The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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The value of non-fuel metals produced in Alaska and the United States during 2018 were similar to 2017, according to Mineral Commodity Summaries 2019, an annual report published by the U.S. Geological Survey. Alaska mines produced roughly $3.44 billion worth of non-fuel minerals last year, down nearly 3 percent from the US$3.53 million in 2017. This slight drop is largely due to lower output from the two largest mines in the state – Fort Knox and Pogo. The roughly 1.4 b...
Those of you that attended the recent Cordilleran Roundup Convention in Vancouver can attest to the exuberant, upbeat atmosphere that pervaded the conference and was very much in evidence at the standing-room only festivities at our annual self-hosted Alaska Night meet and greet. But digging down under this veneer of optimism, many of the junior explorers and most of the producers admitted to their expectations of challenging times in 2019. Putting words to this apparent...
Kinross Gold Corp. Feb. 13 reported a nearly 33 percent drop in gold produced at its Fort Knox Mine in Alaska during 2018, when compared to the previous year. This operation about 25 miles north of Fairbanks produced 255,569 ounces of gold last year, a 132,546 oz drop from the 381,115 oz produced in 2017. Kinross said this lower gold output is primarily attributed to a minor pit wall slide that occurred in March, which restricted access to higher-grade ore. This problem was...
IDM Mining Ltd. Jan. 6 reported high-grade gold-silver was encountered during the 2018 trenching of the Randell Vein in the Lost Valley area of its Red Mountain property near Stewart, British Columbia. Situated about 4,000 meters south of the underground gold-silver resource at Red Mountain, the mineralization encountered at Lost Valley is similar in structure and geochemistry to the ore being mined at the Pogo underground gold mine in Alaska. Since 2014, 713 samples,...
WESTERN ALASKA Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. announced that it had finalized a surface right of way agreement with Alaska Peninsula Corporation for use of that latter's lands for the construction and operation of transportation infrastructure associated with the Pebble copper-molybdenum-gold project. Alaska Peninsula Corporation is an Alaska Native village corporation with extensive land holdings proximal to the Pebble site and more than 900 shareholders, many of which live...
Members of the Kaminak Gold Corp. executive team have reunited to form Tectonic Metals Corp., a private exploration company that has acquired three overlooked gold exploration properties in Alaska's Eastern Interior. While with Kaminak, this team advanced the Coffee project in the Yukon from a grassroots discovery to a roughly 5-million-ounce gold mine project that Goldcorp Inc. acquired in 2017 for C$520 million. Cashing in on Coffee, several of the Kaminak executives moved...
Kinross Gold Corp. Nov. 7 reported lower gold production and higher costs at its Fort Knox Mine due to lower ore grades and the minor pit wall slide that occurred at this Interior Alaska operation in March and above average rainfall which affected geotechnical stability during the third quarter. Fort Knox produced 51,984 ounces of gold during the third quarter of 2018, a roughly 49 percent decrease from the 101,047 oz recovered during the same period last year. The per-ounce c...
Underscoring the interconnected nature of the global mining market, not 48 hours after the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act was signed into law, the mining industry began wondering out loud how they were going to produce rare earth element, tungsten, tantalum and molybdenum in the near future. Why these metals and why the worry now? Because one of the many impacts the Defense Authorization Act will have on the U.S. economy is its ban on the U.S. Department of...
FAIRBANKS: An Aug. 15 ceremonial groundbreaking for the Gilmore expansion at Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine marked a new chapter in the life of this important gold operation in the heart of Alaska's Interior. Lying immediately west of the Fort Knox pit, which has produced more than 7 million ounces of gold over the past 22 years, Gilmore is expected to add roughly 1.5 million ounces of gold to the Fairbanks-area operation and extend the life of the mine out to 2030....
Kinross Gold Corp. Aug. 1 reported lower gold production and higher costs at its Fort Knox Mine due to lower ore grades and the minor pit wall slide that occurred at this Interior Alaska operation in March. Fort Knox produced 71,463 ounces of gold during the second quarter of 2018, a roughly 22 percent decrease from the 91,237 oz recovered during the same period last year. The per-ounce cost of Fort Knox gold sold during the quarter was US$969, a 53 increase over the US$635...
Extremely hard and with the highest melting point of all the elements on the periodic table, tungsten is a vital ingredient to a wide-range of industrial and military applications, yet none of this durable metal is currently mined in the United States. According to the United States Geological Survey, more than half of the tungsten consumed in the U.S. last year was used to make the cemented tungsten-carbide, a compound typically made with equal parts tungsten and carbon....
Riversgold Ltd. July 9 said it has begun a seven-week exploration program that is expected to include drilling at several targets on its gold properties in Southwest Alaska. A Perth-based mineral exploration company that listed on the Australia Stock Exchange late in 2017, Riversgold owns three gold exploration properties – Luna-Quicksilver, Kisa and Gemuk – that blanket 27,122 acres of the Kuskokwim Mountains about 95 miles southwest of the 39-million-ounce Donlin Gold Min...
The summer field season is in full bloom across Alaska with programs stretching from the Brooks Range to southeastern Alaska, and from the Yukon border to southwestern Alaska. Exploration targets range from grassroots to mine-site, focused on commodities including gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, cobalt and graphite. For Alaska's exploration industry, planned, announced and estimated expenditures are well over the $100 million mark for 2018. This expenditure level is well...
