The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 243
The Red Dog Mine has been a gamechanger for the more than 15,000 Iñupiat shareholders of NANA Corp., the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) regional corporation that owns the world-class Red Dog deposits in Northwest Alaska that are the source of nearly 5% of the world's new zinc supply each year. The revenues from shipping out more than 1 billion pounds of zinc annually, along with healthy portions of lead, silver, and minor amounts of germanium, have served as a...
Pioneer Alaskans swore that Alaska's economy would be destroyed if "the Natives" secured control of any lands in Alaska. However, they did not realize how practical and pragmatic Alaska Natives have had to be to survive and thrive in their Arctic homeland. Whatever tool was needed to survive, Alaska Natives created it with the minimal materials at hand-skin, wood, stone, jade, copper, seashells, mud, plants, flint, obsidian, snow, and ice. With the settlement of Alaska Native...
Vast petroleum reserves underlying what is now the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. (ASRC) region, and the need to build a pipeline to deliver this oil to an ice-free port 800 miles to the south and then to global markets that lie beyond, raised the urgency to settle aboriginal land claims in Alaska. This need for a resolution before a pipeline corridor that would bisect the state prompted lawmakers in Washington, D.C. to enact the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, a...
Calista Corp. and its more than 33,000 Yup'ik, Cup'ik, and Athabascan shareholders are on the cusp of realizing the benefits that will come with the sustainable development of a mine at the 45-million-ounce Donlin Gold project on their land in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region of Southwest Alaska. With 39 million oz of gold in measured and indicated resources that average 2.24 grams per metric ton, and another 6 million oz in the inferred category averaging 2.02 g/t gold, Donlin...
It is my good fortune to be asked to write a short piece on the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. My mother, Naungagiaq, would have been proud. She set me free to seek an education in a Tennessee boarding school when I was 14 – just at the time of my life that I could have been of help to her and the family in our hunting, fishing, and trapping world of the 1940s and 1950s. We had lived in three sod homes along the Little Noatak about a dozen miles from Kotzebue. She, in a...
President Richard M. Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971, exactly 230 years after Captain Vitus Bering's Second Kamchatka Expedition finally sighted land in Alaska offshore from what is now Mount Saint Elias in 1741. In the years between, the 70,000 or so Unagan (Aleut), Sugpiaq, Yupik, Inupiat, Athapascan, Tlingit, and their descendants began to experience extreme changes brought on by Russian and American firepower, disease, religion,...
Leveraging its expertise in exploring for Arctic-type volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits in the Ambler Mining District, Trilogy Metals Inc. exploring for similar high-grade polymetallic deposits on three groups of claims east and west of the Upper Kobuk Mineral Project in Northwest Alaska. Being advanced by a joint venture equally owned by Trilogy and South32 Ltd., UKMP is a 427,690-acre land package that includes state and patented claims covering a 75-mile-long stretch...
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy highlighted the importance of cooperation between Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) corporations and their shareholders, state organizations, and mining companies during a recent visit to the Ambler Mining District in Northwest Alaska. "Collaboration begins with trust," he said. "When we work together and develop our state's resources responsibly, we can achieve incredible outcomes for all Alaskans." Having spent nearly two decades as a...
With a $13 million budget for predevelopment activities during 2021, a proposed road to the enormously metal-rich Ambler Mining District in Northwest Alaska takes another step closer to reality. This summer's work to prepare the proposed 211-mile industrial access road for a development decision will be funded equally by Ambler Metals LLC, which is working to develop the rich mineral potential at the road's terminus, and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority,...
From a world-class graphite deposit in the Northwest to rare earths on the Southeast Panhandle, Alaska has the potential to offer a sustainable and secure supply to meet the coming explosive demand for the minerals and metals crucial to the renewable energy and electric vehicle sectors in North America and around the globe. International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank Group, estimates that this shift to low-carbon energy and electric mobility will create nearly...
Rhenium is exceptionally resistant to heat and wear, characteristics that make it a vital ingredient in superalloys used in jet and industrial gas turbine engines. "The high-temperature properties of rhenium allow turbine engines to be designed with finer tolerances and operate at temperatures higher than those of engines constructed with other materials," the United States Geological Survey penned in a fact sheet on the critical metal. "These properties allow prolonged engine...
Mining and mineral exploration helped to bolster an Alaskan economy plagued by COVID-19 during 2020. According to a report prepared by the McKinley Research Group, a renowned Alaska-based research and consulting firm formerly known as McDowell Group, Alaska's mining industry injected roughly $2 billion into the Alaska economy last year. Commissioned by the Alaska Miners Association and Council of Alaska Producers, "The economic benefits of Alaska's mining industry" report...
