The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 26 - 40 of 40
It is high summer in Alaska and the mining industry is busy breaking rocks, drilling holes, collecting baseline data, making upgrades to mine facilities and producing metal and coal across the state. The effects of declining prices for metals are starting to be felt at the operating metal mines and except for a few projects, the exploration sector continues to wallow in the doldrums, which have plagued the industry since 2013. That said, the tire-kicking of earlier this...
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...
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...
Northern Empire Resources Corp. Nov. 5 reported results from the first phase of its 2015 prospecting and sampling program at the 28,763-acre Richardson gold property in Interior Alaska. The work program at Richardson, completed in two phases, focused on soil sample lines north of the Democrat Pit, portions of the adjacent intrusive body known as the Wide Zone, and at Tenderfoot Creek. According to a 1990 State of Alaska publication entitled "Alaska's Mineral Industry, 1989,"...
Northern Empire Resources Corp. and Sonoro Metals Corp. Oct. 22 reported that the second phase of 2015 exploration has expanded the area of gold mineralization at the Hilltop project located in Interior Alaska about 45 miles (70 kilometers) southeast of Fairbanks. "The phase 2 exploration program has expanded the known gold footprint at the Hilltop South and Hilltop North areas, highlighted new prospective target areas, demonstrated a clear association between gold values and...
By the time this summary reaches your eyes, termination dust (aka "snow") will have started to cover mineral projects across Alaska. At a recent project site visit, one of the project owner's representatives was listening to local Alaskans talk about not being ready for winter, how many things planned for the summer remained un-done, etc. After some cogitation on this, he asked me "Does everyone in Alaska get surprised by winter every year?" My response was simple: When you...
Northern Empire Resources Corp. and Sonoro Metals Corp. Aug. 10 said the initial phase of exploration at the Hilltop project has confirmed and expanded the known gold footprint on this property located just north of the paved Richardson Highway about 45 miles east of Fairbanks. Highlights from the program include channel samples returning up to 19.45 grams per metric ton gold and rock grab samples grading as high as 26.55 g/t gold. The program included 61 soil samples to...
The world's mining industry has once again transmogrified itself in the face of changing global metals markets and investor expectations. In a recent Reuters report, several companies, including Newmont Mining Corp., Goldcorp Inc. and Yamana Gold Inc., were singled out as having taken steps to bring smaller, leaner, lower output projects into production to avoid the cost over-runs which have plagued the large multibillion-dollar projects in recent years. The same large mine...
Northern Empire Resources Corp. and Sonoro Metals Corp. June 15 said they have completed the first phase of field work at the Hilltop Gold project located some 45 miles southeast of Fairbanks. The phase-1 program, which began in May, included 8.2 miles (13.2 kilometers) of road improvements to provide access to priority zones; eight trenches excavated and mapped over a total strike extent of 213 meters; six test pits completed in areas with prospective geology; 228 rock sample...
Northern Empire Resources Corp. has laid claim to Richardson, a 52,000-acre gold property in Alaska's Interior and has formed an alliance to begin exploring a segment of this vast parcel. Northern Empire is a prospect generator with early-stage gold properties in Alaska and Nunavut and a silver property in Mexico. The company was formed as part of a restructuring of Prosperity Goldfields Corp., a Nunavut-focused exploration company headed by Adrian Fleming. As part of a re-org...
The state of the world's exploration industry was recently summarized in SNL Metal & Mining's annual "World Exploration Trends" publication, released at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention in Toronto. Not surprisingly, it painted a grim picture of 2014, a year we are all glad to have behind us. The statistics indicate that worldwide exploration expenditures declined a further 26 percent to $11.4 billion, compared with $15.2 billion in 2013 and...
Slipping metals prices and investors' ongoing reluctance to risk venture capital in the junior mining sector is hitting Alaska's mineral exploration sector hard; and the Far North state is not the only mining jurisdiction reeling from this one-two punch. "After another year of strong headwinds in 2014, and with lower demand and overproduction continuing to depress metals prices, the mining industry's outlook for 2015 is unpromising at best," SNL Metals & Mining wrote recently...
Sonoro Metals Corp. March 11 said it has signed a letter of intent to enter into an option agreement to acquire a 60 percent interest in Northern Empire Resources Corp.'s 7,840-acre Hilltop Gold project located some 70 miles south of Fairbanks. To exercise the option and earn a 60 percent interest in Hilltop, Sonoro must spend C$3 million on exploration activities to advance the exploration-stage project and issue 1 million Sonoro shares to Northern Empire by the end of 2019....
Most Alaskans have never heard of Robert B. Gillam, the self-made Anchorage money man who built from scratch an investment empire approaching $10 billion in financial assets under management. But Gillam recently emerged as a central figure in the ongoing fight to stop development of the mammoth Pebble copper-gold deposit near Iliamna in southwest Alaska. He testified in favor of House Concurrent Resolution 29 at a hearing Feb. 10 before the Alaska House Committee on Natural Resources in Juneau. HCR 29 is a resolution that...
Information continues to trickle in from 2002 exploration programs around the state with the final tally suggesting exploration expenditures for 2002 will come in at about the same or slightly higher levels as in 2001. As is most years, a few major projects expend the majority of the funds while many smaller projects move either forward toward increased funding or backward to the project bone yard. The big spenders in 2002 will be Donlin Creek, Pebble and Pogo while properties...
