The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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From the advancements of technology during the Bronze Age to the computers and telecommunication systems of today's Big Data Era, tin has been critical to human progress for at least 5,500 years. Sometime around 3500 BC, Sumerians living in modern day Turkey and Iran discovered that mixing a little tin with copper created bronze, an alloy that produced much more durable weapons and tools than those cast from copper alone. This cutting-edge discovery offered a strategic and...
Considering the almost unfathomable quantities that will be needed to power the global shift to low-carbon energy and electric mobility, copper is the most critical of the minerals and metals that have not been deemed critical by the United States or the European Union. How much demand will it take to push an abundant and widely produced metal like copper to the level of criticality? A doubling of current demand would likely be sufficient, and many analysts are forecasting...
From jewelry at a black-tie soiree to scrubbing harmful emissions from the exhaust system of a farm truck, the six platinum group metals – platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, and osmium – are metals that are both precious and critical to the United States and Canada. Extremely rare, durable, and with a brilliance that does not tarnish, platinum and other metals in its group are a treasured choice for high-end jewelry that stands the test of time. Three of the...
Reminiscent of America's gilded age, the world is priming itself for a new era of technology and energy centered on the electricity that sparked the imaginations of visionaries such as Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison. This new era, however, sets aside more than a century of burning fossil fuels in favor of new clean sources of the electricity that will power human innovation into the 21st century and beyond. Solar, wind, hydro, and geothermal are but a few of the methods...
From electric vehicles plugged into renewable energy to smartphones connected to 5G networks, new technologies take advantage of the special properties of a suite of critical minerals and metals that are often rare and in short supply. In addition to the rare earths, cobalt, lithium, and other technology metals that capture headline attention, this list includes even more obscure mined materials such as gallium, germanium, scandium, and tellurium. While scarce, these critical...
Far to the north lies the second largest of Canada's three territories, simply named the Northwest Territories, and within this vast region of more than 400,000 square miles lies its only city, the capital called Yellowknife. Yellowknife, and most of the region of the Northwest Territories, lies within what is known as the Canadian Shield, a large area of Precambrian igneous and metamorphic rock, meaning it dates to the earliest part of Earth's history. Scoured down to stone...
Challenged by a global pandemic and a particularly wet summer, many of Northern British Columbia's mineral explorers became adept to adjusting on the fly as they endeavored to unlock the rich precious, base, and battery metals potential of this section of the Pacific Cordillera. With companies like Skeena Resources Ltd. and Ascot Resources Inc. running year-round drill programs as they seek to establish a new era of gold-silver mines at historic operations in the Golden Triang...
Cans, cups, roofs, and foil hats are likely the first things that come to mind when thinking about tin – none of which conjure images of a metal that should be considered critical to a modern country like the United States. According to a study carried out by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, however, tin is the metal expected that be most impacted by new technologies. Commissioned by Rio Tinto, the MIT study found that tin beat out more likely technology metals candidate...
While the United States consumes roughly 5% of the chromite mined globally, none of this chromium mineral comes from domestic mines. Instead, America relies on foreign sources for approximately 72% of its supply and the balance of this vital ingredient in stainless steel and many superalloys comes from recycling. Nearly all America's chromite imports come from one country, South Africa. This heavy reliance on one country, coupled with a dearth of alternatives for this vital...
The six platinum group elements – platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, and osmium – have one foot firmly planted in the realm of precious metals while the other is firmly established in the industrial sectors. While being amongst the rarest metals on the planet already makes PGE's highly valued for jewelry and bullion, their applications in the automotive, petrochemical, and electronics industries are catalysts that drive the price of these industrious pre...
Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. Nov. 19 reported that this year's prospecting and soil sampling has confirmed historically reported high-grade gold mineralization at Big Nugget Gold and has helped refine drill targets for follow up drilling at this project associated with the company's Palmer project in Southeast Alaska. "The Big Nugget Gold project represents a rare, untested and undrilled, high grade gold quartz vein system that is unusual to find in this day and age,"...
Next year will mark the 175th anniversary of one of the greatest institutions in the world – the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. and certainly the pride of our nation's capital. The patron of this American Institution was a geologist who willed its creation with $500,000 in gold despite the fact that he had never stepped foot in the United States. The story behind the Smithsonian is an interesting one, but the gold that funded its founding tells an equally intriguing tale of fi...
