The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Although spring took its good old time in arriving across much of Alaska, the mining industry's busy summer exploration and development season has arrived. Five of Alaska's major mines reported strong first-quarter operating results, and two new companies acquired exploration properties in Alaska in the last month. These new acquisitions are not expected to be the last, as the prolonged venture capital drought continues with no end in sight. The news this month is sparse, prim...
The winds of change are once again blowing across Alaska's mineral industry, not only because the industry is gearing up for another busy summer season, but also because the mining investment climate has turned from cautiously optimistic to decidedly undecided. The sea change occurred steadily and without a lot of fanfare between mid-January and mid-March. As is always the case, good projects continue to advance with those that are drilling and adding resources or moving throu...
When geologists talk about the exciting gold deposits recently discovered in Canada's Yukon Territory, they use terms like "structurally controlled, intrusion-related" and "Carlin-style." Attentive laymen soon catch on, recognizing that "structural" often characterizes the non-glaciated hydrothermal deposits found in the White Gold district of west-central Yukon and "intrusive" commonly refers to impressive finds in mountainous central Yukon, while some discoveries to the east have been labeled "Carlin-style" because of...
The Fraser Institute's "Survey of Mining Companies, 2011/2012" was recently released to the public. This annual survey of exploration and mining companies gauges the pros and cons of working in various countries around the world. This year's results came from over 800 mineral industry companies working in 93 jurisdictions and representing cumulative 2011 exploration expenditures of over US$6.3 billion. The perception of Alaska from the companies that work here was about the...
There are some new statistics just out from the Alaska Miners Association that I thought you might like to see. For 2011, the Alaska mining industry accounted for 4,500 direct jobs and 9,000 indirect jobs. The industry paid US$620 million in payroll with the average salary totaling US$100,000 per year, which is double the statewide average for all sectors. The industry paid US$148 million in rents, royalties, taxes and other fees to the State of Alaska (up 170 percent over...
British Columbia, Yukon Territory and Alaska - the headliners of the Association for Mining Exploration British Columbia's annual Mineral Exploration Roundup - tallied more than C$1 billion of mineral exploration spending and some C$12.7 billion in mine production in 2011. "We are going to talk in the next three sessions about the wrinkly parts of western North America - B.C., Yukon and Alaska. The geological phenomena that has created these mountain chains that we have in...
One year after going public, Chieftain Metals Inc. is blazing a trail through roadblocks that impeded past efforts to re-open the historical Tulsequah Chief Mine, a precious metals-rich volcanogenic massive sulfide project on British Columbia's western border about 65 kilometers (40 miles) northeast of Alaska's capital city of Juneau. A C$20 million initial public offering that closed in December 2010 provided Chieftain with the funds needed to put the project back on the...
After an extremely busy, productive year, the final weeks of 2011 and the first few weeks of the New Year were remarkably quiet for Alaska's mining industry. But not to worry, it appears to be just a pause, while everyone catches their breath before heading into what promises to be another eventful year. While reading the plentiful (and sometimes bizarre) end of year reviews and forecasts, I came upon one that surprised me. In a Dec. 30 news release, Reuters noted that gold...
In the shadow of two new producing mines and startup of a gold mine on the near-horizon, a mega-mine project is quietly taking shape in a remote area of central Yukon Territory. The sprawling Casino property, where Western Copper and Gold Corp. has spent the past five years aggressively exploring and defining a huge copper-gold-molybdenum-silver resource, is proving to be an attractive venture that could transform the territory's mining industry, delivering within the next few years 1,800 construction jobs over four years...
One byproduct of the recent revival of the mining industry in Yukon Territory is the ongoing success of the rehabilitated Skagway Ore Terminal at Alaska's Port of Skagway. Originally built in 1968 to accommodate ore shipments form Yukon's Faro lead-zinc mine, the terminal closed in 1997 after the Faro Mine ceased operations due to unfavorable market conditions. Purchased by the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority from White Pass Railway in 1993, the terminal, after substantial renovation, resumed shipping ore...
I was tempted to make a few 2012 predictions now that 2011 is nearly gone, but I decided not to when I came across the following lines and was struck by how closely they mimic our current mining climate: "On a more local level, several old Alaska properties have been rejuvenated by new players to the Alaska mineral scene. Reserve announcements have touched off renewed land acquisitions and property negotiations. Contracts for technical personnel, drill rigs, helicopters and...
Much of Alaska's resource wealth is locked up in more than 350,000 square miles (906,000 square kilometers) west of the state's contiguous road system. Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell has included some US$50 million in his fiscal 2013 state budget proposal to support measures aimed at gaining access to much of the state's abundant oil, gas and minerals resources including three roads that would trek westward. "Better transportation corridors will open up petroleum and mining...
Stretching some 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) off Southwest Alaska into the Pacific Ocean, the Alaska Peninsula and trailing Aleutian Islands host among the oldest gold discoveries ever made in Alaska, yet it is the only island arc environment in the Pacific Ring of Fire without a major producing mine. Though no mines are currently operating in this region rich with epithermal gold, and porphyry copper-gold mineralizing systems, the arc has a prominent entry in the annals of...
