The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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ILLINOIS CREEK CAMP: Maps spread out here on a pool table and laptops filled with geophysical and geochemical data collected at the Round Top copper project line up on a makeshift desk against the wall – an air of optimism and excitement fills the former recreation room for the past-producing Illinois Creek Mine that now serves as the headquarters for Western Alaska Copper & Gold Company. The source of the excitement is a drill tapping into a potentially large and robust p...
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...
FM: TSX / FQM: LSE Chairman and CEO: Philip Pascall President: Clive Newall Principal geologist, generative projects: Tim Ireland With seven mines in operation and five mineral projects under development, First Quantum Minerals Ltd. is a growing, diversified miner with a particular focus on copper. Its operating mines and development projects are located in Africa, Australia, Finland, Spain, Turkey and Latin America. Yet the company has no foothold in North America. Carrying forward a relationship built between Inmet and...
First Quantum Minerals Ltd. has agreed to invest US$2 million on a drill program aimed at further investigating the potential of Millrock Resources Inc.'s highly-prospective copper-gold project in western Alaska. The roughly 500,000-acre property extends about 75 miles from Stepovak Bay near the southwestern end of the Alaska Peninsula to a few miles north of Chignik Bay, one of the primary ports in the area. Millrock optioned the property in 2012 from Bristol Bay Native...
Amid the volatile metals markets that have become the norm in the past year, miners, developers, explorers, prospectors and investors met in Vancouver at the end of January for the annual Cordilleran Roundup mining convention. The mood was decidely positive, and having seen a lot of "whistling in the cemetary" at this convention in the past, I know the difference between false bravado and contagious optimism. Perhaps it was the stabilization of copper prices after a nine month...
Since buying out its mining rival Inmet Mining Corp. in early 2013, First Quantum Minerals Ltd. has shown a keen interest in Alaska's copper potential. With seven mines in operation and five mineral projects under development, First Quantum is a growing, diversified miner with a particular focus on copper. Its operating mines and development projects are located in Africa, Australia, Finland, Spain, Turkey and Latin America. Yet the company has no foothold in North America....
MRO: TSX.V President and CEO: Gregory Beischer Chief Exploration Officer: Philip St. George Executive Vice President: Sarah Whicker Millrock Resources Inc. identifies and acquires grassroots mineral prospects and then seeks joint venture partners to help fund the exploration. This project generator model lessens the company's need to raise money in the markets, minimizes the risks involved with grassroots exploration and exposes shareholders to a large amount of exploration expenditure per dollar invested. Since its...
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,...
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...
The Bokan Mountain and Niblack mineral projects are attracting substantial support from Alaska lawmakers. This vote of confidence may result in a financial boost needed to develop the Prince of Wales Island deposits into mines during an otherwise tight financial market. "In southern Southeast (Alaska), we are working on legislation right now to create hundreds of new jobs at Niblack and Bokan," Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell said during an April 10 keynote address at the Arctic Inte...
ANCHORAGE - "Mining in Alaska: Build it, keep it, grow it" was the theme of the Alaska Miners Association 2013 Convention, but "screwed by the federal government" was an underlying refrain that permeated conversations from chats over coffee to keynote speeches at the annual gathering. "If there is a poster-child for being screwed by the federal government, Alaska is the one," Rep. Doc Hastings, R-Washington told the mining community during his Nov. 6 opening speech at the convention. The latest in this series of posters...
At the end of October this year, the U.S. District Court for the District of Alaska handed down a case brought by Alaskan John Sturgeon, as another in a long list of decisions upholding the federal government's power to circumscribe our rights to use reasonable and appropriate methods of access to remote areas of the State. Without criticizing either the outcome or the reasoning that was used to achieve that outcome, this case, if it withstands appeal, will be just one additional landmark along the way to the apparent...
It's been deceptively quiet - with a few notable exceptions - within Alaska's minerals sector this year. Thanks to low metals prices and risk-averse investors, we haven't seen much new mineral exploration in Alaska in 2013. That's after a series of gangbuster years - 2011 set a record for investment in mineral exploration in Alaska. But at the Department of Natural Resources, we remain very bullish on the magnitude of Alaska's exploration potential and the future of Alaska's minerals sector. And we are working hard to make...
You say the world's frontiers have all been conquered, and Nature's riddles have all been solved? Don't tell that to Darnley Bay Resources Ltd. The Toronto-based junior is celebrating two decades this summer of working to unravel one of Earth's most intriguing mineral mysteries. The puzzle lies deep beneath the earth's surface in Canada's Far North in what potentially may be the strongest isolated gravity anomaly in the world and certainly, in North America. Located near Paulatuk, Northwest Territories on the Arctic coast,...
