The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 151 - 175 of 323
Caught between an updraft caused by dwindling supply and the gravity of slowing growth in global demand, zinc prices seem to have reached a cruising altitude above US$1 per pound. Recent closures of two large zinc mines - Century in Australia and Lisheen in Ireland - wiped out more than 600,000 metric tons of the world's annual supply of the galvanizing metal. Analysts expected these looming supply deficits to send zinc prices soaring well above US$1/lb. in 2015. While the...
Anniversary celebrations, golden milestones and rising metals prices are providing Alaska's metal miners with plenty to cheer about in 2016. Roughly 1 million ounces of gold will be mined in Alaska this year, when you tally the amount of the precious metal produced at four of Alaska's large metal mines – Fort Knox, Pogo, Kensington and Greens Creek – and the placer aurum produced at the family-scale operations across the state. Fortunately for all these miners, gold shot up...
Trilogy Metals Inc. Oct. 27 provided an update from its 2016 summer field program at the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in the Ambler mining district of Northwest Alaska. "We are pleased to announce another highly successful and safe field season at our high grade Arctic deposit. We had zero loss time incidents, no environmental incidents and maintained a high percentage of local NANA shareholder hire," said Trilogy President and CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse. NANA is the Alaska Native regional corporation in Northwest Alaska and...
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,...
As tangible buoyancy returns to the mining industry, I began to wonder if any of the multitude of forecasters had actually predicted the recent return of stronger metals prices. Since most "forecasters" are actually "hindsighters," I was drawn to a November 2013 summary of gold mines by Roy Sebag of Natural Resource Holdings. The summary, entitled "Global Gold Mines & Deposits 2013 Ranking," indicated that we were nearing peak gold production because the total in-situ ounces...
What does a name say about a company? Management of NovaCopper Inc. feels that its corporate moniker does not say enough about the diversity of metals present in the high-grade deposits encompassed by its Upper Kobuk Minerals Projects in the Ambler mining district of Northwest Alaska. Arctic, the most advanced UKMP deposit, actually hosts more zinc than it does copper. And, while copper remains the dominant metal in terms of value, zinc supply shortages are closing the price...
Mining's contribution to Alaska's economy starts with the hefty paychecks being issued to the some 4,350 miners that work in the state, according to recent study completed by the Alaska Miners Association and McDowell Group. The report, "The economic benefits of Alaska's mining industry," found that the average miner working in Alaska during 2016 received a whopping US$108,000 for the year, about double the average income across all sectors in the state. That is nearly US$470...
Most of Alaska is now enjoying a warm, early spring, allowing field programs to get off to an quicker start this year. While budgets are still tight, interest in Alaska projects has steadily increased as the mining and metals markets slowly recover from a four-year slowdown. Current estimates for 2016 exploration expenditures are looking like they will end up in the US$50 million to US$60 million range, down from the US$75 million range of last year but less precipitous than...
With metal prices stabilizing, physical stockpiles dwindling and demand again on the rise, things are beginning to look up for the beleagered mining industry. Gold's performance over the past several months is a case in point. The World Gold Council reported that during the first quarter, buying of exchange-traded gold funds rose to its highest level since early 2009, wiping out the deep sell-offs of 2014 and 2015 for this instrument. Uncertainties in the fiscal stability of...
The Bureau of Land Management Feb. 28 opened a 90-day public scoping period for the Ambler Mining District Industrial Access Road, a proposed 211-mile road that would run west from the Dalton Highway along the southern foothills of the Brooks Range to the Ambler Mining District. If built, this road would provide surface access to the Upper Kobuk Minerals Project, a large high-grade copper district being explored under a partnership between Trilogy Metals and NANA Regional Corp. According to the latest resource calculations,...
The path to discovering the viability of developing a mine at Arctic and the road needed to deliver the copper, zinc, lead, gold and silver from this exceptionally high-grade Northwest Alaska deposit to world markets are both making headway in 2017. Arctic is the most advanced of the high-grade deposits that make up the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, an extensive land package that unites Trilogy Metals Inc.-controlled mining claims that blanket a 70-mile- (110 kilometer) long...
With the opening late last month of a public comment period for the environmental impact statement on the proposed Ambler Mining District Industrial Access Project, I am cautiously optimistic that this time, Sisyphus will get the boulder up the hill. As a lowly graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks back in 1979, I helped a crew from Anaconda Minerals color township-size blocks on a huge paper map of the Brooks Range. At the time, Anaconda and numerous other...
South32 Ltd., a coal and base metals miner spun out of BHP Billiton in 2015, has cut a US$150 million deal with Trilogy Metals Inc. to earn up to a 50 percent interest in the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, UKMP, a large land package that blankets most of the Ambler Mining District in Northwest Alaska. South32, which up to this point was focused on the Southern Hemisphere, has eight mines in Australia, Africa and South America that produce aluminum, coal, manganese, nickel and...
