The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 78
Buoyed by the first-ever mineral resource estimate reported for its Yellowknife City Gold Project, Vancouver-based Gold Terra Resource Corp. (formerly TerraX Minerals Inc.) appears to be hitting its exploration stride after a half-dozen years of seeking gold in Northwest Territories. In February, the junior reported new intersections of gold mineralization in a winter drill program carried out at two deposits on its 790-square-kilometer (305 square miles) property. The junior...
The unseasonably, interminably, unspeakably cold spring that is delaying mineral exploration and development work in Alaska this year is being mimicked by a financial chill that is affecting Alaska exploration efforts just like it is the rest of the world. Not to put too fine a point on it, but from a mineral exploration standpoint, Alaska is shaping up to be as dead as a doornail this summer (ever wonder where that saying came from ... but I digress.). How dead? Try this statistic on for size: Of the 49 exploration projects...
Mineral exploration spending in Alaska will likely struggle to top US$80 million for 2014, a dramatic fall from the US$365.1 million pinnacle reached in 2011. "The din of mineral industry activity that is normally a part of the summer months in Alaska is decidedly muted this year as the global mining industry attempts to lift itself off the bottom of a plus-18-month-long slump," Avalon Development President Curt Freeman opined in a June column written for Mining News. Unlike 2...
Over the past month, the world has been awash in year-end 2013 mining news, ranging from exploration and production statistics to economic impact numbers and mining favorability polls. The Alaska highlights from this wad of info include the results from the annual Fraser Institute political jurisdiction favorability survey where Alaska placed first in the world out of 112 jurisdictions for mineral potential. However, Alaska plummeted to 21st place on the survey's Policy Percep...
Amid the volatile metals markets that have become the norm in the past year, miners, developers, explorers, prospectors and investors met in Vancouver at the end of January for the annual Cordilleran Roundup mining convention. The mood was decidely positive, and having seen a lot of "whistling in the cemetary" at this convention in the past, I know the difference between false bravado and contagious optimism. Perhaps it was the stabilization of copper prices after a nine month...
WestMountain Gold Inc. Jan. 28 said it has begun operations at a new testing and processing facility in Anchorage. In addition to housing recovery and metallurgical testing equipment, this facility will serve as a staging area for the company's Terra gold project, located about 140 air miles to the northwest. WestMountain said it will use the facility in the coming months to process concentrate from last year's field season, providing some additional near-term cash flow. The...
Although mineral exploration and development activities continue around the state, year-end total expenditures are beginning to gel, and we are getting an increasingly clear picture of just what sort of year it has been for the Alaska mining industry. For the producing metal mines, gross and net revenue are down over last year, largely due to significant decreases in the spot prices for those metals, with gold down almost 15 percent and silver down almost 25 percent over...
The Dene First Nations of Northwest Territories has created what is likely Canada's first 100 percent aboriginal-owned exploration and mining company. Named DemCo Limited Partnership, the startup will celebrate one year in business in October, and is already making its mark in the industry. DemCo's mission is to enable the Dene to become owners of hardrock mines operating on their own lands. The new company is owned by Denendeh Investments Limited Partnership, which has a membership comprised of First Nations from the five...
WestMountain Gold Inc. has gained full ownership of the Terra project and now has its sights set on recovering 3,000 to 5,000 ounces of gold from this high-grade property over the coming summer season. "I am pleased to announce that we now have 100 percent ownership of the Terra mine project. With this milestone accomplished, WMTN (WestMountain Gold) is now focused on raising operating capital to continue gold production at our high-grade gold mine in Alaska," WestMountain...
If you believe what you see in the press, Alaska's mineral industry was recently given a Christmas gift that trumps even the high-grade anthracite coal that most Alaskans were dreaming of during the last 40-below cold snap. The Alaska Dispatch reported on a recent presentation at the fall 2013 meeting of the American Geophysical Union titled, "Critical Metals in Western Arctic Ocean Ferromanganese Mineral Deposits," by James Hein, a senior scientist at the U.S. Geological...
The ongoing scarcity of venture capital available to junior companies coupled with a retreat in metals prices has landed a one-two blow that sent mineral exploration spending in Alaska plunging for the second straight year. A handful of big-budget projects scattered across Alaska, though, is softening the hit to exploration spending across the Far North State during 2013. Mineral exploration expenditures in Alaska, which were a meager US$23.8 million in 2001, topped US$365...
WMTN: OTC QB President and CEO: Gregory Schifrin Chief operations officer: James Baughman Since optioning the Terra Project from Corvus Gold Inc. in 2010, WestMountain Gold Inc. has been focused on the exploration and development of this high-grade gold project in Southwest Alaska. After completing the set-up of a pilot plant in 2012, WestMountain fed 23 metric tons of material through the two-metric-ton-per-hour mill at the end of the 2012 mining season. This sample of two vein-systems, Ben and Fish Creek, produced 75...
