the year winds down, mineral industry evaluations for 2019 are being published at a rapid rate. One of the most interesting such global reviews is EY Global Mining and Metals' annual "risk radar" for mining and metals, outlining what mining companies perceive as the top ten risks facing them in the near future. This publication stated that, for the second straight year, "social license to operate" remains the number one risk facing mining companies in 2020. This was...
Since its founding in 2010, Northern Star Resources Ltd. has built a multi-billion-dollar mining company by breathing new life into aging underground gold mines in Australia. Now, the Perth-based company is applying the same strategy that has proven so successful at home to its newly acquired Pogo gold mine in Interior Alaska. This strategy includes making large investments into the exploration, underground mine development and equipment needed to turn Pogo into a tier-one ass...
Kinross Gold Corp. focuses its in-house exploration on high-quality brownfield projects and the discovery of new resources within the existing footprint of several of its mine properties, including extensions of known mineralization, as well as looking at other properties in surrounding districts. The Fort Knox Mine in Interior Alaska is an example of the Toronto-based gold miner's brownfield success. In its 23rd year of operation, this open-pit mine a few miles north of...
Melbourne, Australia-based Nova Minerals Ltd. first looked north to Alaska late in 2017, when it acquired five Alaska properties – Estelle, a gold-copper-silver project about 100 miles northwest of Anchorage; Chip-Loy, a nickel-copper-cobalt-gold-silver-platinum group element project; Bowser Creek, a silver-zinc-lead project; Windy Fork, a rare earth elements property; and Ozzna Creek, a gold-silver-zinc-copper-lead property. Nova Minerals' 2019 exploration focused p...
Freegold Ventures Ltd. is focused on exploring for copper and gold on two properties in Interior Alaska – Golden Summit, an advanced stage gold project just north of Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine, and Shorty Creek, an enticing porphyry copper-gold project about 75 miles northwest of Fairbanks. In March, South32 Ltd. entered into an option agreement with Freegold Ventures to acquire 70 percent interest in Shorty Creek for US$30 million, less any money the A...
Emerging on Alaska's exploration scene in 2018, Tectonic Metals Inc. is a new junior mining company that applies a business-first strategy to managing the risks inherent to advancing grassroots gold discoveries to a multi-million-ounce gold reserve that global mining companies want to buy and the local people want to see developed into a mine. "Junior mining is 99 percent risk, the failure rate is huge, yet nobody has any protocols in place for managing the risks," Tectonic...
Since statehood at least and, to a certain extent, since the earliest territorial days, Alaska has depended on the development of its resources for its prosperity. Fishing and mining were among the earliest major industries to evolve. As the abandoned millsites and canneries around the state will attest, those industries have waxed and waned cyclically. Oil and gas development also made a major impact on the State and undoubtedly will continue to do so well into the future;...
