The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Australia-based Mine Discovery Fund launches Wiseman Metals to explore Doyon-owned copper & critical minerals properties; more deals to come. Since emerging on the Alaska mineral exploration scene in 2021, Felix Gold Ltd. has amassed more than 150 square miles of gold-enriched properties in the Fairbanks Mining District and is working toward establishing an inaugural resource at one of the most prospective gold targets discovered so far on this enormous land package. As Felix...
Gold dominates Alaska mineral exploration, but a critical shift arises. Since the discovery of gold in what is now the Alaska capital city of Juneau, prospectors, geologists, and fortune seekers have spent more than 140 consecutive summer seasons exploring The Last Frontier's golden potential. With these endeavors turning up rich aurum lodes in every corner of the state, except for the oil-rich North Slope, the nearly century-and-a-half tradition of seeking and discovering wor...
HOPE, Alaska – An Alaska partnership between Trout Unlimited and Kinross Gold Corp. demonstrates that cooperation and collaboration are more powerful than conflict and polarization when it comes to conserving the environment while also producing the minerals and metals the world needs and wants. This strength-in-partnerships strategy is on full display in Alaska's historic Hope gold mining district, where Trout Unlimited, Kinross, Hope Mining Company, U.S. Forest Service, a...
Strong metal prices and an infusion of cash from notable resource investors helped to salvage much of a 2020 mineral exploration season in Alaska that became lethargic with disruptions, delays, and shelving of field programs infected by the COVID-19 pandemic early in the year. At its onset, 2020 was looking like it would be the best year for Alaska's mining sector in a decade. Australia-based mining companies were slated to invest nearly US$100 million in mineral exploration...
Millrock Resources Inc. Jan. 12 announced that it has vended three of its Alaska gold exploration projects – Treasure Creek, Ester Dome, and Liberty Bell – to Alaska-based subsidiaries of Felix Gold Ltd., a newly formed Australian mineral exploration company. Millrock Resources President and CEO Greg Beischer said the team behind Felix Gold are well respected for their technical expertise and the respect of the financial groups in Australia. "It is a private company, but they...
Kinross Gold Corp. has rolled out a strategy to double gold production at its Fort Knox Mine by feeding higher grade ore into the underutilized 14-million-metric-ton-per-year mill at the open-pit operation about 20 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska. "We have enhanced our production profile, ramping up from approximately 200,000 ounces per year to approximately 400,000 ounces per year," Fort Knox General Manager Jeremy Brans told Mining News. While some of this new mill feedstoc...
Though gold is not considered a metal critical to the United States, this increasingly valuable precious metal could serve as a pathfinder element for several of the other minerals and metals the U.S. Geological Survey deemed critical to America. Selling for roughly US$2,000 per ounce and expected to climb much higher as central banks and governments inject unprecedented amounts of cash into a global economy affected by COVID-19, gold has become an increasingly vital...
Would you consider drinking heavy metals to make your stomach feel better? A serum containing arsenic, cadmium, lead or mercury would only make matters worse and could be deadly. Bismuth, the heaviest of the heavy metals, however, is swigged by millions of indigestion sufferers each year. In fact, stomach remedies such as Pepto-Bismol, along with cosmetic applications, are currently the largest market for bismuth. Being the only non-toxic heavy metal, bismuth is being...
Kinross Gold Corp.'s new long-term strategy for its Fort Knox Mine is a paradigm shift for mineral exploration companies with gold projects on or near the road system within a 300-mile-radius of the iconic gold operation about 20 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska. Under this new operating plan, Kinross is looking for Alaskan projects that can deliver high-grade ore to the underutilized 14-million-metric-ton-per-year mill at Fort Knox. "There is an economic radius around Fort...
With 12.5 million acres of land spanning Alaska's Interior, Doyon Ltd. is the largest private landholder in the state and one of the largest in the nation. For mining and mineral exploration companies, the rich mineral potential of these lands may be more impressive than the sheer size of the estate. This is because the Doyon region is a nearly Texas-sized swath of Interior Alaska that is renowned for its gold and a host of other metals, providing the regional corporation,...