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers does not subscribe to the idea that it is better for the residents of the Bristol Bay region of Southwest Alaska to have worked and lost than never to have worked at all. In its public interest review for the Pebble project, Army Corps determined that some Bristol Bay residents that become accustomed to increased income and lower living costs from developing Pebble may be forced to move out of the region or lower their standard of living after...
North of 60 Mining News recently spoke with Ramzi Fawaz, president and CEO of Ambler Metals LLC, a 50-50 joint venture between South32 Ltd. and Trilogy Metals Inc. to develop the rich mineral resources at the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in Alaska. In a candid conversation, Fawaz talks about what attracted him to Ambler Metals; the company's Alaska-based team and partnerships; the strategy for developing Arctic Mine and the other rich metals deposits at the Upper Kobuk Mineral...
U.S. Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority have signed documents that provide a 50-year right-of-way across federal lands for the Ambler Mining District Industrial Access Road. "This right-of-way is the culmination of years of research, planning, and collaboration," said AIDEA Executive Director Alan Weitzner. "The signing of this permit is a major milestone. It's the first step in a multi-year phase of...
Investing capital and resources into keeping its mines operational in the midst of a global pandemic, Teck Resources Ltd. has scaled back on exploration during 2020. "These continue to be challenging times, as the world works its way through the COVID-19 pandemic," said Teck Resources President and CEO Don Lindsay. "Teck will remain focused on protecting our people and communities while continuing to operate responsibly and safely, to support the economic recovery in the wake...
Whether it is the exponential growth in electric vehicles traveling global highways, the massive need for storing energy at solar and wind electrical generating facilities, or cutting the cords on our electronic devices, the world is becoming increasingly dependent on lithium-ion batteries. And this is driving up the demand for cobalt, a critical safety ingredient in the cathodes of these energy storage cells. "Globally, the leading use is in the manufacture of cathode materia...
A pitch to deep-pocketed investors about the potential to develop a world-class mine at the Pebble copper project in Alaska turned out to be a clandestinely videotaped sting operation that compromised the integrity of Pebble Limited Partnership CEO Tom Collier. A pair of operatives for the Environmental Investigation Agency, a United Kingdom-based environmental group, posed as representatives of a Hong Kong-based investment firm with links to a company owned by the Chinese...
A feasibility study for developing a mine at the world-class Arctic deposit in Alaska's Ambler Mining District details a financially robust operation that would produce 1.9 billion pounds of copper, 2.3 billion lb of zinc, 388 million lb of lead, 386,000 ounces of gold, and 40.6 million oz of silver over an initial 12-year mine life. While high-grade volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits such as Arctic are typically mined from underground, the Arctic feasibility study details...
The COVID-19 pandemic has led NANA Corp. and its mining partners, Teck Resources Ltd. and Ambler Metals LLC, to adjust their mineral exploration and mine development plans in order to meet the ever-evolving health and safety mandates to keep shareholders, employees and residents of Northwest Alaska as safe as possible. "Although the pandemic was unexpected, learning to adapt is nothing new for the region and Iñupiaq people. For 40 years, NANA shareholders have supported...
Trilogy Metals Inc. July 8 confirmed that the 2020 field programs at the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in Northwest Alaska has been deferred due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Ambler Metals LLC, a joint venture operating company equally owned by Trilogy Metals and South32 Ltd., had budgeted US$22.8 million for the 2020 program. Following the novel coronavirus outbreak, Ambler Metals met with NANA Corp., the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) regional corporation for...
As COVID-19 continues to create global economic hardship, it is reassuring to see steady progress on a project offering immediate and long-term benefits to Alaska's economy. The Ambler Mining District Industrial Access Project, or Ambler road, would help bring jobs and new revenues for the Northwest Arctic Borough and the State by lowering the cost to explore, build and operate future mines in the area. We have known of the Ambler district's vast copper and base metal...
Northern Dynasty Minerals Ltd. said its Pebble project could provide another source of jobs and revenue to an Alaska economy challenged by an interrelated combination of COVID-19 and low oil prices. Though fewer than 400 cases of COVID-19 have been diagnosed in Alaska, placing it among the lowest states in the country on an absolute and per capita basis, the economic impact of the global pandemic on the largest of the United States is both severe and ongoing. As a result of...
North of 60 Mining News is proud to introduce 20 questions for 2020. Over the course of this series, Mining News will interview mining and political leaders from Alaska, British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon. Each interview will include 20 questions on mining, markets and doing business across Alaska and Canada's North. For the inaugural 20 questions for 2020, Mining News talks with Contango ORE Inc. CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, a longtime mining executive...
It was the vast petroleum reserves lying under what is now the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. (ASRC) region and the need to build a roughly 800-mile pipeline to deliver oil to global markets that prompted the need to settle aboriginal land claims in Alaska and led to the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, commonly referred to as ANCSA. Signed into law by U.S. President Richard Nixon in 1971 ANCSA involved a unique plan to organize Alaska Natives into 12 regional...
