The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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What does Molycorp Inc.'s bankruptcy have to do with the price of rare earths in China? Some analysts say everything, while other experts in the field point to other weaknesses as the root cause of the American REE Goliath's undoing. When China put a chokehold on its exports of rare earth elements in 2010, Molycorp was already well on its way to seizing the opportunity to reopen the Mountain Pass Mine in California, an operation hailed for its ability to re-establishing an...
The owners of Alaska’s five large metal mines – Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo, Hecla Mining Company, Kinross Gold Corp, Teck Resources Ltd. and Coeur Mining Inc. – accounted for nearly half the US$92 million of exploration spending in the state during 2014 and similar investments by these companies is providing solid footing for the Far North state’s mineral exploration sector this year. Avalon Development President Curt Freeman said he is seeing more mining majors shopping for d...
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...
UXU: TSX.V President and CEO: Jim McKenzie Chief Operating Officer: Ken Collison VP, Business Development: Mark MacDonald Ucore Rare Metals Inc. has its sights set on developing a complete mines-to-metal operation at its Bokan Mountain rare earth elements project in Southeast Alaska. Toward this goal, the company has been working on expanding the heavy REE-enriched Dotson Ridge deposit at Bokan and developing innovative technologies for the separation of the individual REE. In February, Ucore published results of a...
Ucore Rare Metals Inc. Aug. 17 reported that a second high-net-worth US-based investor has agreed to purchase a royalty on the sale of products and services related to the processing of rare earth elements and other specialty metals and critical materials with SuperLig Molecular Recognition Technology. Ucore and Utah-based IBC Advanced Technologies formed a joint venture to develop this new method of separating rare earths using molecular recognition technology, a process desi...
Over the past month Alaska's mining industry has suffered a perfect storm of manmade and natural issues that read like something from a pulp fiction novel. On the man-made side of the ledger, gold, silver, copper, and lead prices have all hit 5-year lows and zinc prices continue to slide lower. Mining equity markets are still in severe decline, making it extremely challenging for junior exploration companies to raise the risk capital necessary to explore their Alaska...
Ucore Rare Metals Inc. July 8 reported that it has commissioned the construction of a pilot plant that will test the use of molecular recognition technology for the separation of rare earth elements at bulk scale. Ucore has contracted with IBC Advanced Technologies Inc. for the design and construction of the plant, targeting completion before the end of 2015. The test plant, "SuperLig-One," will be constructed at IBC facilities in American Fork, Utah. Once complete, the unit...
Ucore Rare Metals Inc.'s exploration endeavors are proving successful - not only in expanding the heavy rare earth elements-enriched deposit at the Bokan Mountain Project in Southeast Alaska, but in discovering new technologies that advance rare earth refinement into the 21st Century. Hoping to cash in on this success, a "high net-worth" American investor recently tendered a US$1 million down payment toward royalties offered by Ucore. These royalties will not come from the...
I recently returned from the Geological Society of Nevada's once-every-five-years Symposium in Reno and was surprised to learn a number of things regarding Alaska, despite the symposium's tight focus on the Great Basin of the western United States. First off, mineral exploration guru Brent Cook presented information suggesting we have reached and are "bumping along" the bottom of the current metals market slump. Reminded me of an overloaded fixed-wing aircraft bumping down the...
With a significant deposit of heavy rare earths in the Southeast, the largest domestic graphite deposit in the Northwest, and vast potential in the 1,300-mile expanse between the two, Alaska is a viable alternative to importing many of the strategic and critical minerals vital to national security, green energy and modern technology. "The State of Alaska is blessed with vast mineral potential on its lands," Alaska Department of Natural Resources Deputy Commissioner Ed Fogels t...
Ucore Rare Metals Inc. May 11 reported a significant upgrade and expansion of the mineralized resources at the Dotson-Ridge deposit of its Bokan Mountain rare earths project in Southeast Alaska. The deposit now contains an estimated indicated resource of 4.79 million metric tons averaging 0.6 percent (63.54 million pounds) total rare earth oxides, a roughly 63 percent increase over the 2.94 million metric tons of indicated resource included in a 2013 estimate. Additionally, th...
