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...
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...
Following a rising chorus of junior companies touting impressive exploration programs on mineral prospects across Alaska that reached its crescendo in 2011, a deafening silence is resonating across the Far North expanse in 2013. And in the junior mining sector, no news is bad news. Mineral exploration expenditures in Alaska, which were a meager US$23.8 million in 2001, climbed to US$347 million by 2008. The "Great Recession of 2008" tightened the equity markets, resulting in...
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...
Alaska miners are on the cusp of topping 1 million ounces of gold produced, an annual milestone that has not been achieved since Gold Rush pioneers recovered copious amounts of alluvial aurum at the turn of the 20th Century. "When you think about what a million ounces of production means, it is all the more amazing that it was first accomplished by placer miners and a few lode miners, a few shovelfuls at a time, more than a century ago!" Curt Freeman, a well-known Alaska...
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...
ITH: TSX / THM: NYSE-A Chairman: Daniel Carriere President and CEO: Don Ewigleben Vice President, Alaska: Tom Irwin Alaska General Manager: Karl Hanneman With the goal of advancing the world-class Money Knob deposit to production by 2018, International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. is crunching the numbers on the feasibility of building a mine at Livengood. With an all-in resource of 20.6 million ounces of gold, the Money Knob deposit at Livengood ranks as the 14th largest undeveloped deposit of gold on the planet, according to a...
An employment forecast published by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development in October pegged the state's mining sector job growth from 2010 to 2020 at 19 percent. That is second only to health care, at 31 percent, and outpacing the 12 percent average growth across all Alaska industries. Expansion of current operations coupled with prospects of building mines at the world-class Livengood and Donlin gold deposits were cited as drivers behind adding new miners t...
As the first cooler days and termination dust start appearing across Alaska, seasonal exploration activities are winding down and operating mines are preparing for another winter. To be sure, less money was spent on fewer projects by the mineral industry exploring and developing Alaska's mineral resources in 2012 versus 2011. More advanced-stage projects that added ounces or pounds to their resource base had a better go of it than early-stage exploration projects which have...
Don Ewigleben and Tom Irwin - two figures that played key roles in the development of Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine - are once again united to develop a world-class gold deposit in Interior Alaska. Filling a void created by the sudden departure of James Komadina in May, International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. appointed Chairman Ewigleben president and CEO of the company looking to develop the 20-million-ounce Livengood gold project. Ewigleben, a lawyer who spent 35 years...
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...
The winds of change are once again blowing across Alaska's mineral industry, not only because the industry is gearing up for another busy summer season, but also because the mining investment climate has turned from cautiously optimistic to decidedly undecided. The sea change occurred steadily and without a lot of fanfare between mid-January and mid-March. As is always the case, good projects continue to advance with those that are drilling and adding resources or moving throu...
The Fraser Institute's "Survey of Mining Companies, 2011/2012" was recently released to the public. This annual survey of exploration and mining companies gauges the pros and cons of working in various countries around the world. This year's results came from over 800 mineral industry companies working in 93 jurisdictions and representing cumulative 2011 exploration expenditures of over US$6.3 billion. The perception of Alaska from the companies that work here was about the...
There are some new statistics just out from the Alaska Miners Association that I thought you might like to see. For 2011, the Alaska mining industry accounted for 4,500 direct jobs and 9,000 indirect jobs. The industry paid US$620 million in payroll with the average salary totaling US$100,000 per year, which is double the statewide average for all sectors. The industry paid US$148 million in rents, royalties, taxes and other fees to the State of Alaska (up 170 percent over...
British Columbia, Yukon Territory and Alaska - the headliners of the Association for Mining Exploration British Columbia's annual Mineral Exploration Roundup - tallied more than C$1 billion of mineral exploration spending and some C$12.7 billion in mine production in 2011. "We are going to talk in the next three sessions about the wrinkly parts of western North America - B.C., Yukon and Alaska. The geological phenomena that has created these mountain chains that we have in...
Ocean Park Venture Corp.'s 2011 exploration at the Chisna project in eastern Alaska has revealed Golden Range, a district-scale iron-carbonate zone rich in gold, copper and silver. Grab samples from this iron-carbonate zone that has now been traced for more than 12 kilometers (7.5 miles) have returned assays as high as 126.5 grams per metric ton gold and 17.7 percent copper; and one drill intercept averaging 681 g/t silver over 2.7 meters. Optioning the Chisna property from...
International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. has pushed back the publication of a prefeasibility study for its Livengood gold project to sometime later this year. While the PFS has been delayed by about six months, the company says it is still on track to begin recovering gold from the Interior Alaska project in 2018 maybe earlier. Tower Hill said that while the bulk of engineering studies have been completed, a review of the preliminary economic assessment revealed some areas of...
I was tempted to make a few 2012 predictions now that 2011 is nearly gone, but I decided not to when I came across the following lines and was struck by how closely they mimic our current mining climate: "On a more local level, several old Alaska properties have been rejuvenated by new players to the Alaska mineral scene. Reserve announcements have touched off renewed land acquisitions and property negotiations. Contracts for technical personnel, drill rigs, helicopters and...
As a busy year in the Alaska and global mining industry starts to slide closer to its end, I figured now was a good time to gaze into my crystal ball (rutilated quartz, of course) to see what next year might bring. While strong metals prices promise another busy year for Alaska, a dose of global reality was provided by the financial giant Ernst & Young, who recently published a list of the top 10 business risks for the mining and metals industry for the coming year. Resource n...
Whether it is multimillion-ounce gold discoveries, copper deposits that measure in the billions of pounds or massive ore-bodies of 20 percent zinc, Alaska is renowned for its mammoth deposits. The prospect of finding another Donlin, Pebble or Red Dog continues to draw explorers to this vast and underexplored corner of the United States. In the Survey of Mining Companies: 2010/2011, conducted by the Fraser Institute, top executives from 494 mining and mineral exploration...
With a 20-million-ounce gold discovery embellishing their résumés, International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. co-founders Jeff Pontius and Russell Myers have taken the helm of Corvus Gold Inc., a junior formed in 2010 to explore Tower Hill's non-Livengood assets. During the initial year after the spin-out, Pontius continued to guide Tower Hill and its Livengood project into the transition from advanced exploration to early development and Myers turned his attention to getting C...
With some 20 million ounces of gold enveloped in a deposit that outcrops alongside a paved road in Interior Alaska, International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.'s Livengood project is ideally situated to become a top-tier gold operation - or, as the company's new CEO James Komadina put it, "A mine-builder's dream." "Rarely in my career have I encountered a project that has so much going for it: the resource is one of the largest and ideally situated gold deposits in the world; it is...
