The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 51 - 75 of 156
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...
MRO: TSX.V President and CEO: Gregory Beischer Chief Exploration Officer: Philip St. George Through careful execution of the project generator model, Millrock Resources Inc. has built a portfolio of grassroots mineral prospects in Alaska, New Mexico and Mexico. In finding joint venture partners to help fund exploration, the project generator model lessens Millrock's need to raise money in tight equity markets, minimizes the risks involved with grassroots exploration and exposes shareholders to a larger amount of exploration e...
Sumitomo Metal Mining Co. (85 percent); Sumitomo Corp. (15 percent) General Manager: Chris Kennedy Senior Mine Geologist: Dave Larimer Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo LLC - a joint venture between Japanese firms Sumitomo Metal Mining Company (85 percent) and Sumitomo Corp. (15 percent) - budgeted roughly US$15 million to explore the high-grade gold zones at and around its Pogo Mine in Interior Alaska in 2015. This follows a US$17 million program last year that further defined and expanded East Deep, North and South Pogo, three zon...
Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo LLC Sept. 30 reported production of 3 million ounces of gold at its Pogo Mine in Interior Alaska. To mark the occasion, 25 mine employees were selected by drawing to view the historic gold pour. This production milestone comes just over a month after the mine reached a significant safety milestone, working more than two years without a lost-time injury. "The journey to three million ounces has taken 10 years of planning and permitting and more than...
Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo Aug. 31 reported that the employees at the Pogo gold mine in Interior Alaska have worked more than two years without a lost-time incident. Mine management said this milestone, reached on Aug. 28, reflects the dedication and commitment to safety among the more than 300 employees at Alaska's largest underground gold mine. "We have reason to celebrate," said Pogo General Manager Chris Kennedy said. "Every single person at Pogo has focused on safety...
Mining is a notoriously cyclical business that generally ebbs and flows with the overall state of the global economy, and these cycles are amplified for junior mining companies charged with scouring the globe for the next generation of mines. Following a bull market that reached a crescendo at the end of 2010, the current bear market has been especially deep and painful for even seasoned mining sector veterans. "This has been a particularly treacherous bear market," longtime...
Millrock Resources Inc. July 29 reported that it has struck a deal with Corvus Gold Inc. to purchase Raven Gold Alaska LLC's assets located in or pertaining to the Goodpaster Mining District of Interior Alaska. As part of the agreement, Millrock has purchased the West Pogo gold property from the Corvus subsidiary. The West Pogo claims cover the projection of a favorable structure that passes through Sumitomo Metal Mining Co.'s Pogo Mine., located about two miles to the east....
Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo May 7 reported to Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation that a ruptured line spilled roughly 90,000 gallons of paste backfill at the Pogo gold mine in Interior Alaska. The 8-inch line delivers paste backfill, a mixture of tailings and cement, into the underground mine for disposal. Once underground, the concrete created from the tailings fills mined-out areas, providing support for continued mining. The backfill material is reported to...
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...
Bloomberg Business March 30 reported rumors that Teck Resources Ltd. and Antofagasta Plc are exploring a merger that would create one of the world's largest copper producers. Attributing the sources of its report to people wishing not to be identified for divulging private information, Bloomberg said any agreement between the two miners hinges on families that control each company. The Luksic family of Chile owns 65 percent of Antofagasta. According to Bloomberg, Teck...
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...
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...
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...
Rockhaven Resources Ltd.'s Klaza Project located at the end of the Nansen Road in central Yukon Territory may be coming into its own as an exciting precious metals property. After three years of exploration, the junior has amassed 460 claims, enough to comprise 90-square kilometers (35 square miles) within a highly prospective area of the Dawson Range. In addition, Rockhaven, a company spawned by the folks at Strategic Metals Ltd. and Archer, Cathro & Associates Limited, has gradually stepped out from its first drilling in...
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...
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...
