The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Following a couple of quiet months where Alaska's mining industry focused on its work, the last month has seen an explosion of new info come out regarding that effort, some of it profound in its potential immediate, near-term and long-term implications. For example, one of Alaska's largest mines was sold to a new owner at a surprisingly low cost per ounce. The results of a robust new preliminary economic analysis were tabled by an advanced gold-silver exploration project...
Northern Star Resources Ltd. Sept. 3 raised AU$175 million to help fund its acquisition of the Pogo gold mine in Alaska. In a deal announced on Aug. 30, the Australia-based miner has agreed to pay US$260 million to buy out Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo, a joint venture between Japanese firms Sumitomo Metal Mining Company (85 percent) and Sumitomo Corp. (15 percent) that owns and operates the mine. Pogo currently has roughly 4.1 million ounces of gold in resources and reserves,...
Australian gold miner Northern Star Resources Ltd. is adding the Pogo Mine in Alaska to its growing portfolio of low-cost, high-grade underground gold mines. In a deal announced on Aug. 30, the Perth-based miner has agreed to pay US$260 million to buy out Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo, a joint venture between Japanese firms Sumitomo Metal Mining Company (85 percent) and Sumitomo Corp. (15 percent) that owns and operates the mine. Pogo currently has roughly 4.1 million ounces of...
The Fort Knox Mine will continue churning out gold until at least 2030, thanks to Kinross Gold Corp.'s decision to move ahead with the development of Gilmore, an expansion project immediately west of the open-pit mine that has provide ore to the Interior Alaska operation for 22 years. "This go-ahead decision for Gilmore represents collaboration, hard work and dedication coming to fruition, and it wouldn't have been possible without the contributions of many," said Fort Knox...
Ascot Resources Ltd. April 19 said a 45,000-meter drill program is now underway at Premier-Dilworth, which blankets more than 100 square kilometers (38.6 square miles) of gold, silver and base metals deposits and prospects in British Columbia's Golden Triangle. This land package still has infrastructure from the Premier Mine – a past-producer of 2.1 million ounces of gold and 44.9 million oz silver – including mill, assay lab building, crusher, tailing storage area and und...
Kutcho Copper Corp. Feb. 14 announced the resumption of environmental baseline studies at the Kutcho copper project in northern British Columbia. The program will continue with and confirm the environmental and socio-economic data that had been collected previously by Capstone Mining Corp. Under its former name, Desert Star Resources Ltd., Kutcho Copper acquired the project from Capstone in 2017. A prefeasibility study prepared for Kutcho Copper outlines a mine at the Kutcho...
Mineral exploration spending in Alaska hit an apex of US$365 million in 2011, but as venture capital for mining explorers dried these expenditures plummeted 78 percent to US$80 million in 2015. However, rising gold prices and a loosening of venture capital in 2016 seems to have marked an end to a painfully long bear market for mining explorers in Alaska. “After taking head shots for the past four years, the industry suddenly came to life over the past month, with new budgets,...
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...
After six tumultuous years, 2017 is shaping up to be a turnaround year for the enormous Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum project in Southwest Alaska. "The stars that were previously askew, they seem to be lining up," Northern Dynasty CEO Ron Thiessen told Mining News. This star realignment is reflected in a US$37.4 million financing the Pebble project owner closed on Jan. 26. Underwritten by a trio of renowned financiers, this financing involved the issuance of 20.24 million shar...
As a follow-up to last month's realization that once again "the game is afoot" in the mining industry, major gold producer Goldcorp recently presented some arresting statistics at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Metals, Mining and Steel Conference. The presentation showed gold discovery and production information for the global mining industry that indicated that peak gold discovery occurred in 1995, this despite three periods between 1995 and 2015 when exploration...
Strong metals prices and a pro-jobs businessman who vows to inject “new American metal into the spine of this country” preparing to set up his office in the White House bodes well for Alaska’s mining sector going into 2017. While a renaissance of Alaska’s mining sector may not be at the top of President-elect Donald Trump’s to-do list, pouring coal on the fire of America’s economic engine – both literally and figuratively – is. The figurative coal important to Alaskan miners...
With world-class mineral deposits, paved roads and commercial power, northern British Columbia is considered by many as a great place to achieve a mining explorer's ultimate goal – find a mine. "The geology has been great up there for 100 million years, but it has only been the last five that we have had run-of-river (hydro-electric) projects, dams – literally billions of dollars of new infrastructure," said Colorado Resources Ltd. President and CEO Adam Travis. The start of...
