The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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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...
Graphite One Resources Inc. Feb. 17 reported that the final 10 holes of its 2014 drill program continue to encounter significant widths of near surface graphite mineralization along 700 meters of strike at its Graphite Creek property near Nome, Alaska. Highlights include: 42.81 meters of 6.27 percent graphitic carbon from a depth of 18.91 meters in hole 14GCH012; 24.56 meters of 6.76 percent graphitic carbon from a depth of 3.95 meters in hole 14GC020; and 38.8 meters of 7.8...
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...
Graphite One Resources Inc. Feb. 6 said it has struck an agreement to extend its deadline to buy a 2 percent net smelter return royalty applicable to 28 of its Graphite Creek mining claims. Pursuant to the original agreement with the vendor of the claims, Cedar Mountain Exploration (Alaska) Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Graphite One, had the right to purchase the royalty by Jan. 24, 2015 for C$1 million. Under a new agreement, the royalty purchase option may now be exercised until Jan. 24, 2017, or six months after the...
The nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away." As 2014 quickly slip-slides away, these normally melancholy lyrics by Paul Simon take on a surprisingly upbeat meaning for Alaska's mining industry. Unlike watching most years slip by, seeing 2014 in the rearview mirror will bring a smile to most in the mining industry, not only in Alaska, but worldwide. This was our third consecutive year of declining commodities prices, near-zero investor interest and the...
As the year winds down, financial information has begun to trickle in quantifying just how tough 2014 was on the mining industry. Industry analyst SNL Metals & Mining announced that the total estimated global budget for nonferrous metals exploration dropped another 25 percent in 2014, to US$11.36 billion, from US$15.19 billion in 2013. Perhaps even more arresting is the precipitous fall in just the past two years from an all-time high of US$21.5 billion in nonferrous metal exp...
GPH: TSX.V Executive Chairman: Doug Smith President and CEO: Anthony Huston General Manager, Operations: David Hembree Graphite One Resources Inc. is focused on advancing the Graphite Creek project in western Alaska to production as quickly as possible. Over the previous two years, the company has drilled 28 holes which have resulted in an inferred resource of 186.9 million metric tons grading 5.5 percent graphite. The current deposit represents drilling along less than 30 percent of an 18-kilometer- (11.2 miles) long...
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...
Will Alaska be home to a "gigamine" that fills explosive future graphite demand expected to be driven by Tesla Motors' lithium-ion battery Gigafactory and the larger market for battery-powered vehicles and devices? Graphite One Resources hopes the answer is yes. In early September Tesla announced that Nevada would be the home of the Gigafactory, a massive facility that aims to produce enough lithium ion batteries annually to power 500,000 electric vehicles. For perspective,...
At the same time as the EPA is pushing forward on its planned precedent-setting, pre-emptive, pre-permit veto of the Pebble project and the tailings dam failure at the Mount Polley mine in British Columbia, former Gold Fields Ltd. Chief Geologist Rael Lipson published an eye-opening summary of where porphyry copper-gold projects like Pebble, Mt. Polley and dozens of others around the world fit into the future of gold production. The article, appearing in the July 2014...
At the recent Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada meeting in Toronto, Dr. Richard Schodde, managing director of MinEx Consulting, presented some key factors which affect the time span between a mineral discovery and start-up of commercial mining. The study reviewed about 3,500 nonferrous metal deposits discovered between 1950 and 2013. Dr. Schodde's findings suggest that only 45 percent of all discoveries made since 1950 have turned into mines. The rate is...
When it comes to policies that attract mining investments, Alaska, British Columbia and the Canadian territories all lost ground compared to their global competition, according to the Fraser Institute's Survey of Mining Companies 2013. The 690 mining executives that completed the annual survey, however, consider these northern neighbors among the top-20 places in the world in terms of "pure mineral potential." The policy perception index (formerly referred to as the policy...
Due to its isolation in the far reaches of Western Alaska, Graphite Creek has long been regarded as an enormous deposit of an industrial mineral with little value. Today, however, graphite has been elevated to the status of a technology mineral and the once-secluded deposit sits on the threshold of the burgeoning Arctic shipping lanes that promise to dramatically reduce the transport time between Europe and Pacific ports. With demand on the rise and access to Graphite Creek...
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...
I recently attended the 119th Annual Meeting of the Northwest Mining Association in Reno and came away feeling better about Alaska than when I arrived. Alaska Miners Association Director Deantha Crockett chaired and spoke in a session that covered everything from small mining operations and new exploration discoveries to advanced exploration projects and operating mines. The 8 a.m. session was surprisingly well-attended, despite the fact that the hotel was host to 1,000 explor...
For those of you that could not attend, the annual Alaska Miners Association Convention and Trade Show was well-attended, with most people pleasantly surprised by the strong turnout. Compared to a year ago, more companies are planning to get back in the field with exploration and development programs in 2014, a sentiment making up one of the few bright spots in a recent IntierraRMG resource sector exploration summary. This report and a similar snapshot of the exploration...
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...
Market-defying mineral exploration grabbed the spotlight in British Columbia throughout 2013, despite the doldrums that appeared to set in north of the 60th parallel. "British Columbia is blessed with an abundant supply of the resources the world needs and the most innovative mining and exploration sectors," British Columbia Premier Christy Clark touted the phenomenon at the 2013 Mineral Exploration Roundup in January. Still, Clark told the crowd that she doubted B.C. exploration could top the record C$462 million spent in...
GPH: TSX-V Chairman and CEO: Charles Chebry President: Anthony Huston Vice President, Exploration: Dean Besserer Upon closing a C$2.2-million financing in September, Graphite One Resources Inc. mounted a late season drill campaign aimed at expanding the aptly named Graphite Creek project. Situated roughly 40 miles (65 kilometers) north of Nome, Graphite Creek has long been suspected to host between 6 million and 20 million tons of crystalline-flake graphite. This assumption was based on a 100-meter-thick graphite-rich layer...
As I write this summary, the annual Alaska Miners Association Convention and Trade Show is right around the corner (Nov. 6-8). Despite the softening commodities prices and generally bearish sentiment expressed by the mining industry throughout the year, in the past month or so, I have seen a refreshing resurgence of that single-most important quality of the Alaska mining industry - optimism! Despite bankruptcies, mine closures, negative feasibility studies and the exodus from...
The lithium-ion battery, power source of the burgeoning electric and hybrid vehicle market, is one of a number of high-technology applications that need healthy doses of graphite. Yet the United States lacks a domestic mine producing this industrial mineral that has gotten a high-tech makeover. The Graphite Creek project in western Alaska, however, hosts one of the largest graphite resources on the planet, a repository that Graphite One Resources hopes to develop into a major global supply of this carboniferous material....
While Imperial Metals Corp. forges ahead with development of its Red Chris Mine Project in northwestern British Columbia, exploration fever is building a few miles to the northwest as Colorado Resources Ltd. delivers early excitement on ground that others have already explored. Not only has the junior's aggressive 2013 exploration program on the 5,188-hectare (12,820 acres) North ROK property attracted attention from investors, it also helped to draw a slew of other explorers to the area. The excitement started in April when...
Mineral consulting group Behre Dolbear Group Inc. released its 2013 "Ranking of Countries For Mining Investment Where Not to Invest." Since 1999 the group has compiled annual political risk assessments from key players in the global mining industry. Geology and mineral potential are not considered in this survey, since such potential is inherently indicated by the fact that mineral exploration, development, and mining activity are occurring in these countries. The only...
