The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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7 marks the 25-year anniversary of the Red Dog Mine in Northwest Alaska being among the largest producers of zinc on the planet. For the more than 13,600 Inupiat who are shareholders of NANA Regional Corporation, owners of the land where Red Dog is found, this world-class mine's success is measured by more than the amount of zinc shipped to world markets every summer. "It has been a revolutionary thing for our region economically and demonstrates the kind of development...
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...
Over the past month, the world has been awash in year-end 2013 mining news, ranging from exploration and production statistics to economic impact numbers and mining favorability polls. The Alaska highlights from this wad of info include the results from the annual Fraser Institute political jurisdiction favorability survey where Alaska placed first in the world out of 112 jurisdictions for mineral potential. However, Alaska plummeted to 21st place on the survey's Policy Percep...
Over the past month, three of Alaska's large mines reported strong quarterly results; two projects in advanced permitting and pre-feasibility reported recent progress; and three exploration properties changed hands. The latter is a trend putting 2015 on course to be one of the most active years for new acquisitions in the past decade. Placer gold production has all but ceased for the year; however, output from Alaska's placer mines is not likely to be known with any certainty...
While tough market conditions are forcing mining companies to tighten their belts, Teck Resources Ltd. does not see maintaining responsible and environmentally sound operations as an area in which it can afford to trim its budget. That commitment has propelled the diversified miner onto the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for six years running, ranking it among the top 10 percent of the 2,500 largest companies in the S&P Global Broad Market Index. "We know that the...
Nearly three weeks after Teck Alaska, operator of the Red Dog Mine in northwest Alaska, sued the Northwest Arctic Borough over a steep tax hike implemented at the beginning of the year, the chasm between the two sides seems to have only widened. In preparation for its plans to "aggressively pursue a satisfactory legal resolution" to the charges brought by Teck, Northwest Arctic Borough has released information outlining its perspective on the argument. In a Jan. 26 statement,...
The Red Dog Mine in Northwest Alaska is highly regarded as an example of a mining company and local aboriginal interests sitting down at the negotiating table and working out a deal that serves the economic and social interests of both. A steep tax hike, however, threatens to shorten the life of the world-class zinc mine and thereby the partnership forged between Teck Resources Ltd. and NANA Regional Corp. The tax increase was introduced recently by the Northwest Arctic...
As the curtain rings down on 2015, the sound of clapping and cheering can already be heard from the mining industry as it anticipates the end of a largely depressing year which started out looking like the long-awaited industry recovery was going to happen but in the end, did not. The uncertainty brought on by this year's unsettling events was front and center in a recent round-table discussion hosted by Northern Miner, sponsored by PearTree Securities and entitled "New...
From an expanding ownership interest in one of the largest producing zinc mines on the planet to grassroots gold exploration, NANA Regional Corp. is delving into all phases of mining across the 24.3 million acres of extremely minerals-rich land in Northwest Alaska. During the past 26 years, this Alaska Native regional corporation and the more than 13,800 Iñupiat shareholders whose forebears settled the northwest corner of Alaska thousands of years ago have enjoyed some...
When NovaCopper Inc. needed additional funds to advance its copper-rich deposits in the Ambler Mining District of Northwest Alaska, the Vancouver B.C.-based junior bypassed typical financing vehicles for such ventures and seized the opportunity to buy Sunward Resources Ltd., a fellow exploration company with roughly US$20 million in the bank but a market cap hovering around US$13 million. "The market had basically discounted the cash they had in the bank, so that provided an...
NovaCopper Inc. Oct. 8 announced the completion of its 2015 field program, which started the work necessary to advance a pre-feasibility study for Arctic, the most advanced of the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, a partnership between NovaCopper and NANA Corp., the Alaska Native regional corporation that represents the Iñupiat of Northwest Alaska. This work included an in-fill drill program designed to evaluate vertical and lateral continuity of the high-grade polymetallic copper-zinc-lead-gold-silver mineralization in support...
While tough market conditions are forcing mining companies to tighten their belts, Teck Resources Ltd. does not see maintaining responsible and environmentally sound operations as an area in which it can afford to trim its budget. That commitment has propelled the diversified miner onto the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for six years running, ranking it among the top 10 percent of the 2,500 largest companies in the S&P Global Broad Market Index. "We know that the...