Since the stampedes of prospectors trekked North in the latter half of the 19th Century, the lure of Alaska's rich gold lodes has drawn dreamers and miners North. Today, four hardrock mines and hundreds of family-run placer operations across the Last Frontier churn out roughly 1 million ounces of this alluring precious metal each year – and the largest stores of aurum discovered here have yet to be realized. Despite being a relatively rare metal that has served as a c...
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...
Mineral exploration spending in Alaska hit an apex of US$365 million in 2011, but as venture capital for mining explorers dried these expenditures plummeted 78 percent to US$80 million in 2015. However, rising gold prices and a loosening of venture capital in 2016 seems to have marked an end to a painfully long bear market for mining explorers in Alaska. “After taking head shots for the past four years, the industry suddenly came to life over the past month, with new budgets,...
The owners of Alaska’s five large metal mines – Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo, Hecla Mining Company, Kinross Gold Corp, Teck Resources Ltd. and Coeur Mining Inc. – accounted for nearly half the US$92 million of exploration spending in the state during 2014 and similar investments by these companies is providing solid footing for the Far North state’s mineral exploration sector this year. Avalon Development President Curt Freeman said he is seeing more mining majors shopping for d...
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...
Alaska's minerals exploration sector is on an upswing, thanks to Australian mining explorers looking north and mining majors upping their activities in the state. South32 Ltd., a Perth, Australia-based miner spun out of BHP Billiton Plc, is the largest mining company from Down Under to express an interest in Alaska's mineral potential this year. South32, which has eight operating mines in the Southern Hemisphere, secured an option to acquire a 50 percent interest in Trilogy...
At a recent mining industry panel discussion at the Western States Land Commissioners Association meeting in Anchorage, I was asked if the recent upturn in activity in the Alaska mining industry was a function of commodities prices or a growing worldwide recognition of Alaska's enormous mineral potential. I answered that I thought neither factor was driving the Alaska mineral industry revival: commodities prices have been steady or rising slowly over the last year and...
Alaska's natural gas is increasingly replacing diesel as the fuel of choice for mines and mining projects across the Far North State and Yukon Territory. At roughly 37 trillion cubic feet, Alaska is awash in natural gas; however, some 35 tcf of these known reserves are isolated in the Arctic oil and gas fields of the North Slope. The balance, located in the Cook Inlet basin that stretches southwest from Anchorage, has been developed primarily to serve consumers in the...
From Kotzebue to Ketchikan, Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority is using its financial muscle and its ability to build and operate large infrastructure projects to help mining companies overcome the challenges of developing the often remote mineral riches that the Last Frontier has to offer. "We are working with local communities and mine developers on infrastructure projects throughout Alaska, including port facilities and energy supply," said AIDEA external...
Ending a streak of robust growth, mineral exploration spending in Alaska during 2012 took a downward turn from the record US$300 million spent a year earlier. "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 taken a hard right cross to the jaw!" Curt Freeman, a well-known Alaska geologist and president of Fairbanks-based Avalon Development, observed in September. This blow de...
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...
The Last Frontier, as Alaska has long been labeled, is as applicable a moniker today as it was to prospectors who ventured to the territory at the end of the 19th century. Alaska is considered one of the most mineralized provinces on Earth, but due to an inter-related combination of Arctic weather, rugged terrain, limited infrastructure and high exploration costs, the state's vast mineral potential remains at the edge of exploratory expansion. Though the Far North state...
Full Metal Minerals Ltd. currently has two drills turning at its Fortymile property in eastern Alaska near the Yukon Territory border and a drill program slated for August at its recently acquired Grizzly Butte copper-gold property in Alaska's Wrangellia Terrane. In addition to drilling these core assets, the Vancouver B.C.-based junior anticipates partner-funded exploration at several of its other properties spanning the state. "It is our objective to get pretty much all of...
The plunge of base metal prices and turmoil in the financial markets caused explorers and producers alike to scale back exploration budgets for 2009. North of 60 Mining News estimates this year's exploration spending in Alaska to be around US$125 million, down more than 60 percent from the US$328.6 million spent in 2008. Though the global financial meltdown played its role, it was not the largest factor in the dramatically scaled back exploration in Alaska. Alaska's two...