A true northern pioneer far from his Eastern European home, 'Wise' Mike Stepovich, settles in a new land and leaves behind a historic legacy in Alaska's Golden Heart City. The history of Fairbanks is not unlike many other gold rush settlements, rife with rugged explorers, savvy tycoons and luckless vagabonds. So, the melting pot of happenstance plays its hand again and begets a fascinating tale of a frontier city and a man far from home. It is hard to say whether Stepovich...
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,...
Another slumbering zinc giant is being awakened in Canada's far north. The MacMillan Pass project, a venture targeting an extensive package of mining claims assembled recently by junior mining company Fireweed Zinc Ltd., hosts the large, advanced Tom and Jason zinc-lead-silver deposits and other occurrences of these minerals in southeastern Yukon Territory. Established in 2015, Fireweed was organized specifically to investigate the potential of the MacMillan Pass area, where...
New Age Metals Inc. Oct. 8 reported that the 2019 Genesis exploration program has significantly expanded the platinum group element-nickel-copper exploration targets on this project in Southcentral Alaska. "We are pleased to announce that this summer's exploration efforts have doubled the strike length of prospective mineralization at our road accessible Genesis PGE-nickel-copper project in Alaska," said New Age Metals Chairman and CEO Harry Barr. Situated along the...
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...
New Age Metals Inc. July 25 announced the start of a 2019 exploration program focused on mapping hydrothermal alteration to better define drill targets on its Genesis platinum group metals-nickel-cobalt project in Southcentral Alaska. Situated along the Richardson Highway about 75 highway miles north of the deep-water port city of Valdez, Genesis is an under-explored palladium-platinum-nickel-copper property with great infrastructure. Previous sampling at Sheep Hill, one of...
In the famous words of Sherlock Holmes, the game is afoot! After seasonally slower news from Alaska's mining industry in March and April, the dam has broken with over two dozen Alaska mining project news releases issued in the last month. Including those projects moving forward that have not released their 2019 plans, Alaska has become a very busy place under the sun. All of our major metal mines reported strong performances in the first quarter, several of Alaska's most...
When it comes to managing its more than 1.5 million acres of land in a region of Southcentral Alaska renowned for its natural beauty, Copper River salmon, abundant wildlife and one of the richest lodes of copper to ever by mined on earth, Ahtna Inc. balances development for the prosperity of its current shareholders and preservation of resources for future generations. An important facet of this management is ensuring that there are plenty of plants, fish and wildlife to suppo...
Tectonic Metals Inc. plans to leverage Alaska's underexplored gold potential to create "the number one mineral exploration company in the world." While this is a lofty goal, Tectonic Metals is led by an executive team that is renowned for the mineral exploration, mining and business skills required to achieve the company's vision. Tony Reda, former vice president of corporate development of Kaminak Gold Corp., is the president and CEO of Tectonic Metals. He is joined by Eira T...
Members of the Kaminak Gold Corp. executive team have reunited to form Tectonic Metals Corp., a private exploration company that has acquired three overlooked gold exploration properties in Alaska's Eastern Interior. While with Kaminak, this team advanced the Coffee project in the Yukon from a grassroots discovery to a roughly 5-million-ounce gold mine project that Goldcorp Inc. acquired in 2017 for C$520 million. Cashing in on Coffee, several of the Kaminak executives moved...
With more than 100 known tin occurrences, Alaska is considered the best place in America to establish a domestic source of this critical alloy metal that has defined human progress since the dawn of the Bronze Age. "Today, Alaskan tin deposits are known to be widespread, occurring from the central Alaska Range north to the Brooks Range and across Interior Alaska ... Southwest Alaska and the Seward Peninsula," according to the 1997 publication, Mineral Deposits of Alaska. And...
The six platinum group elements – platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, and osmium – are amongst the rarest metals on Earth. This scarcity, coupled with PGEs' uses in the automotive, petrochemical and electronics industries, has this group of industrious precious metals firmly planted on the United States Geological Survey's critical minerals list. "PGEs are indispensable to many industrial applications but are mined in only a few places," USGS inked in a 2017 rep...
A vital ingredient in stainless steel and superalloys, chromium is considered by the United States Geological Survey as "one of the nation's most important strategic and critical materials." "Because there is no viable substitute for chromium in the production of stainless steel and because the United States has small chromium resources, there has been concern about domestic supply during every national military emergency since World War I," the USGS explains. Rich chromite...
