The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 1 - 23 of 23
Indispensable, expensive, and rare – PGMs get a green upgrade. Back in 1950, the first catalytic converter in the United States was a box bolted onto a car's undercarriage to reduce tailpipe emissions. It was patented by French mechanical engineer Eugene Houdry, who was concerned about the effects of automobile exhaust on the good people of Los Angeles. And it would have worked if it had not been for the octane-boosting lead then being added to fuel, which could choke any c...
Company sees Brandon Macdonald step down; position to be held by Peter Hemstead in interim. Fireweed Metals Corp. May 3 announced an abrupt change of management with the replacement of its former CEO and director, Brandon Macdonald, for Peter Hemstead, who has been appointed as the interim president and CEO. "On behalf of the board, I would like to thank Brandon for the role he has played in helping build Fireweed into one of Canada's leading base-metal exploration...
While lithium has been the poster child for optimism and controversy in equal measure, nickel has its own crucial role to play in the batteries powering the clean energy future – increasing range and capacity – but is traditionally carbon-heavy to produce. For nickel, the industry's focus has been twofold – obtaining enough and moving the needle between untenable quantities of emissions from mining and processing and the battery and alloying metal's necessary inclusion in ne...
PolarX Ltd. May 19 announced plans to carry out a roughly 3,000-meter drill program to test the high-grade copper and gold previously encountered in the Zackly East skarn deposit on its Alaska Range property Extending for roughly 22 miles (35 kilometers), Alaska Range consists of two adjacent copper and precious metal projects – Stellar and Caribou Dome – the Australia-based explorer merged in 2017. Zackly skarn is found in the middle of a 7.5-mile- (12 kilometers) long min...
PolarX Ltd. Jan. 20 announced that trenching, mapping and sampling has identified a potential 600-meter extension of the thick and high-grade copper-gold skarn mineralization it discovered at Zackly East on its Alaska Range project. This 22-mile- (35 kilometers) long Alaska Range property is made up of two adjacent projects – Stellar and Caribou Dome – the Australia-based exploration company brought together in 2017. Zackly skarn is found in the middle of a 7.5-mile- (12 kil...
With two Australian companies making major investments and several exploration companies from Down Under chomping at the bit to get into the field, 2020 is shaping up to be the best year for Alaska's mining sector in a decade. When you add up the investments South32 Ltd. plans to make in the Ambler Mining District and other exploration projects; Northern Star Resources Ltd.'s spending at the Pogo gold mine; and the exploration dollars at least five other Aussie companies are...
PolarX Ltd. Nov. 18 reported that the first hole drilled at Mars has indeed tapped a wide section of copper-gold-molybdenum mineralization, confirming the porphyry potential of this target on the Australia-based explorer's Alaska Range property. From a depth of 308 meters, this first hole ever drilled at Mars, 19MAR001, cut 102.1 meters averaging 0.22 percent copper, 0.07 grams per metric ton gold and 200 parts per million molybdenum. "Assays confirming the presence of...
An abnormally long fall has allowed the Alaska mining industry to extend seasonal work well into mid-October, creating a lot of new information about project work conducted around the state. Exploration efforts, in particular, benefitted from this additional field time. Based on information available to date, 2019 exploration expenditures are expected to be in the $135-140 million range, well ahead of the $120-125 million exploration spending tracked for 2018. In addition,...
PolarX Ltd. Oct. 21 reported that the encouraging porphyry copper mineralization encountered in the first hole at the Mars target on its Alaska Range property increased in intensity to the bottom of the hole. On Oct. 1, the Australia-based company announced that its Mars discovery hole, 19MAR001, cut roughly 300 meters of porphyry-style mineralization starting at a depth of about 5.3 meters. Today, the company said this visible copper and molybdenum mineralization increased...
PolarX Ltd. Oct. 1 announced that drilling has tapped encouraging porphyry copper mineralization at the Stellar project, part of the Australia-based explorer's Alaska Range property. This Stellar copper, however, was not encountered at Saturn, the primary target of porphyry exploration at Alaska Range. Instead, this mineralization was identified in core from the first hole drilled at Mars, another porphyry target at the opposite end of a 7.5-mile- (12 kilometers) long...