NovaCopper Inc. July 10 reported the start of a work program focused on advancing a pre-feasibility study for the development of an open-pit mine at Arctic, the most advanced of the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, a partnership between NovaCopper and NANA Corp., the Alaska Native regional corporation that represents the Iñupiat of Northwest Alaska. The Arctic pre-feasibility work is expected to be carried out over a two- to three-year period. NovaCopper has approved a US$5.5...
Teck Resources Ltd. June 29 released its 2014 Sustainability Report. The 25th anniversary of Teck's Red Dog mine, which operates under an innovative operating agreement with the Iñupiat people of Northwest Alaska, is among the highlights featured in the report. Situated roughly 100 miles north of the Arctic Circle, Red Dog is among the largest zinc mines in the world. In 1982, Cominco (now Teck) and Iñupiat-owned NANA Regional Corp. signed a landmark agreement that directs h...
In a move that provides the cash needed to advance a feasibility study for the Arctic project in Northwest Alaska, NovaCopper has agreed to purchase Sunward Resources Ltd., a Vancouver, B.C.-based mining exploration company with a copper-gold asset in Columbia and roughly US$20 million in the bank. Over the several weeks leading up to the April 23 announcement of the potential merger, the value of Sunward's stock has hovered at roughly US$13 million, substantially less than...
The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority is asking state lawmakers whether it should move ahead with the Ambler Mining District Industrial Access Road, a proposed 200-mile transportation corridor that would link the Ambler Mining District in Northwest Alaska, with the Dalton Highway to the east. This question comes under the auspice of Administrative Order No. 271, a temporary suspension of all "mega-projects" being funded by the state, signed by Gov. Bill...
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...
NovaCopper Inc. plans to invest roughly US$20 million over the next two to three years on finalizing a feasibility study for its Arctic deposit, the next step toward the exploration company's vision of developing mines at the world-class copper projects found in the Ambler Mining District of Northwest Alaska. Arctic is the most advanced of the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, a venture formed by NovaCopper and NANA Corp., the Alaska Native regional corporation that represents the...
Plummeting oil prices have put Alaska residents and Alaska miners in the same boat. Suddenly, it's less expensive to top off the tank of an SUV or a haul truck, but the state budget, fueled by oil revenue, is teetering on the edge of an estimated $3.5 billion deficit. That's $10 million a day for 2015. "We know Alaska is experiencing a significant drop in revenue - the price of oil has dropped more than 50 percent over the past six months," Alaska's new governor, Bill Walker,...
As the year winds down, financial information has begun to trickle in quantifying just how tough 2014 was on the mining industry. Industry analyst SNL Metals & Mining announced that the total estimated global budget for nonferrous metals exploration dropped another 25 percent in 2014, to US$11.36 billion, from US$15.19 billion in 2013. Perhaps even more arresting is the precipitous fall in just the past two years from an all-time high of US$21.5 billion in nonferrous metal exp...
NCQ: NYSE/TSX Chairman: Thomas Kaplan President and CEO: Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse Project Manager, Upper Kobuk Mineral Project: Scott Petsel NovaCopper Inc. has nearly reached its preliminary goal of defining 10 billion pounds of high-grade copper at the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, a long-term partnership between NovaCopper and NANA Regional Corp. The alliance combines Bornite and a number of other mineral prospects on NANA-owned lands with the world-class Arctic deposit and dozens of similar volcanogenic massive sulfide...
Indicative of the state of mineral exploration in Alaska, and around the world, no drills are turning at NovaCopper's Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in 2014. Instead, crews crated up 12,918 meters of core from historical drilling at the northern Alaska project and shipped it to Fairbanks where it can more economically be re-logged and readied for re-sampling. At an expected cost of around US$2.7 million, this relatively modest program follows two years of exploration...
The languishing price of zinc has provided little incentive for investors to embrace companies seeking to explore and develop the next generation of mines that produce this essential metal. However, an expected 1.5 million metric tons of supply being lost to mine closures by 2016 is beginning to galvanize the zinc sector. "In the case of zinc, this is a metal that's been unloved for a long time. As a result there has been very little investment put into the industry. Due to th...
Zinc is at a supply-demand tipping point that has miners and investors looking to cash in on an imminent shortage of this essential metal which has been in oversupply for nearly a decade. "We believe the outlook for zinc is the most favorable of the base metals. With recent and expected closures of a number of zinc mines, we believe that approximately 1.5 million metric tons of current zinc mine production will be closed by the end of 2016 in a 13 million (tpa) market," Teck...
