The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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A group of diverse global-scale mining companies hailing from Australia, Japan, and the United States are quietly exploring a relatively small region of Alaska's Interior. Two of these international players - Sumitomo Metal Mining and Newmont Mining Corp. - are seeking gold in the Pogo region of the Tintina Gold Belt. Melbourne-based MMG Ltd., on the other hand, is seeking nickel in the Wrangellia Terrane, a promising band of rocks immediately south of the legendary gold...
Mineral exploration spending in Alaska will likely struggle to top US$80 million for 2014, a dramatic fall from the US$365.1 million pinnacle reached in 2011. "The din of mineral industry activity that is normally a part of the summer months in Alaska is decidedly muted this year as the global mining industry attempts to lift itself off the bottom of a plus-18-month-long slump," Avalon Development President Curt Freeman opined in a June column written for Mining News. Unlike 2...
International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. March 26 announced that Karl Hanneman has been elevated to the role of chief operating officer. Hanneman has worked for Tower Hill since 2010, most recently serving as the company's general manager. He has more than 30 years of Alaska-based mining industry experience, including serving in a key role on the team that worked to successfully resolve permitting issues at the Red Dog Mine in 2008-2010. Prior to that, he was Alaska regional...
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....
Galvanized by higher zinc prices and strong production at Teck Resources Ltd.'s Red Dog Mine, the value of Alaska's mineral production topped US$3 billion for the fifth year running. Larry Freeman, chief of Minerals Resources at the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys, told an audience at the AME BC Mineral Exploration Roundup that production of zinc, lead and silver - all metals produced at Red Dog - climbed in Alaska during 2014. Gold production, on the...
Plummeting oil prices have put Alaska residents and Alaska miners in the same boat. Suddenly, it's less expensive to top off the tank of an SUV or a haul truck, but the state budget, fueled by oil revenue, is teetering on the edge of an estimated $3.5 billion deficit. That's $10 million a day for 2015. "We know Alaska is experiencing a significant drop in revenue - the price of oil has dropped more than 50 percent over the past six months," Alaska's new governor, Bill Walker,...
Several events have dramatically affected Alaska's mining industry in recent weeks, underscoring critical links between Alaska and the global economy. First came bad news for newly-elected Gov. Bill Walker: The plunge in world oil prices pushed Alaska's coming-year budget projections about $3.5 billion into the red. The ripple effect of this was a slashing of everything not required and one of the cuts, temporarily at least, was state funding of the Ambler District Road....
Continuing its success in finding new deposits of high-grade gold in the shadow of the mill at the Pogo Mine located in Interior Alaska, Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo - a joint venture between Sumitomo Metal Mining Company (85 percent) and Sumitomo Corp. (15 percent) - ramped up exploration spending at its Interior Alaska operation to US$17 million in 2014. "Some of the companies are reducing their exploration costs; we aren't doing that," Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo General...
TSX: FVL President and CEO: Kristina Walcott Vice President, Exploration and Development: Alvin Jackson Freegold Ventures Ltd. has a portfolio of four gold exploration properties in Alaska. In recent years, the company has focused its exploration primarily on Golden Summit, a 6-million-ounce bulk-tonnage gold project located roughly 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of Fairbanks and four miles (seven kilometers) from Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine. The Dolphin-Cleary zone at Golden Summit has an indicated resource of...
Sumitomo Metal Mining (95 percent), Sumitomo Corp. (5 percent) Stone Boy Inc., owned by subsidiaries of Sumitomo Metal Mining (95 percent) and Sumitomo Corp. (5 percent), continues to seek high-grade gold on claims in the area of the Pogo gold mine in Interior Alaska. The Stone Boy partners have been exploring the larger Pogo district since 1991. This includes recent drilling on the Monte Cristo property, located roughly 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Sumitomo Metal Mining's Pogo gold mine, and the Ink claims, situated a...
In an industry eager for even a scintilla of good news, a recent report from industry analyst SNL Metals & Mining recently gave the good-news-starved industry a bit of hope. SNL's article, titled, "Too early to start celebrating a recovery in the sector," indicated that although the downward trend in mineral exploration has not broken yet, the market has stopped down-grading mining equities, with a modest gain in market capitalization since its most recent low in mid-2013....
