The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Cans, cups, roofs, and foil hats are likely the first things that come to mind when thinking about tin – none of which conjure images of a metal that should be considered critical to a modern country like the United States. According to a study carried out by Massachusetts Institute of Technology, however, tin is the metal expected that be most impacted by new technologies. Commissioned by Rio Tinto, the MIT study found that tin beat out more likely technology metals candidate...
Traditionally used to create stronger, lighter, and more durable steels, vanadium is emerging as a potential game changing element in the grid-scale batteries needed to store renewable energy. Known as vanadium redox flow batteries, or VRFBs, this emerging electrical storage technology takes advantage of vanadium's ability to exist in solution in four different oxidation states as electroactive elements, instead of separate elements for the cathode and anode. The amount of ene...
Considering the global shift to low-carbon energy and electric mobility, copper is the most vital metal not on the United States Geological Survey's list of 35 minerals and metals considered critical to America's economic wellbeing and security. Copper's importance is due to the rapidly emerging electric vehicle, wind turbines and photovoltaic (PV) solar technologies need a lot more copper than the combustion cars and power plants they are replacing. It is estimated that the...
The six platinum group elements – platinum, palladium, rhodium, ruthenium, iridium, and osmium – have one foot firmly planted in the realm of precious metals while the other is firmly established in the industrial sectors. While being amongst the rarest metals on the planet already makes PGE's highly valued for jewelry and bullion, their applications in the automotive, petrochemical, and electronics industries are catalysts that drive the price of these industrious pre...
While indium is not part of the everyday lexicon, if you are reading this article on your smartphone, computer or tablet there is a very good chance you are looking at (or more accurately, through) indium right now. This is because indium-tin oxide is used as a transparent conducting film applied to virtually every flat-panel display and touchscreen computer, tablet, and smartphone on the market. This thin coating transforms incoming electrical data into an optical form, a pro...
America's supply of tungsten, an extremely durable metal that is vital to a broad range of American industrial sectors, is at high-risk. A recent U.S. Geological Survey assessment to identify which mineral commodities are most at risk to supply disruptions ranked tungsten near the top of the list – alongside rare earth elements, cobalt and graphite, platinum group metals and tungsten. Like many of its neighbors at the top of the mineral commodity supply risk list, much of the...
The United States imported more than 90% of the 1.4 million metric tons of titanium minerals it consumed during 2019. What the mass majority of this critical mineral was used for, however, may come as a surprise. While titanium's lightweight and extreme durability make it an excellent material for aircraft and high-performance sporting equipment, more than 90% of this mineral mined each year is used to impart a stark whiteness to a surprisingly wide variety of consumer goods w...
As a private company, Western Alaska Copper & Gold Company has done a great job steadily advancing the multiple precious and base metals deposits and targets across its 34,000-acre Illinois Creek Mining District property in western Alaska. Given the success of this work, especially a 2020 program that indicates the viability of resuming operations at the historic Illinois Creek gold-silver mine, management is taking the exploration company public on Canada's TSX Venture Exchan...
When Granite Creek Copper Ltd. decided to refocus its energies on finding copper in Yukon Territory in October 2018, it swung into action, aggressively tackling its vision of becoming a leading copper exploration company. Just over two years later, the junior has acquired the advanced Carmacks Copper Project and is hoping to establish a mineral resource estimate on its larger Stu Project next door. To begin its transition, the junior changed its name from Granite Creek Gold...
As the price of gold reaches historic highs and silver tops US$24 per ounce, Western Alaska Copper & Gold and Piek Exploration are investigating the potential of restarting operations at the past producing Illinois Creek Mine near the Yukon River about 65 miles southwest of the town of Galena and 120 miles north of the Donlin Gold Mine project. In 2018, Western Alaska Copper & Gold and Piek Exploration formed a joint venture to consolidate the entire Illinois Creek district,...
The U.S. Department of Interior issued two decisions that mark a major milestone along the path of permitting a road to the incredibly rich and strategically important Ambler Mining District in Northwest Alaska. On July 23, the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and the National Park Service (NPS) with the U.S. Federal Highway Administration, issued a record of decision that authorizes a right-of-way for the proposed 211-mile-long road...
ATAC Resources Ltd. July 15 announced that the initial phase of its 2020 exploration program is now underway at Rau, an intriguing precious and base metals project at the western end of the 185-kilometer- (115 miles) long Rackla Gold property in the Yukon. ATAC's phase-one 2020 exploration program will include excavator trenching, 1,500 meters of rotary air blast (RAB) drilling, mapping and prospecting to develop diamond drill targets at the Airstrip target, which hosts an...
Like working a giant jigsaw puzzle, Western Copper and Gold Corp. has gradually pieced together components of the Casino Mine project in Yukon Territory, hoping to usher the project into production within the next few years. For 14 years, the industrious junior has chased the dream of producing copper, gold, molybdenum, and silver from the Casino deposit, known as one of the most prospective mineral concentrations of its type in the world. But with the turn of a drill a year a...