As the rest of the country suffers through the Dog Days of summer, Alaska is approaching the end of a topsy-turvy summer season that saw unseasonably hot, dry weather in some parts of the state during some parts of the summer, while other parts of the state have seen record rainfall and unseasonably early snowfall. Gold prices have skyrocketed over the $1,500 per ounce mark and silver prices have moved strongly up, now trading at a one-year high. However, copper and zinc are a...
PolarX Ltd. Aug. 6 reported that initial data from an induced polarization (IP) geophysical survey over the Saturn target at its Alaska Range project has identified large anomalies which are consistent with the porphyry copper‐gold mineralization being targeted by drilling that is now underway. Funded by an A$4.3 million investment by Lundin Mining Corp. in June, this 5,000-meter drill program is expected to include eight to 10 deep holes. PolarX identified Saturn as a p...
Earlier this month Reuters reported that several agencies within the U.S. Federal government were "rapidly assessing" our domestic ability to mine and refine rare earth elements and utilize those 17 super cool elements in value-added products needed for a wide and ever-growing array of consumer and national defense products. Not surprisingly, mining industry officials demurred when quizzed about supplying information on where rare elements might be mined in the U.S. and how...
PolarX Ltd. July 10 said a roughly 5,000-meter drill program is slated to begin this month at the Saturn copper‐gold porphyry target within its Alaska Range project. Funded with the recent AU$4.3 million investment by Lundin Mining Corp., this program is expected to include eight to 10 deep holes targeting a porphyry copper‐gold target identified in early 2018 through evaluation of regional aeromagnetic geophysical data and confirmed through a higher‐resolution survey carried...
Earlier this month S&P Global put out a summary indicating that during the first quarter of 2019 metals like copper, zinc and nickel were up quarter over quarter by 11 percent, 22 percent and 25 percent, respectively. More recently gold has skyrocketed beyond the $1,400-per-ounce mark for the first time in many months. Correspondingly, the mining industry's aggregate market cap also rebounded strongly in the period after four bearish quarters, rising 12 percent to $1.43...
Lundin Mining Corp. has agreed to invest AU$4.3 million (US$3 million) to acquire 14.3 percent of PolarX Ltd. shares, a deal that gives the Canada-based miner an option to earn a 51 percent interest in the Australia-based junior's Stellar copper-gold project in Alaska. Lundin Mining is a global base metals miner with copper, nickel and zinc operations in Chile, United States, Portugal and Sweden. The Toronto, Ontario-based miner also holds a 24 percent stake in the Freeport...
Australia-based PolarX Ltd. and its copper- and gold-rich Alaska Range property has drawn the interest of Canada-based Lundin Mining Corp. In a deal finalized in June, Lundin invested roughly US$3 million to acquire a 12.85 percent interest in PolarX. This investment provides the Toronto-based miner an option to earn a 51 percent interest in Stellar, a porphyry copper-gold portion of the larger Alaska Range property, by investing US$24 million in exploration and making US$20 m...
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...
Over the past five years, Kaminak Gold Corp. has rocketed the Coffee project from Yukon Territory's other White Gold property to an expansive set of gold deposits on pace to be the first of the Shawn Ryan discoveries to be developed into a mine. A preliminary economic assessment published in June envisions an open-pit mine and heap-leach facility producing an average of 167,000 ounces of gold annually over the life of mine at an all-in sustaining cash cost of US$688 per...
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...
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...
TSX: ZAZ Chairman and CEO: Gil Atzmon Vice President, Corporate Development: Matt Ford Vice President, Exploration: Joe Britton Analysts predict growing demand in Asia markets coupled with the expected closure of several of the world's largest zinc-producing mines will result in a global shortage of the industrial metal in the coming years. Zazu Metals Corp. hopes zinc mined from its Lik Project located about 22 kilometers (14 miles) northwest of Teck Resources Ltd.'s Red Dog Mine, will help fill this forecasted shortfall....
Zinc, the fourth most consumed metal in the world, is an essential building block of modern society and the dominant metal mined in Alaska over the past two decades. In 2010, 538,000 metric tons of zinc was mined at Teck Resources Ltd.'s Red Dog Mine and an additional 67,580 metric tons of zinc was recovered as a byproduct at Hecla Mining Co.'s Greens Creek silver mine, accounting for US$1.3 billion, or about 42 percent, of Alaska's US$3.1 billion of mineral production for...