As is normally the case in high summer in Alaska, news has started to trickle out of the hills on projects where new work is being conducted, and several properties have changed hands or are in the process of changing hands as mining deals are negotiated and announced across the state. Alaska mines are enjoying slight upticks in metals prices, but recent price volatility has left producers cautious about making long-term capital investments in new or existing projects. Regardl...
Alaska's natural gas is increasingly replacing diesel as the fuel of choice for mines and mining projects across the Far North State and Yukon Territory. At roughly 37 trillion cubic feet, Alaska is awash in natural gas; however, some 35 tcf of these known reserves are isolated in the Arctic oil and gas fields of the North Slope. The balance, located in the Cook Inlet basin that stretches southwest from Anchorage, has been developed primarily to serve consumers in the...
FAIRBANKS - The Arctic International Mining Symposium in Fairbanks afforded Interior Alaska mines the opportunity to provide an update on the latest developments at local operations. While the mines touted individual achievements in 2013 - record gold at Fort Knox, new discoveries at Pogo and a new deposit at Usibelli - a commitment to and appreciation of people was a common thread spun through messages from all three operations. "Without the people you might as well shut the...
NovaCopper Inc.'s 2013 exploration program has added another 2.6 billion pounds of copper to the resource at the Bornite project in the Ambler mining district, swelling the size of this Northwest Alaska deposit to 6 billion lbs. of the red metal. Bornite is one of many deposits and prospects that make up the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, a long-term partnership forged between NovaCopper and NANA Regional Corp. in 2011. The alliance combines Bornite and a number of other...
British Columbia Premier Christy Clark ordered a review of the Canadian province's environmental assessment process in January, saying the current system has become too cumbersome. Clark provided few details when she announced the initiative at the Mineral Exploration Roundup in Vancouver Jan. 27. She said environmental reviews of major projects are crucial, and while the current process is rigorous and transparent, the B.C. environmental assessment office can "do better." "In my view, it is better to do the hard and...
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...
Spurred by a record-setting pace at Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine, Alaska gold production topped 1 million ounces during 2013, a golden milestone not achieved by Last Frontier gold miners since 1906. Though more than a century lies between these monumental milestones, they are linked by a discovery made by Felice Pedroni, an Italian immigrant better known to Alaskans as Felix Pedro. It was Pedro's gold find in an Interior Alaska stream in 1902 that sparked the Fairbanks...
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...
Miners in Alaska make good money! How good? Well, a report recently published by the McDowell Group found that the 329 direct employees at the Pogo gold mine averaged a whopping US$116,916 before benefits during 2012. Roughly 217 of these six-figure paychecks were brought home by Alaskans, including about 167 going to employees living in the Interior region of the state where the high-grade underground mine is located. "Mining is good for Alaska and Pogo, specifically, is an...
The ongoing scarcity of venture capital available to junior companies coupled with a retreat in metals prices has landed a one-two blow that sent mineral exploration spending in Alaska plunging for the second straight year. A handful of big-budget projects scattered across Alaska, though, is softening the hit to exploration spending across the Far North State during 2013. Mineral exploration expenditures in Alaska, which were a meager US$23.8 million in 2001, topped US$365...
President, Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo: Katsuya Tanaka Pogo General Manager: Chris Kennedy Pogo Geology Manager: Ken Puchlik Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo LLC - a joint venture between Japanese firms Sumitomo Metal Mining Company (85 percent) and Sumitomo Corp. (15 percent) - is preparing to mine East Deep, a new zone of high-grade gold discovered in the shadow of the mill at the Pogo Mine in Interior Alaska. Since 2008, this high-grade underground mine, situated some 85 miles (137 kilometers) southeast of Fairbanks, has...
From Kotzebue to Ketchikan, Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority is using its financial muscle and its ability to build and operate large infrastructure projects to help mining companies overcome the challenges of developing the often remote mineral riches that the Last Frontier has to offer. "We are working with local communities and mine developers on infrastructure projects throughout Alaska, including port facilities and energy supply," said AIDEA external...
Many concerned Alaskans may have read former State Senator Clem Tillion's op-ed piece in the July 2, 2013, issue of the Alaska Dispatch concerning the royalty that might be paid to the people of Alaska should the Pebble Project one day become a mine. Sen. Tillion argues that at current rates, the royalties to the state would be insufficient to justify allowing the Pebble Project to go forward. His message seems to be that developing Alaska's resources, when properly...