U.S. Bureau of Land Management April 7 announced a nine-month extension of the scoping period for the Ambler Road project, a proposed 211-mile road that would run west from the Dalton Highway along the southern foothills of the Brooks Range to the Ambler Mining District. In February, BLM announced a 90-day scoping period for the project that was slated to expire on May 31. That expiration has now been extended to Jan. 31, 2018, for a total of 338 days of scoping. Tim La Marr, manager of BLM's Central Yukon field office, said...
With winter programs winding down and summer efforts rapidly ramping up, it is becoming clear that 2017 will be a much more vigorous year for the Alaska mining industry than the 2013 to 2016 period. For example, my internal estimates are already pushing $75 million for exploration activity alone and a significant number of projects that have announced exploration plans have not yet announced budgets for 2017, so that number is likely to rise. Compare this to estimates of less...
The Northwest Arctic Borough and Teck Alaska, operator of the Red Dog Mine, May 3 announced that they have finalized a new 10-year payment in lieu of taxes agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, Red Dog would flow roughly US$20 million to US$26 million into the borough each year under the new agreement. Roughly US$14 million to US$18 million of these funds would be paid directly to the Northwest Arctic Borough each year, a payment that would be calculated on a percentage of Red Dog's fixed asset value. The agreement...
Now that the Pebble Partnership has settled its dispute with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the company is focusing its attention on readying the world-class Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum project for permitting. The first move towards attaining this goal was to assemble an advisory committee that will provide valuable insights from a broad range of perspectives, including those that voiced concerns about building a large mine in the Bristol Bay region of Southwest...
If there is anyone still on the fence wondering if the minerals industry has started a recovery from the doldrums of the past four years, this month’s mineral industry activity in Alaska should settle the question with authority. During the past month, we have seen two merger/acquisitions occur, one by Solitario Exploration & Royalty Corp., which acquired Zazu Metals Corp. and its interest in the Lik lead-zinc-silver deposit. Then we also had Coventry Resources acquire V...
The summer solstice has come and gone, but the Alaska mining industry has paid little attention to the decreased amount of daylight because it is high summer in the high latitudes, time to be out completing work programs that have been in the planning since last fall. Exploration drilling programs have sprouted in the Brooks Range, Interior, Alaska Range, Southeast, Southwest and the Alaska Peninsula. In addition, the sounds of tire-kicking are being heard over a wide area of...
As the Alaska mining industry prepares for and kicks off exploration, development and production activities for 2017, the question on everyone’s lips at the recent Cordilleran Roundup mining convention in Vancouver, B. C., was the same: “Have we seen the bottom of this down cycle?” While signs of life were seen for short periods during the 2008 to 2015 period, the reality was an overall downward spiral of commodities prices and global demand. However, in a recent editi...
Alaska is rich in mineral potential but poor in the critical infrastructure needed to fully realize this potential, that was the message Alaska Division of Geological and Geological Surveys Director Steve Masterman delivered to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. During a March 30 hearing, Masterman informed member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that Alaska could be the answer to the United States growing dependence on foreign suppliers for minerals....
Healthy price gains for zinc and copper this year, and gold rocketing through the US$1,300-per-ounce threshold on Aug. 28, is good news for Alaska's mining sector. Together, zinc and gold account for more than 80 percent of the value of metals mined in Alaska - silver and lead account for most of the balance. Copper, on the other hand, is set up to play an important role for the future of mining in the state. Gold rockets above $1,300 Entering 2017 at US$1,151/oz, gold made...
As the first snows of the coming winter began to fall at high elevations across Alaska, results of summer programs likewise began to trickle in from far-flung areas of the state. Meanwhile, second- and third-quarter production data began to show up and mining industry analysts released a series of reports covering a wide range of industry-wide trends. For example, SNL Metals and Mining Research released information on how long it takes to move a new discovery to production....
The Alaska mining industry continued its increased pace of activities in August, even as the first hint of autumn starts to be felt across the state. Metals prices were relatively stable with increasing demand for zinc and gold, the two metals that generate the most revenue from Alaska's operating mines. Wood Mackenzie is forecasting a 3 percent increase in global refined zinc demand in 2017 to 14.7 million metric tons. With refined zinc production limited to a 2 percent...
NovaCopper Inc. June 22 said the Bornite Camp is being prepared for the 2016 field program at the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects located in Northwest Alaska. The majority of this year's project budget of US$5.5 million is planned to be spent on roughly 3,000 meters of drilling at the Arctic project. The program will include drilling for geotechnical, hydrological, waste rock characterization and metallurgical studies as well as further resource definition. The company is also planning a series of environmental studies that...