TerraX Minerals Inc. may have crafted the perfect gold exploration program to carry out during a capital-scarce down cycle. The Vancouver-based junior won a competitive bid in January to explore the gold-rich Northbelt claims, which consists of 121 leases totaling 3,562 hectares (8,802 acres) covering about 13 kilometers of strike along the prolific Yellowknife Belt, 15 kilometers (9 miles) north of the city of Yellowknife, Northwest Territories. The property was offered for sale by Samson Belair/Deloitte & Touche Inc.,...
Having enjoyed one of the warmest and driest summers on record, most of Alaska is now paying the piper as unseasonably cold and in many areas, snowy, weather takes hold of the state. With the termination dust come news that is both good and bad, a common theme in what is turning out to be a year of significant cutbacks for exploration, development and production plans. Earlier in 2013, I summarized the expected decrease in exploration expenditures this year. Now that the bulk...
At two metric tons per hour, the mill at WestMountain Gold Inc.'s Terra project is the smallest of the hardrock gold operations in Alaska. But with feedstock exceeding one ounce of gold per metric ton, the electrum recovered from this pilot plant will likely help finance ongoing drilling of the high-grade veins for which the project is known and a much larger deposit believed to be lurking nearby. After completing the set-up of this pilot plant, WestMountain fed 23 metric...
Further proof that the mining industry is undergoing fundamental changes can be found in "Mine: A Confidence Crisis," the 10th edition of PricewaterhouseCoopers's annual report on the global mining industry. This recently released report indicates that in 2012 the top 40 global mining companies saw net profits plummet 49 percent to US$68 billion. To make matters worse, after a 25 percent decline in average mining stock value in 2011 and a slower but still downward trend in 201...
In a year that has started off with more than its share of mining industry gloom and doom, this year's Fraser Institute "Survey of Mining Companies, 2012/2013" provided a bit of sunshine for Alaska. The annual survey of exploration and mining companies gauges the pros and cons of working in various political jurisdictions around the world. This year's results came from 742 mineral industry companies working in 96 jurisdictions worldwide and represented cumulative 2012 explorat...
The mining industry just passed through one of the quietest year-end transitions in over a decade. The last month has seen few new public announcements regarding Alaska mineral occurrences but that relative silence is about to change. Within a week of completing this summary, the 2013 Cordilleran Roundup mineral convention will begin in Vancouver, B.C. This annual event is well-attended by individuals and corporations that are active in Alaska's mineral industry or looking to...
I finally found something I have been thinking about for a long time but had not seen discussed in detail. We have all seen summaries of the declining rate of discoveries for new mineral deposits and have heard about the steadily increasing cost of production, now at a record US$727 per ounce, according to GFMS' Gold Survey 2012. What I really wanted to know was the replacement cost of an ounce or a pound of metal. Let's take gold for example: If I am a producing mine and I just produced an ounce of gold, what is the cost of...
A recent letter distributed to the minerals industry by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources' Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys and the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development's Division of Economic Development is seeking faster and more efficient ways to gather, collate and publish Alaska's Annual Minerals Industry Report. The agencies are looking for feedback regarding what items the industry thinks is important to retain in the report, what items are not in the report that should be...
KOR: TSX/CORVF: OTCQX CEO: Jeffrey Pontius President: Russell Myers Exploration Manager, Alaska: Chris Brown Formed in 2010 to explore International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.'s non-Livengood assets, Corvus Gold Inc. has set out on a path to become a gold producer with significant interest and royalty exposure. While Corvus focuses its in-house efforts on advancing a preliminary economic assessment for North Bullfrog - a southern Nevada bulk tonnage gold project the company plans to put into production by 2015 - the junior has...
Over the past six months, the single-most common question I have gotten asked about Alaska's mineral industry is, "Have there been any significant new discoveries?" While there may be an as-yet unannounced new discovery in Alaska, it seems the above question is being asked more frequently in other parts of the world as well and the most common answer is a simple "no." While information on new discoveries in other sectors of the mining industry is out there, it's not as...
Over a year ago, Natural Resource Holdings published a report entitled "How Rare are One Million Ounce Gold Deposits?" At that time, the publisher ranked 296 gold deposits that have more than 1 million ounces of gold in all resources categories. The same firm recently published a follow-up report titled, "Global Gold Mines & Deposits 2012 Ranking." The report ranks gold deposits above 1 million ounces, whose numbers have increased to 439 deposits with total resources of...
In a long overdue step to bring Alaska into the 21st Century, state and federal agencies met in late June to discuss collaborative funding strategies for Alaska's Statewide Digital Mapping Initiative, an enterprise designed to create Alaska's first high-quality digital topographic map. The roundtable was convened by Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and the Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, U.S. Department of Interior. Alaska remains the only state in the United States...
One year after donning the mantle of chief executive officer at International Tower Hill Mines Ltd., James Komadina abruptly vacated the position recently. The unexpected departure comes less than a week after Tower Hill filed its first-quarter 2012 financial results, revealing a budget overrun of C$46.9 million on Komadina's watch. The vacuum created in the upper echelon of Tower Hill management has pulled in company founder Jeff Pontius to help steer the company through...
