The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Found within the newest territory of Canada, Nunavut may seem barren and inhospitable, yet it has provided resources and succor to its First Peoples for thousands of years. While European colonizers and the indigenous peoples in their ancestral home suffered many differences, it was the shared efforts of the two groups in trade and labor that bridged this gap, eventually leading to the formation of Nunavut itself. While it may seem strange, as history often describes events...
Canada is positioning itself as the "global supplier of choice" for the critical minerals and metals essential to tomorrow's technologies, especially the almost unfathomable quantities of raw materials that will be required by a world transitioning to low-carbon energy and electric vehicles. "Demand for minerals and metals continues to grow with an increasing focus on critical minerals – vital in aerospace, healthcare, telecommunications and an array of clean technologies such...
Throughout the relatively short modern history of Alaska, many nameless and oft unrecognized explorers have contributed to the Last Frontier state in ways that future generations will never be able to truly appreciate. This, however, is not the case for Bill Ellis, an explorer and geologist who has gifted his knowledge and experience for nearly half a century and personifies the attitude needed to succeed in mineral exploration, optimism. As if by providence, Bill was born in...
Fortune Minerals Ltd. Sept. 23 announced the start of a 3,000-meter resource expansion and exploration drill program at its Nico cobalt-copper-bismuth-gold project in Canada's Northwest Territories. Nico hosts 33.1 million metric tons of proven and probable reserves averaging 0.11% (82 million pounds) cobalt, 0.14% (110 million lb) bismuth, 0.04% (27 million lb) copper, and 1.03 grams per metric ton (1.1 million ounces) gold. This unique mix of critical, precious, and base met...
The envisioned green future where every North American is driving a battery-powered electric vehicle charged with renewable energy could be undermined by cobalt, a somewhat scarce and controversial metal that makes lithium-ion batteries better. "Cobalt is considered the highest material supply chain risk for electric vehicles in the short and medium term," the U.S. Department of Energy penned in an April report. This risk has automakers, lithium-ion battery manufacturers, and...
"Please mine more nickel," these four words from Tesla CEO Elon Musk reverberated across the global mining sector and raised awareness of how fundamental nickel is to the lithium-ion batteries powering hundreds of millions of electric vehicles to come off Tesla and traditional automaker assembly lines over the next two decades. "Tesla will give you a giant contract for a long period of time if you mine nickel efficiently and in an environmentally sensitive way," Musk implored...
When Australia-based South32 Ltd. decided to expand its portfolio into the Northern Hemisphere, Alaska was its first stop. Under a deal struck with Trilogy Metals Inc. in 2017, South32 agreed to invest more than US$175 million to earn a 50% joint venture interest in the massive Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in Alaska's world-class Ambler Mining District. After investing more than US$30 million to fully understand the mineral potential at UKMP, the major base metals producer...
Giga Metals Corp. July 5 announced the start of a 2021 field program focused on upgrading the resource and collecting other data needed for a prefeasibility study for its Turnagain nickel-cobalt project in Northern British Columbia. "This work program is designed to collect all necessary exploration, geotechnical and other data to advance project engineering to the pre-feasibility level," said Giga Metals CEO Mark Jarvis. This PFS will build upon a preliminary economic...
Garibaldi Resources Corp. June 1 announced that crews have arrived at the camp at Nickel Mountain for a 2021 exploration program that will further explore the battery metals for which this Northern British Columbia project is renowned, as well as to follow up on precious metals for which the Golden Triangle is renowned. "The growing demand for critical metal sources required to drive the new green economy, and precious metals to protect against increasing inflation, was the...
Alaska, Northern British Columbia, and the Yukon are home to a dozen advanced stage exploration and mine projects hosting billions of pounds of copper ready to deliver to a world demanding massive amounts of this conductive metal for the green energy and electric mobility transition envisioned over the next three decades. In its report, "Copper is the new oil," Goldman Sachs forecasts that the electrification of transportation and decarbonization of electrical generation...
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...
Alaska mines produced roughly $3.16 billion worth of non-fuel minerals during 2020, a slight increase over the $3.13 billion during 2019, according to Mineral Commodity Summaries 2021 published by the U.S. Geological Survey on Feb. 2 The rise in Alaska mine production value is largely due to higher gold output at Alaska's large mines and record setting prices for the precious metal last year. According to early estimates by the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical...