Ucore Rare Metals Inc. April 28 reported the separation of samarium and gadolinium, the final two rare earths needed to be split by way of the cutting-edge molecular recognition technology. The MRT process is designed to bind selectively with ions based on multiple parameters such as size, chemistry, and geometry. Using a pregnant leach solution prepared from material taken from Ucore's Dotson Ridge deposit in Southeast Alaska, IBC Advanced Technologies developed a three-step...
The state of the world's exploration industry was recently summarized in SNL Metal & Mining's annual "World Exploration Trends" publication, released at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention in Toronto. Not surprisingly, it painted a grim picture of 2014, a year we are all glad to have behind us. The statistics indicate that worldwide exploration expenditures declined a further 26 percent to $11.4 billion, compared with $15.2 billion in 2013 and...
Ucore Rare Metals Inc. has reached another milestone in its quest to separate rare earths into the individual elements needed in high-tech devices. In testing molecular recognition technology, a proprietary method of separating rare earths developed by Utah-based IBC Advanced Technologies, the rare earths found at Ucore's Bokan Mountain project in Southeast Alaska have been segregated as individual salts exceeding 99 percent purity. "MRT offers a means of separating REEs to...
While many analysts are betting that most metals prices will at least hold their own, those who follow zinc say 2015 could be a breakout year for the gray metal. China is expected to see lower growth of zinc output due to tightening ore supply worldwide and acceleration of inefficient capacity elimination in China, according to industry watchers. Zinc demand in China, reflected by high output of galvanized plate/sheet, is strong. Production of galvanized plate/sheet hit a new record high of 4.82 million metric tons in...
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...
Ucore Rare Metals Inc. Feb. 3 reported assay results from the 2014 infill drill program at the Bokan-Dotson Ridge rare earth elements project in Southeast Alaska. Ucore said the resource confirmation drilling intersected the mineralized zone as expected, and with assay results consistent with those returned on prior programs. Of the 12 holes drilled, 10 cut significant mineralization. The company highlights the prevalence of intersections averaging more than 1 percent total...
Ucore Rare Metals Inc. Jan. 28 reported that all five holes drilled beneath the existing resource at the Bokan-Dotson Ridge heavy rare earth element project in Southeast Alaska intercepted mineralization with grade and rare earth content consistent with what has already been delineated. The existing Bokan resource currently extends to an average depth of 220 meters and the five deeper holes drilled in 2014 cut the mineralized zone an average of 100 meters below all previous...
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....
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...
In the race to deliver heavy rare earth metals to western markets, Ucore Rare Metals Inc.'s Bokan Dotson-Ridge property in Southeast Alaska may sprint to the front of the pack with the help of an award-winning industrial process. Ucore recently completed a successful test in which it produced a heavy rare earth concentrate from material found in the deposit, using Molecular Recognition Technology, a proprietary process developed by IBC. The concentrate, which is 99 percent rare earth elements, was extracted from a...
UCU: TSX.V President and CEO: Jim McKenzie Chief Operating Officer: Ken Collison Vice President, Business Development: Mark MacDonald Ucore Rare Metals Inc. carried out 2014 exploration programs at both its Bokan-Dotson Ridge rare earth elements project in Southeast Alaska and Ray Mountain REE-tin project in the Interior region of the state. A C$7.8-million private placement completed in April, along with C$2.8 million of working capital Ucore had on the books at the end of March, is anticipated to provide ample funds to meet...
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....
At the same time as the EPA is pushing forward on its planned precedent-setting, pre-emptive, pre-permit veto of the Pebble project and the tailings dam failure at the Mount Polley mine in British Columbia, former Gold Fields Ltd. Chief Geologist Rael Lipson published an eye-opening summary of where porphyry copper-gold projects like Pebble, Mt. Polley and dozens of others around the world fit into the future of gold production. The article, appearing in the July 2014...
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...
