The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 276 - 300 of 547
It is high summer in Alaska and the mining industry is busy breaking rocks, drilling holes, collecting baseline data, making upgrades to mine facilities and producing metal and coal across the state. The effects of declining prices for metals are starting to be felt at the operating metal mines and except for a few projects, the exploration sector continues to wallow in the doldrums, which have plagued the industry since 2013. That said, the tire-kicking of earlier this...
The Red Chris copper-gold mine in northwestern British Columbia has received final approvals necessary for commercial operation, marking the sixth new mine to open in the western province since 2011. “This is a significant achievement made possible through a tremendous amount of collaboration between Imperial Metals Corp., the Tahltan Central Council and this government,” B.C. Minister of Energy and Mines Bill Bennett said June 19 while announcing full production at Red Chr...
Millrock Resources Inc. Ot. 13 said it entered into an option to purchase the Liberty Bell gold-copper project near the town of Healy, Alaska. The 15,200-acre property hosts the historical Liberty Bell Mine, which was operated in the 1930s by Eva Creek Mining. According to a U.S. Geological Survey bulletin, production records indicate that 8,400 ounces of gold were produced from 17,500 short tons of ore at Liberty Bell during 1932 and 1933. In 1987, NERCO reported a resource...
By the time this summary reaches your eyes, termination dust (aka "snow") will have started to cover mineral projects across Alaska. At a recent project site visit, one of the project owner's representatives was listening to local Alaskans talk about not being ready for winter, how many things planned for the summer remained un-done, etc. After some cogitation on this, he asked me "Does everyone in Alaska get surprised by winter every year?" My response was simple: When you...
The famous quotation by Rahm Emanuel: "You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that, it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before" is entirely fitting for Alaskans, and perhaps the nation, to ponder this week. At last check, the price of sweet crude was in the $44 per barrel range, gold was about $1,108 per ounce and copper was $2.32 per pound, more or less. For Alaska, as dependent as it is on revenue from resource development,...
The Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys July 16 published preliminary results of geologic mapping conducted in the Talkeetna Mountains during 2014. The resultant map presents new, detailed information about bedrock geology, surficial deposits, and faults for a 450-square-mile area about 50 miles east of the town of Talkeetna. DGGS says the results have implications for platinum, gold, and copper exploration in the region, and for the proposed Susitna-Watana...
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...
First Quantum Minerals Ltd. has agreed to invest US$2 million on a drill program aimed at further investigating the potential of Millrock Resources Inc.'s highly-prospective copper-gold project in western Alaska. The roughly 500,000-acre property extends about 75 miles from Stepovak Bay near the southwestern end of the Alaska Peninsula to a few miles north of Chignik Bay, one of the primary ports in the area. Millrock optioned the property in 2012 from Bristol Bay Native...
Novagold Resources Inc. July 8 reported that the permitting process for its 50-percent-owned Donlin Gold project continues to move ahead with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers planning to issue the draft Environmental Impact Statement for public comment towards the end of 2015. "Reminiscent of 'The Tortoise and the Hare'," Donlin Gold continues to advance at a steady pace, as originally envisioned. In less than two-year's time, subject to market conditions, the co-owners will...
The world's mining industry has once again transmogrified itself in the face of changing global metals markets and investor expectations. In a recent Reuters report, several companies, including Newmont Mining Corp., Goldcorp Inc. and Yamana Gold Inc., were singled out as having taken steps to bring smaller, leaner, lower output projects into production to avoid the cost over-runs which have plagued the large multibillion-dollar projects in recent years. The same large mine...
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 mild winter for most of Alaska behind us and an early spring in progress over much of the state, spring fever has once again laid its grip on the mining industry. A number of exploration and development programs are slated for the summer season, suggesting the mining industry has finally started to rise from the three-year miasma that has gripped it worldwide. A couple of macro-scale items also are pointing toward a more robust industry. The U. S. Geological Survey's...
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...
Primarily associated with cans, cups and roofs, tin is not the flashiest metal on the market. Despite its lowly ranking, even among base metals, this lackluster commodity fetches around US$8.00 per pound - substantially more than copper, zinc, lead, or even nickel - and Alaska has plenty of it. Strongbow Exploration Inc., a company primarily focused on exploring for nickel in Northwest Territories, is working on a deal that would allow it to acquire two Alaska tin properties...
American billionaires John Paulson, Seth Klarman and Thomas Kaplan have taken a keen interest in Alaska's next generation of gold and copper mines. While it is natural for hedge fund managers such as Paulson and Klarman, and resource investors such as Kaplan, to hold mining stocks in their portfolios, this trio holds major positions in three of the top Alaska-focused mineral exploration and development companies. In fact, the companies founded and managed by these...
Amid the volatile metals markets that have become the norm in the past year, miners, developers, explorers, prospectors and investors met in Vancouver at the end of January for the annual Cordilleran Roundup mining convention. The mood was decidely positive, and having seen a lot of "whistling in the cemetary" at this convention in the past, I know the difference between false bravado and contagious optimism. Perhaps it was the stabilization of copper prices after a nine month...
With roughly US$150 million of working capital, Novagold Resources Inc. is among a rare few non-producing mining companies that has no need to squeeze money out of a market reluctant to dole funds to the mining sector. This has allowed management to focus on the task at hand - moving the 39-million-ounce Donlin Gold project through permitting to a development decision. "Our healthy financial position, with more than US$165 million in cash and term deposits, gives us...
Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. Jan. 26 reported final drill results and summarized key advancements of the 2014 exploration program at its Palmer copper-zinc-gold-silver project in Southeast Alaska. Two of the newly reported holes, CMR14-64 and CMR14-65, intersected the massive sulfide electromagnetic plate target of the South Wall zone. Hole 64 cut 4.1 meters grading 0.55 percent copper, 4.98 percent zinc, 21.1 grams per metric ton silver, 0.16 g/t gold and hole 65 cut...
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,...
Copper North Mining Corp. Jan. 21 said recent testing demonstrates that an agitated tank leach is the optimal recovery process for copper, gold and silver from oxide mineral resources at the Carmacks Copper Project in central Yukon Territory. A new process plan consists of three-stage crushing and rod mill grinding prior to placing ore in an agitated tank for leaching of copper oxides with weak sulfuric acid. Testing indicates 84 percent copper recovery with leach times of 16...
The nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away." As 2014 quickly slip-slides away, these normally melancholy lyrics by Paul Simon take on a surprisingly upbeat meaning for Alaska's mining industry. Unlike watching most years slip by, seeing 2014 in the rearview mirror will bring a smile to most in the mining industry, not only in Alaska, but worldwide. This was our third consecutive year of declining commodities prices, near-zero investor interest and the...
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...
Harlan Meade, Ph.D. is a member of a very exclusive club - professional miners who have shepherded multiple Yukon Territory mines and mining projects through the rough patches of development to production or near-production. First, with Yukon-Zinc Corp.'s currently producing 1,700-metric-ton-per-day Wolverine volcanogenic massive sulfide mine in Southeast Yukon and a few years later, with the giant Selwyn lead-zinc project located in Howard's Pass near Yukon's eastern border with Northwest Territories, Meade harnessed his ext...
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...
Unlike its neighbors in the North, the Yukon Territory is forecasting a marked increase in exploration in 2014. While well shy of the roughly C$300 million invested in exploration in 2011, the peak of the modern Yukon gold rush, the C$65 million forecast to be invested on exploration in the Yukon during 2014 is roughly a 45 percent leap over last year. This exploration spending is dominated by an aggressive drill program at the Selwyn zinc project, situated in an area of...
