The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Yukon Territory, a mineral exploration frontrunner in Canada's North, is witnessing a significant slowdown in 2019. As a result, growth in Yukon's economy is expected to slow this year but rebound in 2020, according to The Conference Board of Canada. In its "Territorial Outlook Economic Forecast: Summer 2019," released in June, the board said new mines coming online in 2020 will drive Yukon's growth in the near future. Several factors, however, have converged to put the...
Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. June 28 reported that recent resampling of historical core from the Johnson Tract gold property in Southcentral Alaska returned long zones of high-grade gold, along with zinc, copper, lead and silver. The results from this resampling are included in a technical report filed in advance of a July 25 meeting for shareholders to vote on Constantine's proposal to spin out Johnson Tract and the company's other gold properties into HighGold Mining...
Washington D.C.'s increased interest in securing a steadfast supply of critical minerals may prompt further advancement at Ucore Rare Metals Inc.'s Bokan Mountain, a Southeast Alaska project that hosts seven of the 35 minerals, metals and groups of elements that are considered critical to the United States. A federal interagency report published earlier this month by the U.S. Department of Commerce, "A federal strategy to ensure secure and reliable supplies of critical...
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) have teamed up to introduce bipartisan legislation aimed at addressing America's "Achilles' heel" – a heavy dependence on foreign countries for its growing mineral needs. "Our nation's mineral security is a significant, urgent, and often ignored challenge. Our reliance on China and other nations for critical minerals costs us jobs, weakens our economic competitiveness, and leaves us at a geopolitical d...
Those of you that attended the recent Cordilleran Roundup Convention in Vancouver can attest to the exuberant, upbeat atmosphere that pervaded the conference and was very much in evidence at the standing-room only festivities at our annual self-hosted Alaska Night meet and greet. But digging down under this veneer of optimism, many of the junior explorers and most of the producers admitted to their expectations of challenging times in 2019. Putting words to this apparent...
NANA Jan. 19 announced the hiring of two key executives heading into the new year – Sarah Lukin now serves as senior vice president and chief administration officer at NANA Regional Corp., and Kevin Aubertin joins NANA's Commercial Group as the president of Tuuq Drilling. Lukin, who officially began her tenure at NANA on Jan. 7, will provide strategic leadership in a broad range of functions, including leading external and government affairs, corporate communications, c...
With nearly indistinguishable physical and chemical properties, niobium and tantalum are almost always found together in nature. Both are also critical to the defense, energy and high-tech sectors in the United States, but neither are mined domestically. For these reasons, the United States Geological Survey considers these transition metals "indispensable twins" that are critical to America's economic and strategic wellbeing. "Niobium and tantalum are transition metals that...
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...
The Trump Administration's latest round of tariffs on Chinese goods includes a 10 percent levy on rare earth elements, a group of 17 elements on the periodic table with unique properties that make them key ingredients in a wide array of modern high-tech products such as terabyte hard-drives that fit in the palm of your hand, high-efficiency green-power generation and sophisticated military hardware. For decades, China has dominated the REE market and has largely controlled...
A vital ingredient in stainless steel and superalloys, chromium is considered by the United States Geological Survey as "one of the Nation's most important strategic and critical materials." "Because there is no viable substitute for chromium in the production of stainless steel and because the United States has small chromium resources, there has been concern about domestic supply during every national military emergency since World War I," the USGS explains. Rich chromite...
Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. May 1 said it intends to raise C$10 million through a non-brokered private placement that will include a major strategic investment from Electrum Strategic Opportunities Fund II L.P., an investment fund managed by The Electrum Group LLC. Altius Minerals Corp. and John Tognetti, a major shareholder and Constantine Metal insider, are also slated to participate in the financing. "We welcome the Electrum 'family' as a major shareholder, who we...
A US$28.7 million financing that closed today provides Trilogy Metals Inc.the funds to take major strides in achieving its goal of beginning to develop the vast mineral potential that the world-class Ambler Mining District in Northwest Alaska has to offer. In a deal announced on April 16, a syndicate of underwriters led by Cantor Fitzgerald Canada Corp. –including Cormark Securities Inc., BMO Capital Markets and Roth Capital Partners – has agreed to buy on a bought deal, und...
In 2017 Alaska’s mineral exploration industry saw its first up-tick in exploration spending since 2011, an increase that S&P Global Market Intelligence’s “World Exploration Trends” indicates was mirrored on the world-wide level. According to S&P’s data, the worldwide exploration industry spent $8.4 billion in 2017, the first such increase in spending since 2012. S&P also forecast a 15-20 percent increase in exploration spending for 2018 as well. The study also showed that dema...