White Gold Corp. is gearing up for another season of systematically advancing the dozens of exploration targets identified across its more than 1-million-acre (422,730 hectares) land package in Yukon's White Gold District. On May 15, the Yukon-focused gold exploration company announced that longtime strategic partners and new institutional investors are participating in a C$6 million financing that involves the issuance of 6.67 million flow-through shares at C90 cents each. Go...
Rau, an intriguing precious and base metals property at the western end of the 185-kilometer- (115 miles) long Rackla Gold property in the Yukon, will continue to be the primary focus of ATAC Resources Ltd.'s exploration efforts in 2020. Last week, the company published the results from an updated preliminary economic assessment (PEA) for Tiger, a carbonate replacement gold deposit that is the most advanced project on the 660-square kilometer (255 square miles) Rau property....
Canada's provinces and territories have fallen from grace in the eyes of the global mining community, according to the latest rendition of Fraser Institute's Annual Survey of Mining Companies. For the first time in a decade, no Canadian jurisdiction ranks in the top 10 for "investment attractiveness" in the annual survey conducted by the Canadian public policy think-tank. This report asks industry professionals from around the globe to score mining jurisdictions based on their...
Following the pouring of the 4 millionth ounce of gold at the Pogo Mine, Northern Star Resources Ltd. Executive Chairman Bill Beament sat down with Mining News to talk about what this milestone means for the Interior Alaska gold mine; the Australia-based mining company's progress since acquiring Pogo; keys to Northern Star's success; and the vast mineral potential at Pogo and across Alaska. Q. Over the past decade, Northern Star Resources Ltd. has grown from a single-asset...
In November 1996, a little over 23 years ago, I began writing quarterly mining news summaries for the Society of Economic Geologists (SEG). Shortly after that, I began writing monthly summaries for this publication's ancestor, Mining News Alaska, and have continued both monthly, quarterly and annual mining news summaries ever since. With this summary, I have written my last Alaska update for North of 60 Mining News. When I wrote my first summary, Greens Creek was milling only...
With more than half of Alaska's entire population living within its region, Cook Inlet Region Inc., more commonly known as CIRI, is the most metropolitan of the 12 landholding Alaska Native regional corporations. While CIRI has leveraged its urban position with retail developments such as Tikahtnu Commons, an enormous retail and entertainment center on the outskirts of Anchorage, the Southcentral Alaska regional corporation also has oil and gas, renewable energy and mining...
With two Australian companies making major investments and several exploration companies from Down Under chomping at the bit to get into the field, 2020 is shaping up to be the best year for Alaska's mining sector in a decade. When you add up the investments South32 Ltd. plans to make in the Ambler Mining District and other exploration projects; Northern Star Resources Ltd.'s spending at the Pogo gold mine; and the exploration dollars at least five other Aussie companies are...
As the year winds down, mineral industry evaluations for 2019 are being published at a rapid rate. One of the most interesting such global reviews is EY Global Mining and Metals' annual "risk radar" for mining and metals, outlining what mining companies perceive as the top ten risks facing them in the near future. This publication stated that, for the second straight year, "social license to operate" remains the number one risk facing mining companies in 2020. This was...
Stretching along roughly 400 miles of Alaska's southern coast – from the north end of the Southeast Alaska Panhandle near Icy Bay to the tip of the Kenai Peninsula near Homer – the Chugach Alaska Corp. region epitomizes Alaska beauty. This 10 million-acre region along Gulf of Alaska coastline is carved with majestic fjords and bays teeming with fish, birds and marine mammals, and vistas of mountains and glaciers rising above and cutting through dense forests of hemlock and...
PolarX Ltd. Nov. 18 reported that the first hole drilled at Mars has indeed tapped a wide section of copper-gold-molybdenum mineralization, confirming the porphyry potential of this target on the Australia-based explorer's Alaska Range property. From a depth of 308 meters, this first hole ever drilled at Mars, 19MAR001, cut 102.1 meters averaging 0.22 percent copper, 0.07 grams per metric ton gold and 200 parts per million molybdenum. "Assays confirming the presence of...
While mining activity remained strong in the Northwest Territories in 2019, industry and government officials alike worried that the robust sector, driven largely by production at three diamond mines, has entered a prolonged downward slide. The near-term economic outlook for the territory, which covers 1.3 million square kilometers in Canada's central Arctic region, continues to be bleak as its diamond mines that have now passed peak production and replacement projects are in...
When it comes to mineral exploration incentives, currency exchange and infrastructure, Alaska is at a disadvantage in the realm of attracting exploration investments from Canada and Australia, countries that are home to the majority of mining companies. The Far North State's vast and underexplored mineral potential, however, trumps these handicaps in the minds of a growing number of miners and mineral explorers. Mining executives from around the globe perennially rank Alaska...