Strong metal prices and an infusion of cash from notable resource investors helped to salvage much of a 2020 mineral exploration season in Alaska that became lethargic with disruptions, delays, and shelving of field programs infected by the COVID-19 pandemic early in the year. At its onset, 2020 was looking like it would be the best year for Alaska's mining sector in a decade. Australia-based mining companies were slated to invest nearly US$100 million in mineral exploration...
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...
For many mining companies eyeing prospects in Canada's far north, 2020 presented insurmountable challenges. But for the few explorers and producers focused on Northwest Territories, the year proved to be quite productive, even as a global coronavirus pandemic added expensive restrictions to already costly campaigns. Rigorous restrictions imposed by local and federal officials to quell potential outbreaks of the disease at mining camps and prevent its spread to local...
As 2020, arguably the most calamitous year for northern mining in decades, drew to a close, the Government of Northwest Territories took the unusual step of topping up its annual mining incentives program with an additional C$100,000. In August, the territorial government awarded C$1 million in these grants to 19 junior mining companies and prospectors who proposed mineral exploration programs during the 2020-2021 field season. Normally awarded in the spring, the incentives...
Resolution Minerals Ltd. is on a mission to reveal the rich gold potential in Alaska's Goodpaster Mining District, home to Northern Star Resources Ltd.'s Pogo gold mine. While still known as Northern Cobalt Ltd., this Australia-based junior cut a deal with Millrock Resources Inc. to earn up to a 60% interest in 64North, a 160,000-acre land package encircling the Pogo Mine property, by investing US$20 million in exploration spending over four years. This enormous property is...
Traditionally used to create stronger, lighter, and more durable steels, vanadium is emerging as a potential game changing element in the grid-scale batteries needed to store renewable energy. Known as vanadium redox flow batteries, or VRFBs, this emerging electrical storage technology takes advantage of vanadium's ability to exist in solution in four different oxidation states as electroactive elements, instead of separate elements for the cathode and anode. The amount of ene...
Niobium and tantalum are nearly identical critical mineral twins with unique personalities that takes them on separate career paths in the defense, energy, high-tech and medical sectors. "The leading use of niobium is in the production of high-strength steel alloys used in pipelines, transportation infrastructure, and structural applications," the United State Geological Survey penned in a 2018 report on the indispensable twins. "Electronic capacitors are the leading use of...
Giga Metals Corp. Oct. 28 published a preliminary economic assessment that outlines a mine at its Turnagain project in Northern British Columbia that would produce an average of 33,215 metric tons of nickel and 1,962 metric tons of cobalt annually over a 37-year mine life. This PEA is based on 1.07 billion metric tons of measured and indicated resource averaging 0.22% (5.21 billion pounds) nickel and 0.13% (312.4 million lb) cobalt; plus 1.14 billion metric tons of inferred re...
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...
N'tsi Tatay, more widely known as the Windy Craggy Project, is one of North America's largest resources of cobalt with excellent copper, zinc, gold, and silver grades hosted in an Upper Triassic Besshi-style volcanogenic massive sulphide. It is located in the northwestern corner of British Columbia within a regional scale volcano-sedimentary basin, termed Alta Basin, which is a mineralized belt that has the potential for future discoveries. Other known sulphide prospects...
Trilogy Metals Inc. Feb. 26 announced that Ambler Metals LLC, a joint venture operating company equally owned by Trilogy and South32 Ltd., has approved a US$22.8 million budget for the 2020 program aimed at advancing the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects (UKMP) in Northwestern Alaska. The largest part of this program will focus on advancing studies to prepare the Arctic mine project for permitting. A 2018 prefeasibility study for Arctic detailed plans for an open-pit mine and...
Avalon Advanced Materials Inc. Feb. 6 reported that headway is being made at its Will Scarlett rare earth elements recovery project in Illinois and Nechalacho REE Mine project in Northwest Territories. Avalon said the December agreement by Canada and the United States to co-operate on critical minerals supply chain development, particularly rare earths, has resulted in new government initiatives in both countries to support the creation of these supply chains. The critical...
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...
