The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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The unseasonably, interminably, unspeakably cold spring that is delaying mineral exploration and development work in Alaska this year is being mimicked by a financial chill that is affecting Alaska exploration efforts just like it is the rest of the world. Not to put too fine a point on it, but from a mineral exploration standpoint, Alaska is shaping up to be as dead as a doornail this summer (ever wonder where that saying came from ... but I digress.). How dead? Try this statistic on for size: Of the 49 exploration projects...
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...
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,...
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...
NCQ: NYSE/TSX Chairman: Thomas Kaplan President and CEO: Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse Project Manager, Upper Kobuk Mineral Project: Scott Petsel NovaCopper Inc. has nearly reached its preliminary goal of defining 10 billion pounds of high-grade copper at the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, a long-term partnership between NovaCopper and NANA Regional Corp. The alliance combines Bornite and a number of other mineral prospects on NANA-owned lands with the world-class Arctic deposit and dozens of similar volcanogenic massive sulfide...
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...
Indicative of the state of mineral exploration in Alaska, and around the world, no drills are turning at NovaCopper's Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in 2014. Instead, crews crated up 12,918 meters of core from historical drilling at the northern Alaska project and shipped it to Fairbanks where it can more economically be re-logged and readied for re-sampling. At an expected cost of around US$2.7 million, this relatively modest program follows two years of exploration...
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...
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...
The over-all mood at the recent Cordilleran Roundup mining convention in Vancouver, B.C. was more restrained than in previous years, but also more realistic due in large part to the prolonged downturn in risk capital mining markets. It seems the industry has transitioned from the denial stage accompanying the declines of 2013 to an acceptance and determination stage that always precedes a return to market vitality. In a recent public release by financial giant Ernst and...
The Alaska Miners Association's annual convention marks the changing of seasons for junior exploration companies with mineral projects in Alaska. As a blanket of snow hides outcropping rocks and the water needed for drilling crystalizes, geologists who have spent the long summer days investigating the vast mineral endowment across the Far North trade in their hammers, backpacks and hiking boots for suits, ties and PowerPoint presentations that show off the achievements of their latest field programs. While the 2013...
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...
As NovaCopper Inc. continues to adds to the more than 5.5 billion pounds of copper it has identified at the highly prospective Ambler mining district, the explorer is beginning to formulate a plan to develop the first of three ultra-high-grade deposits in this highly prospective but remote region of Northwest Alaska. The Vancouver B.C.-based junior launched into 2013 with the February release of a maiden NI 43-101-compliant mineral resource estimate for South Reef, one of two...
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...
A new preliminary economic assessment has stripped away the idea of underground mining as the only means to recover the copper, zinc, lead, silver and gold from the volcanogenic massive sulfide deposit at the Arctic deposit. Instead, the scoping study has encouraged NovaCopper Inc. to favor an open-pit mine scenario as it advances the Northwest Alaska project towards a pre-feasibility study. "We think this (PEA) demonstrates that the open-pit is a viable alternative; and I...
Following a rising chorus of junior companies touting impressive exploration programs on mineral prospects across Alaska that reached its crescendo in 2011, a deafening silence is resonating across the Far North expanse in 2013. And in the junior mining sector, no news is bad news. Mineral exploration expenditures in Alaska, which were a meager US$23.8 million in 2001, climbed to US$347 million by 2008. The "Great Recession of 2008" tightened the equity markets, resulting in...
Mineral consulting group Behre Dolbear Group Inc. released its 2013 "Ranking of Countries For Mining Investment Where Not to Invest." Since 1999 the group has compiled annual political risk assessments from key players in the global mining industry. Geology and mineral potential are not considered in this survey, since such potential is inherently indicated by the fact that mineral exploration, development, and mining activity are occurring in these countries. The only...
VANCOUVER, B.C. - British Columbia, Alaska and Yukon Territory - the headliners of the Association for Mining Exploration British Columbia's 2013 Mineral Exploration Roundup - tallied more than C$1 billion of mineral exploration spending in 2012. This marks the second year running that these neighboring jurisdictions at the northwestern extent of the North American Cordillera topped the C$1 billion mark. But unlike the 2012 Roundup, a year in which explosive exploration...
A recent letter distributed to the minerals industry by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources' Division of Geological and Geophysical Surveys and the Department of Commerce, Community and Economic Development's Division of Economic Development is seeking faster and more efficient ways to gather, collate and publish Alaska's Annual Minerals Industry Report. The agencies are looking for feedback regarding what items the industry thinks is important to retain in the report, what items are not in the report that should be...
Ending a streak of robust growth, mineral exploration spending in Alaska during 2012 took a downward turn from the record US$300 million spent a year earlier. "More advanced-stage projects that added ounces or pounds to their resource base had a better go of it than early-stage exploration projects which have taken a hard right cross to the jaw!" Curt Freeman, a well-known Alaska geologist and president of Fairbanks-based Avalon Development, observed in September. This blow de...
NovaCopper Inc. - formed as a 2012 spinout of NovaGold Resources Inc.'s Ambler project in Northwest Alaska - already boasts some 3.6 billion pounds of high-grade copper resources plus appreciable quantities of gold, silver, lead and zinc. "This is an excellent start to NovaCopper's life as a public company," said NovaCopper President and CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse. In addition to some 90,624 acres of state, federal and patented mining claims blanketing the Ambler Mining Distric...
Over the past six months, the single-most common question I have gotten asked about Alaska's mineral industry is, "Have there been any significant new discoveries?" While there may be an as-yet unannounced new discovery in Alaska, it seems the above question is being asked more frequently in other parts of the world as well and the most common answer is a simple "no." While information on new discoveries in other sectors of the mining industry is out there, it's not as...
An employment forecast published by the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development in October pegged the state's mining sector job growth from 2010 to 2020 at 19 percent. That is second only to health care, at 31 percent, and outpacing the 12 percent average growth across all Alaska industries. Expansion of current operations coupled with prospects of building mines at the world-class Livengood and Donlin gold deposits were cited as drivers behind adding new miners t...
The 17,209-meter drill program carried out by NovaCopper Inc. in 2012 at the Upper Kobuk Mineral Project in the Ambler Mining District of Northwest Alaska is revealing a third copper deposit with sufficient size and grade to be deemed world-class. When the spin-out of NovaGold Resources Inc.'s copper-rich Ambler project was completed in May, NovaCopper held Arctic, a single deposit with an NI 43-101-compliant resource. But the deal also included US$40 million in start-up...