Geologists familiar with Alaska already know the Far North State is a great place to explore for critical minerals and metals such as graphite, rare earths, platinum metals, cobalt and tin. A new report published by the U.S. Geological Survey, however, indicates that Alaska may be richer in these and other minerals and metals vital to the economy and security of the United States than previously realized. Working alongside the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical...
The strength and durability of steel and other alloys is greatly enhanced by adding a small amount of vanadium, currently the primary use of this critical mineral. While this toughness is legendary, the future of vanadium could rest in another set of more subtle traits that could make it the element of choice for large-scale storage of renewable energy generated by wind and solar. "Vanadium is becoming more widely used in green technology applications, especially in battery...
With more than 100 known tin occurrences, Alaska is considered the best place in America to establish a domestic source of this critical alloy metal that has defined human progress since the dawn of the Bronze Age. "Today, Alaskan tin deposits are known to be widespread, occurring from the central Alaska Range north to the Brooks Range and across Interior Alaska ... Southwest Alaska and the Seward Peninsula," according to the 1997 publication, Mineral Deposits of Alaska. And...
A vital ingredient in stainless steel and superalloys, chromium is considered by the United States Geological Survey as "one of the nation's most important strategic and critical materials." "Because there is no viable substitute for chromium in the production of stainless steel and because the United States has small chromium resources, there has been concern about domestic supply during every national military emergency since World War I," the USGS explains. Rich chromite...
At least 125 million electric vehicles are expected to be traveling global highways by 2030, which means the world is going to need a lot more graphite in the coming decade and beyond. This is because graphite serves as the anode in the lithium-ion batteries that power these EVs, not to mention the growing number of portable tools and electronics that use the same type of battery. According to Mineral Commodity Summaries 2019, an annual report published by the United States...
Welcome to the 10th anniversary of Mining Explorers! While there have been tectonic shifts in the mineral exploration markets over the past decade, two things have remained rock solid – mining explorers continue to uncover the vast mineral resources across Alaska and Canada's North and North of 60 Mining News has been here to tell their story. With the price for an ounce of gold pushing above US$1,300 to ring in the new year – along with zinc and copper selling at mul...
Canada is the world's top destination for mining exploration spending, attracting more than 14 percent of global budgeted expenditures from explorers seeking to tap the country's vast mineral wealth. Yet in 2017, the three huge mineral-rich territories to the north, Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Yukon Territory, lured only about C$360 million, or less than one-fifth of the roughly $2.1 billion that junior and senior mining companies invested in mineral exploration and dep...
More than three dozen explorers chased lucrative mineral deposits in Yukon Territory in 2017 and most of these junior and senior companies returned to the northern jurisdiction this year to take another crack at hitting the jackpot. Known for its rich and storied gold mining history as well as its rugged mountain peaks, Yukon is roughly 15 percent larger than California, covering more than 482,000 square kilometers (186,272 square miles). Split off from the Northwest...
Since investing roughly US$70 million to acquire a 28 percent stake in Novagold Resources Inc. in 2009, American billionaire Thomas Kaplan and his Electrum Group of companies have taken a keen interest in some of the more intriguing mineral exploration companies and projects in Alaska and across Canada's North. Kaplan, an Oxford-educated historian that began investing in natural resources in the 1980s, knows that gold has served as a currency throughout mankind's written histo...
Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. continues to advance its flagship property, the Palmer copper-zinc-silver-gold-barite project near the port-town of Haines in Southeast Alaska, as it looks to create a new vehicle to carry its gold properties in Alaska, Yukon Territory and Ontario. The roughly US$9 million exploration program at Palmer is being funded by a joint venture between Constantine Metal Resources (51 percent) and Dowa Metals & Mining Co. Ltd. (49 percent). A new resour...
International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. continued optimization and environmental baseline studies at Livengood, an 11.5-million-ounce gold project located along a paved highway about 70 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska. To fund this work, the Alaska-based exploration company raised US$12 million through a non-brokered private placement that involved issuing 24 million shares at US50 cents each. Electrum Strategic Opportunities Fund II, a new International Tower Hill Mines...
ATAC Resources Ltd.'s Rackla Gold project saw roughly C$13 million of exploration in 2018. Barrick Gold Corp. invested about C$6 million at Orion, a gold project that lies in the middle of the 1,700-square-kilometer (656 square miles) Rackla Gold property. ATAC spent the balance at Osiris and Rau, situated on the east and west ends of Rackla, respectively. Barrick has the option to earn up to 70 percent ownership of Orion by investing roughly C$63.3 million, including a...