The 28th Alaska Legislature has forwarded a slew of bills to the desk of Gov. Sean Parnell that are aimed at recognizing the Last Frontier's rich mining history and ensuring the industry is a key component of the state's economic future. Senate Bill 1, which designates May 10 of every year as Alaska Mining Day, was the first of these to garner Parnell's endorsement. May 10 was chosen to coincide with the day the General Mining Act of the United States was adopted in 1872....
The right size operation, recovering the right rare earth elements in the right location; this is how market experts and policymakers are describing Ucore Rare Metals' Bokan Mountain REE project in Southeast Alaska. In a March 9 article, "The Rare Earth Space, 'A Culling of the Herd, and the Survivors' (Part 1: North America)," pre-eminent technology metals expert Jack Lifton said Ucore and its Bokan Mountain project has the right elements to survive "the Darwinian nature of...
Putting Alaska on the map as a domestic source of rare earth elements and other strategic and critical minerals is a priority of Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell. During the 2012 budget cycle, Alaska lawmakers approved US$498,000 proposed by the administration to begin a statewide REE evaluation. This year's budget includes US$2.7 million for a three-year project to continue this initiative. "Alaska can become America's source for rare earth elements," Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell...
The Nunavut Mining Symposium, held April 16-19 in Iqaluit, NU, the northern territory's capital, drew more than 500 delegates, a record for the annual gathering. Patricia M. Mohr, vice president of Scotiabank, delivered the keynote address, outlining the financial institution's 2012-13 outlook for metal prices, currencies and global growth. Mohr, a commodity market specialist at the Toronto-based international bank, said price increases in the bank's widely respected Metal & Mineral Index at 11.1 percent per annum during the...
David Mate, chief geologist for the Canada Nunavut Geoscience Office, is part of a team of scientists venturing this field season into relatively unknown territory. Mate refers to the Hall Peninsula where he will be working this summer as "white space" on modern geological maps. "This is very exciting for a geologist. It's also interesting because it's in my backyard," Mate told Mining News April 22. Nunavut is Canada's northernmost and least-explored territory. About 1 ½ times the size of Alaska it is generally regarded as...
The Yukon Chamber of Mines recently signed a memorandum of understanding with the First Nation of Na-cho Nyak Dun and the Tr'ondëk Hwëch'in to create a framework within which the industry and aboriginal groups will work together for their respective goals. The First Nations said they seek to preserve a way of life that is based upon an economic and spiritual relationship with the land, while the Chamber of Mines said it aims to promote a vibrant, healthy, safe and responsible mining and exploration industry in the Yukon. T...
NovaGold Resources Inc. and NANA Regional Corp. have forged a landmark partnership to explore and develop the Ambler Mining District - a region of Northwest Alaska renown for a 110-kilometer- (70 miles) long belt of world-class volcanogenic massive sulfide deposits rich in copper, zinc, lead, gold and silver that sweep across its breadth. The progressive agreement, penned by NovaGold President and CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse and NANA President and CEO Marie Greene Oct. 19,...
Nearly a half century ago, John S. Brock ventured into Yukon Territory to explore for hardrock minerals. The young geologist soon found himself involved in Anvil Mining and Dynasty Exploration's discoveries that led to the development of Faro, which became the world's largest open-pit lead-zinc mine. "I was just a kid then, and I thought, 'This business is really easy,' " Brock recalled. Today, the longtime explorationist knows better. During the past 48 years, Brock has participated in numerous mineral discoveries in Canada,...
An ancient Chinese aphorism advises that if you give a man a fish he will eat for a day, and if you teach him how to fish, he will eat for a lifetime. I am going to go way out on a limb here and suggest that contrary to all known experience, government is not uneducable. Here's my simple point: The Council on Environmental Quality has spent the last 40 years screwing things up. They have interpreted their mandate myopically; they have wasted literally forests of paper on...
Alaska legislators are at odds on how to proceed with a state-funded study of the Pebble Project and what effect building a mine at the enormous copper-gold-molybdenum deposit will have on the people and environment of the Bristol Bay region of Southwest Alaska. With US$750,000 appropriated in the fiscal 2011 Alaska state budget to advance such a study, the Alaska Legislative Council formed a subcommittee to move the review forward. Chaired by Alaska House Speaker Mike...
More and more explorers are buying up and/or staking claims in an elongated area of central British Columbia that is emerging as a significant rare earth metals play, while juniors line up to mobilize exploration crews to begin searching the area for economic concentrations of rare earths. All of this attention is focused on a major continental geologic feature known as the Rocky Mountain trench, a southeast-northwest trending swath of mountainous ground that could host numerous potentially economic concentrations of rare met...
