The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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For nearly two decades, the Fort Knox Mine in Interior Alaska has been a steady low-cost gold producer for owner, Kinross Gold Corp., and an economic driver for the nearby city of Fairbanks. A new technical report, however, outlines a mine plan that begins winding down operations in 2017. It is an important reminder that this Interior Alaska mine has an expiration date. Including the 387,285 ounces recovered in 2014, Fort Knox has produced 6.35 million oz of gold since the... Full story
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...
Stakeholder Gold Corp. April 23 reported that renowned Yukon Territory prospector and innovator Shawn Ryan has agreed to join its exploration advisory committee. Ryan will provide guidance for exploration of Stakeholder's Ballarat gold property and other strategic initiatives in the White Gold District, Yukon. "Shawn Ryan is an experienced and proven discoverer of gold deposits in the Yukon, and the company he founded, GroundTruth Exploration Inc., has developed some of the most advanced and cost-effective methods of...
I recently returned from the Geological Society of Nevada's once-every-five-years Symposium in Reno and was surprised to learn a number of things regarding Alaska, despite the symposium's tight focus on the Great Basin of the western United States. First off, mineral exploration guru Brent Cook presented information suggesting we have reached and are "bumping along" the bottom of the current metals market slump. Reminded me of an overloaded fixed-wing aircraft bumping down the...
With a mild winter for most of Alaska behind us and an early spring in progress over much of the state, spring fever has once again laid its grip on the mining industry. A number of exploration and development programs are slated for the summer season, suggesting the mining industry has finally started to rise from the three-year miasma that has gripped it worldwide. A couple of macro-scale items also are pointing toward a more robust industry. The U. S. Geological Survey's...
Northern Empire Resources Corp. has laid claim to Richardson, a 52,000-acre gold property in Alaska's Interior and has formed an alliance to begin exploring a segment of this vast parcel. Northern Empire is a prospect generator with early-stage gold properties in Alaska and Nunavut and a silver property in Mexico. The company was formed as part of a restructuring of Prosperity Goldfields Corp., a Nunavut-focused exploration company headed by Adrian Fleming. As part of a re-org... Full story
Slipping metals prices and investors' ongoing reluctance to risk venture capital in the junior mining sector is hitting Alaska's mineral exploration sector hard; and the Far North state is not the only mining jurisdiction reeling from this one-two punch. "After another year of strong headwinds in 2014, and with lower demand and overproduction continuing to depress metals prices, the mining industry's outlook for 2015 is unpromising at best," SNL Metals & Mining wrote recently... Full story
Sonoro Metals Corp. March 11 said it has signed a letter of intent to enter into an option agreement to acquire a 60 percent interest in Northern Empire Resources Corp.'s 7,840-acre Hilltop Gold project located some 70 miles south of Fairbanks. To exercise the option and earn a 60 percent interest in Hilltop, Sonoro must spend C$3 million on exploration activities to advance the exploration-stage project and issue 1 million Sonoro shares to Northern Empire by the end of 2019....
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... Full story
Galvanized by higher zinc prices and strong production at Teck Resources Ltd.'s Red Dog Mine, the value of Alaska's mineral production topped US$3 billion for the fifth year running. Larry Freeman, chief of Minerals Resources at the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys, told an audience at the AME BC Mineral Exploration Roundup that production of zinc, lead and silver - all metals produced at Red Dog - climbed in Alaska during 2014. Gold production, on the...
Unlike its neighbors in the North, the Yukon Territory is forecasting a marked increase in exploration in 2014. While well shy of the roughly C$300 million invested in exploration in 2011, the peak of the modern Yukon gold rush, the C$65 million forecast to be invested on exploration in the Yukon during 2014 is roughly a 45 percent leap over last year. This exploration spending is dominated by an aggressive drill program at the Selwyn zinc project, situated in an area of...
TSX: FVL President and CEO: Kristina Walcott Vice President, Exploration and Development: Alvin Jackson Freegold Ventures Ltd. has a portfolio of four gold exploration properties in Alaska. In recent years, the company has focused its exploration primarily on Golden Summit, a 6-million-ounce bulk-tonnage gold project located roughly 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of Fairbanks and four miles (seven kilometers) from Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine. The Dolphin-Cleary zone at Golden Summit has an indicated resource of... Full story
KGC: NYSE / K.TO: TSX Chairman: John Oliver Chief Executive Officer: Paul Rollison Chief Operating Officer: Warwick Morley-Jepson Kinross Gold Corp. continues to carry out robust exploration at and around its Fort Knox gold mine in Interior Alaska, while quietly investigating other prospects around the state. When Kinross began mining at Fort Knox in 1996, the deposit had 4.1 million ounces of proven and probable gold reserves; going into 2014 the mine continues to boast 2.86 million ounces of gold contained in 183.11... Full story
In an industry eager for even a scintilla of good news, a recent report from industry analyst SNL Metals & Mining recently gave the good-news-starved industry a bit of hope. SNL's article, titled, "Too early to start celebrating a recovery in the sector," indicated that although the downward trend in mineral exploration has not broken yet, the market has stopped down-grading mining equities, with a modest gain in market capitalization since its most recent low in mid-2013....
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...
WHITEHORSE, Yukon Territory - Quieter streets, emptier skies, shorter business hours and closed shops here are sure signs of tough times in the mining industry. Hours away by helicopter, one can find bare-bones exploration camps and skeleton staffs sprinkled like the occasional grain of visible gold across remote mountain vistas, which also reflect the return to the frugal times of the past. In the wake of more than two years of scarce capital, mineral exploration activity is a shadow of the booming times the territory...
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... Full story
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... Full story
FAIRBANKS - The Arctic International Mining Symposium in Fairbanks afforded Interior Alaska mines the opportunity to provide an update on the latest developments at local operations. While the mines touted individual achievements in 2013 - record gold at Fort Knox, new discoveries at Pogo and a new deposit at Usibelli - a commitment to and appreciation of people was a common thread spun through messages from all three operations. "Without the people you might as well shut the...
The over-all mood at the recent Cordilleran Roundup mining convention in Vancouver, B.C. was more restrained than in previous years, but also more realistic due in large part to the prolonged downturn in risk capital mining markets. It seems the industry has transitioned from the denial stage accompanying the declines of 2013 to an acceptance and determination stage that always precedes a return to market vitality. In a recent public release by financial giant Ernst and...
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... Full story
Spurred by a record-setting pace at Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine, Alaska gold production topped 1 million ounces during 2013, a golden milestone not achieved by Last Frontier gold miners since 1906. Though more than a century lies between these monumental milestones, they are linked by a discovery made by Felice Pedroni, an Italian immigrant better known to Alaskans as Felix Pedro. It was Pedro's gold find in an Interior Alaska stream in 1902 that sparked the Fairbanks...
International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. rang in 2014 with a new chief executive leading a streamlined Alaska-centric company focused on optimizing and safeguarding Livengood until a partner steps up to continue the advancement of the 20-million-ounce gold deposit. Tom Irwin, who ascended to the role of president and CEO of International Tower Hill Mines on Jan. 1, will lead the company's efforts to develop a mine at the world-class Livengood gold project that would contribute to...
Like most mining jurisdictions worldwide, Yukon Territory encountered numerous challenges in 2013, including the prolonged drought in the capital markets. But the territory still managed to attract investment in more than 100 mineral exploration projects, most of which were follow-ups to campaigns in earlier seasons. The Yukon Geological Survey, in its annual exploration overview to be released Jan. 26, estimates exploration expenditures throughout the territory in 2013 to total about C$45 million, down dramatically from...
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... Full story