Desert Star Resources Ltd. June 15 reported that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire full ownership of Capstone Mining Corp.'s Kutcho copper-zinc-gold-silver project in northern British Columbia. To acquire Kutcho Copper Corp., the Capstone subsidiary that owns Kutcho, Desert star has agreed to pay C$28.8 million in cash and issue enough shares to provide Capstone with 9.9 percent of Desert Star's issued and outstanding shares. A prefeasibility study prepared for Desert Star outlines a mine at Kutcho that would...
Established in 1891, Hecla Mining Company has survived two World Wars, the Great Depression and numerous crests and troughs of a cyclical metals market that has sunk many of the silver miner's contemporaries over the past 125 years. Over this century-plus span, Hecla has grown adept at navigating tumultuous markets in a way that enables the company to be well-positioned for smooth sailing in calm waters. "We have been in business longer than iconic American companies such as...
Mineral exploration spending in Northwest Territories dipped sharply in 2015. While the final numbers are not in, Natural Resources Canada predicts exploration and deposit appraisal expenditures in the territory to be around C$43.6 million, or less than half the roughly C$95.8 million invested last year. Industry and government leaders in the territory, however, have come together "to develop a robust mineral industry in the NWT." In January, the government announced the...
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...
After ushering in devolution in concert with implementing the first phase of a well-reasoned mineral development strategy, the Northwest Territories is eager to attract new mineral resource investment in 2014 in hopes of building on an uptick in exploration activity in recent years. "The Canadian North is the next frontier in mining and mineral development and nowhere is this more evident than in the NWT," said NWT Industry, Tourism, and Investment Minister David Ramsay. Home to the third-richest diamond resources in the...
Diamonds exploration heated up in the Northwest Territories in 2014 as more and more companies mounted campaigns aimed at identifying the next big discovery in a region that has already produced three operating diamond mines and one well-advanced mine project. "It's been an exciting season for us because on April 1, we took over management of mineral and oil and gas resources in the territory. Overall, we're seeing a consistent trend for exploration as well as a bit of a resurgence of interest in diamonds," Pam Strand,...
If you believe what you see in the press, Alaska's mineral industry was recently given a Christmas gift that trumps even the high-grade anthracite coal that most Alaskans were dreaming of during the last 40-below cold snap. The Alaska Dispatch reported on a recent presentation at the fall 2013 meeting of the American Geophysical Union titled, "Critical Metals in Western Arctic Ocean Ferromanganese Mineral Deposits," by James Hein, a senior scientist at the U.S. Geological...
I recently attended the 119th Annual Meeting of the Northwest Mining Association in Reno and came away feeling better about Alaska than when I arrived. Alaska Miners Association Director Deantha Crockett chaired and spoke in a session that covered everything from small mining operations and new exploration discoveries to advanced exploration projects and operating mines. The 8 a.m. session was surprisingly well-attended, despite the fact that the hotel was host to 1,000 explor...
The 6.4 million ounces of low-cost silver recovered from the Greens Creek Mine in Southeast Alaska during 2012 is funding growth aspirations at Hecla Mining Co., including a foray into Canada's mining sector. This growth begins with the first silver production from the Lucky Friday Mine since the Idaho operation was put out of commission for safety and operational upgrades at the end of 2011. With the Idaho operation scaling back up to full capacity in 2013, Hecla is looking...
In 2013, the mineral industry globally has been buffeted by financial challenges. Development infrastructure has seen major cost increases. Multinational corporations have had major write-downs of assets associated with falling mineral prices. Junior exploration companies have not been able to raise venture capital for funding projects as investors appear to be shying away from what is seen as a risk investment. Yukon was not exempt from these challenges. Most exploration programs were downscaled with emphasis on lower-cost...
The 6.4 million ounces of low-cost silver recovered from the Greens Creek Mine in Southeast Alaska during 2012 is funding growth aspirations at Hecla Mining Co., including a foray into Canada's mining sector. "This past year, with the Lucky Friday down, Greens Creek generated strong silver production and cash flow to allow record capital investments that are expected to generate not only higher silver production in 2013, but expected organic growth well into the future," said...
I finally found something I have been thinking about for a long time but had not seen discussed in detail. We have all seen summaries of the declining rate of discoveries for new mineral deposits and have heard about the steadily increasing cost of production, now at a record US$727 per ounce, according to GFMS' Gold Survey 2012. What I really wanted to know was the replacement cost of an ounce or a pound of metal. Let's take gold for example: If I am a producing mine and I just produced an ounce of gold, what is the cost of...
Northwest Territories, a vast expanse of mountains, forests and tundra, has been slower to experience the surge in mineral exploration and development activities that has swept across Yukon Territory and Nunavut in recent years. But the mining industry is turning its attention to the 1.17 million square kilometers (431,162 square miles) Arctic land - roughly two-thirds the size of Alaska - that lies in between. Permits have been issued for new areas of exploration and claims are being staked in places where such activity has...