As a busy year in the Alaska and global mining industry starts to slide closer to its end, I figured now was a good time to gaze into my crystal ball (rutilated quartz, of course) to see what next year might bring. While strong metals prices promise another busy year for Alaska, a dose of global reality was provided by the financial giant Ernst & Young, who recently published a list of the top 10 business risks for the mining and metals industry for the coming year. Resource n...
As cold weather wraps up the 2011 field season, mining in Yukon Territory appears to be getting hotter, with exploration and development activities throughout the year living up to all of the pre-season hype and then some. Early in the year, explorers laid the groundwork for grassroots exploration seemingly in every corner of the territory. No sooner than the meeting rooms emptied at Roundup in Vancouver in late January, than a frenzy of claim staking erupted in the Yukon. Golden Predator Corp. snatched up all of the...
Droves of exploration companies have rushed to Yukon Territory in recent years to hunt for sizable deposits of gold, silver, copper, rare earth elements and base metals. Employing the most advanced geophysical and geochemical techniques available, along with their best hunches, these explorers, like others around the globe, are pulling out all the stops to find commercial quantities of the minerals currently riding the winds of strong demand and high prices. But noticeably absent from the list of lucrative commodities being...
Is the "Yukon Gold Rush" about to spill into Alaska? Since the 1896 discovery of gold on the aptly named Bonanza Creek sparked a stampede of fortune seekers to the rivers and streams of the Klondike, these world-class mining jurisdictions that share a common geological and mineralization history have been engaged in a cross-border rivalry of drawing prospectors and miners to their mineral-rich deposits. While 19th Century miners seeking their fortunes in Alaska's Fortymile...
Whether it is multimillion-ounce gold discoveries, copper deposits that measure in the billions of pounds or massive ore-bodies of 20 percent zinc, Alaska is renowned for its mammoth deposits. The prospect of finding another Donlin, Pebble or Red Dog continues to draw explorers to this vast and underexplored corner of the United States. In the Survey of Mining Companies: 2010/2011, conducted by the Fraser Institute, top executives from 494 mining and mineral exploration...
Throughout the 2011 field season, explorers pushed the envelope in Yukon Territory, scrambling to target and assess rapidly increasing numbers of deposits of gold, silver and base metals mineralization being identified as the exploration rush that overtook the region in 2009 stretched into its third consecutive year. With gold prices climbing to new highs and a stable investment climate, the lure of the Yukon attracted miners and investors in numbers not seen in a century. "Both Yukon and Nunavut are entering a period of sust...
As termination dust settles over Alaska, the diversity of mineral exploration, development and production news this month covers the entire spectrum of mining industry activities. The last of the seasonal early-stage exploration projects are reporting in, a major producing company has entered the state for the first time, Alaska finished its first off-shore mineral lease process in more than a decade, several projects reported on resource definition and feasibility studies, a gold deposit was sold, a ballot initiative aimed...
A recent article in the Newsletter of the Society of Economic Geologists discussed ways of addressing an arresting trend in the mining industry that affects Alaska's mining future. Authors N. Stephen Enders of the Colorado School of Mines and Cliff Saunders of Too Serious Unlimited, showed that the discovery rate for gold has been dropping steadily since 1999, while the gold mined by operating mines worldwide has remained essentially unchanged at about 80 million ounces per year. The low for ounces discovered coincided with...
Despite the abundance of good news from the Alaska mining industry this month, there is an unusual black cloud hanging over the industry that threatens to rain on our parade of projects. Domestic and international markets got a severe case of the jitters during the recent United States debt crisis. The resulting economic uncertainty contributed to significant metal price volatility. For example, the London gold price jumped 20 percent, from about US$1,480 to US$1,770 during the month prior to the debt deferral and has since d...
YUKON TERRITORY - "There's gold, and it's haunting and haunting; It's luring me on as of old; Yet it isn't the gold that I'm wanting; So much as just finding the gold." This passage from the "Spell of the Yukon" is as applicable to the contemporary stampede of explorers seeking mineral riches in the home of the Klondike as it was to the prospectors of which Robert Service wrote more than a century ago. It is estimated that the modern rush of prospectors to Yukon Territory...
Thanks to rising revenue, exports, production and prices, the mining industry in British Columbia is racing toward a potential record year for exploration, development and production activity. The province's mining boom is being fueled by the global recovery in manufacturing, and in particular the strong demand for raw materials in Asia, according to B.C. officials. In 2010, the price of metallurgical coal rose by 70 percent, while prices for copper climbed 45 percent, silver by 37 percent and gold by 25 percent from 2009....
Every year about this time, I notice new ways to gauge just how busy the Alaska mining industry is. This year, it is the silence. Not the amazing silence of a mountaintop in the Alaska Range but the virtual and literal silence being practiced by the people who make up the industry. In an age where communications options are abundant and the opportunity to be "connected" is a 24-7 reality, people in the Alaska mining industry go silent in the depths of summer, primarily...