Nighthawk Gold Corp. June 13 reported a 24 percent increase in the gold resource for the Colomac gold project at the company's Indin Lake property in Northwest Territories. Incorporating the results from 913 historical holes and 175 holes completed by Nighthawk from 2012 through 2017, Colomac now hosts 50.3 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 1.62 grams per metric ton (2.61 million ounces) of gold. Located about 160 kilometers (100 miles) north of Yellowknife,...
Freegold Ventures Ltd. June 7 said it is putting together plans for a drill program aimed at expanding the oxide resource at its Golden Summit gold property near Kinross Gold Corp.’s Fort Knox Mine in Interior Alaska. Located along a paved highway about 30 minutes north of Fairbanks, Golden Summit hosts 61.5 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 0.69 grams per metric ton (1.36 million ounces) gold; and 71.5 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.69 g/t (1.58 million oz) gold. The oxide portion o...
The Fort Knox Mine will continue churning out gold until at least 2030, thanks to Kinross Gold Corp.'s decision to move ahead with the development of Gilmore, an expansion project immediately west of the open-pit mine that has provide ore to the Interior Alaska operation for 22 years. "This go-ahead decision for Gilmore represents collaboration, hard work and dedication coming to fruition, and it wouldn't have been possible without the contributions of many," said Fort Knox...
Riversgold Ltd. June 6 reported that it plans to complete 1,000 meters of drilling on its Southwest Alaska gold properties. A Perth-based mineral exploration company that listed on the Australia Stock Exchange late in 2017, Riversgold owns three gold exploration properties – Luna-Quicksilver, Kisa and Gemuk – that blanket 27,122 acres of the Kuskokwim Mountains about 120 miles southwest of the Donlin Gold project. These properties lie at the southwest end of the Tintina Gold B...
PolarX Ltd. is ready to kick off the initial phase of its 2018 drill program at its Alaska Range copper-gold project. Encompassing the Stellar and Caribou Dome properties, the Alaska Range blankets a 22-mile mineralized trend that hosts Zackly, a high-grade skarn deposit with roughly 91 million pounds of copper and 213,000 ounces of gold; Caribou Dome, a sediment-hosted deposit with 280 million pounds of copper; and numerous exploration targets. The initial 23-hole program...
One of the most common complaints I hear from companies and individuals working in the mineral industry in Alaska is our deplorable lack of modern, usable-scale digital geophysical and geologic maps. How bad is it? Consider this: the U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that less than 2 percent of Alaska has acceptable geophysical data coverage, and less than 20 percent has been geologically mapped at a scale useful to evaluate the state's mineral resources. Nobody will deny...
Nighthawk Gold Corp. May 22 said preliminary metallurgical testing on material from the Colomac gold project on its Indin Lake property in Northwest Territories returned favorable recoveries for all process options. "Although at the early stages of metallurgical test-work, the results to-date describe Colomac rock as exceptional in terms of grind characteristics, gold recoveries, purity, and responsiveness to all standard gold recovery technologies," said Nighthawk President...
Kinross Gold Corp. May 8 reported that its Fort Knox Mine near Fairbanks, Alaska, produced 79,928 ounces of gold during the first quarter of 2018, a roughly 14 percent decrease from the 93,038 oz recovered during the same period last year and about 16 percent lower than the last three months of 2017. "Production at Fort Knox was in line with our expectations for the quarter, although it was lower compared with the fourth quarter of last year. This was mainly due to lower mill...
Riversgold Ltd. April 18 said it is putting together plans to accelerate drilling at gold properties in Southwest Alaska and Australia in the coming months. "We have been working behind the scenes on advancing a number of our projects in WA (Western Australia) and South Australia, whilst also preparing ourselves for the upcoming Alaskan field season," said Allan Kelly, managing director, Riversgold. "We have also picked up some fantastic new projects in WA and Alaska and look...
Thanks to its own rich mineral endowment, Australia is a juggernaut in the world of mining, especially across the Southern Hemisphere. Over the past couple of years, however, a growing number of Aussie mining companies are looking north to Alaska, another minerals-rich land way north of the Equator. At least four Aussie juniors – White Rock Minerals Ltd., PolarX Ltd., Nova Minerals Ltd. and Riversgold Ltd. – and three Australia-based metals producers – South32 Ltd., North...
Thanks largely to increased investments from Aussie mining explorers, mineral exploration spending across Alaska topped US$100 million in 2018. This is well above the roughly US$95 million invested last year and nearly double the US$58 million spent at the bottom of the market in 2015. "Canadian and Australian companies continue to be the source for the bulk of funds spent in Alaska in 2018, together comprising well over 80 percent of the exploration expenditures earmarked...
11 is a milestone year for Kinross Gold Corp. – 25 years as a growing force in the global gold mining sector. Over its first quarter-century, Kinross has grown exponentially, from producing 83,000 ounces of gold with 1.6 million oz of reserves in 1993 to a major expected to produce 2.5 million gold-equivalent-oz from 25.9 million oz of gold reserves in 2018. This dramatic expansion is largely due to Kinross' two-pronged exploration strategy – focusing its own efforts on high...
