The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 1001 - 1025 of 3020
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, is again urging fellow lawmakers in Washington, D.C. to enact legislation that would restore America’s mineral security. “After years of inaction, it is time for Congress to recognize that our mineral policies need to be modernized as soon as possible,” said Murkowski, who is chairman of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee CBS newsmagazine, 60 Minutes, provided a timely segue to Murkowski’s critical minerals bill by airing...
The Chandalar Mine in Alaska's Arctic is on track to begin commercial production this summer, a milestone that is expected to significantly move the dial of placer gold production in Alaska. Goldrich Mining Co., which owns 50 percent of a venture to mine gold in the Chandalar district, provided a forecast of anticipated gold recoveries from the mine over the next five years that includes 16,500 ounces of the precious metal this summer. Considering that the 300 or so placer min...
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...
Granite Construction Inc. said it has been recognized by Ethisphere Institute as a 2015 World's Most Ethical Company®. Ethisphere is a global leader in defining and advancing the standards of ethical business practices. The World's Most Ethical Companies designation recognizes those organizations that have had a material impact on the way business is conducted by fostering a culture of ethics and transparency at every level of the company. The World's Most Ethical Company assessment is based upon the institute's Ethics Quotie...
Slipping metals prices and investors' ongoing reluctance to risk venture capital in the junior mining sector is hitting Alaska's mineral exploration sector hard; and the Far North state is not the only mining jurisdiction reeling from this one-two punch. "After another year of strong headwinds in 2014, and with lower demand and overproduction continuing to depress metals prices, the mining industry's outlook for 2015 is unpromising at best," SNL Metals & Mining wrote recently...
The U.S. Bureau of Land Management is planning to designate nearly one-third of the historic Fortymile mining district in eastern Alaska as off limits to mining in a blow to miners of the region who already feel unduly targeted by federal regulators. The proposal to set aside large swaths of the district along the Alaska-Yukon border for environmental conservation, which comes as a late addition to the federal land manager's Eastern Interior Draft Resource Management Plan, als...
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...
As marine placer miners prepare for another summer of plumbing the gold-laden seabed off the coast of Nome, many of these intrepid individuals are keeping an eye on potential new rules that could affect future lease renewals. Proposals being considered by the Alaska Department of Natural Resources are meant to clear up ambiguity in eligibility requirements for renewing offshore mining leases offered by the state. Currently, the rules primarily apply to nearly 24,000 acres of...
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...
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...
The Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority is asking state lawmakers whether it should move ahead with the Ambler Mining District Industrial Access Road, a proposed 200-mile transportation corridor that would link the Ambler Mining District in Northwest Alaska, with the Dalton Highway to the east. This question comes under the auspice of Administrative Order No. 271, a temporary suspension of all "mega-projects" being funded by the state, signed by Gov. Bill...
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...
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...
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...
NovaCopper Inc. plans to invest roughly US$20 million over the next two to three years on finalizing a feasibility study for its Arctic deposit, the next step toward the exploration company's vision of developing mines at the world-class copper projects found in the Ambler Mining District of Northwest Alaska. Arctic is the most advanced of the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects, a venture formed by NovaCopper and NANA Corp., the Alaska Native regional corporation that represents the...
A design flaw resulting from an inadequate understanding of the glacial lake sediments that formed a portion of the foundation on which the tailings dam at the Mount Polley mine located in south-central British Columbia was built caused the structure to collapse under its own weight, according to engineers tasked with finding out why the dam burst on Aug. 4. Mount Polley is an open pit copper-gold mine with a developing underground project. "The design did not take into...
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...
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,...
Greens Creek Mine is preparing for the next stage of its long-running tenure as a low-cost primary silver producing mine in Southeast Alaska. The underground mine, located on Admiralty Island about 18 miles southwest of Juneau, extracts ore from a volcanogenic massive sulphide deposit with an unusually high silver content. The mine produces silver, along with zinc, lead and gold as by-products. Idaho-based Hecla Mining Co. owns the mine, which has operated for most of the quarter-century since its operations began in 1989....
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....
Thanks to higher grades and improved recoveries, Greens Creek and Kensington, the two producing mines located in the Alaska Panhandle, reported strong output in 2014 and outstanding results for the fourth quarter. Record output at Greens Creek At Greens Creek which is owned and operated by Idaho-based Hecla Mining Co., about 360 full-time workers carved some 7.83 million ounces of silver and 58,753 oz gold, as well as lead and zinc concentrates from the volcanogenic massive sulphide mine in 2014, milling ore at an average rat...
Royal Gold and Contango Ore have forged an alliance that promises to invest as much as US$30 million in furthering the exploration and potential development of the Tetlin gold properties situated along the Alaska Highway near the crossroads community of Tok in eastern Alaska. Contango Ore shareholders ratified a joint venture agreement Jan. 8 that the Denver-based gold royalty firm and Houston-domiciled mineral exploration company struck tentatively on the project in...
It's official! The Alaska Geologic Materials Center (GMC) is set to make the long-awaited move to its new, larger Anchorage quarters on April 6, weather permitting. The center, a unit of the Alaska Division of Geological & Geophysical Surveys within the state Department of Natural Resources, is the repository for geologic materials collected from across Alaska, and then catalogued, stored and studied. Visitors to the center, primarily representative of companies, state and federal agencies, and academia, examine hardrock...
With a new management team in place, roughly C$2 million of cash in the bank and an improved understanding of its high-grade gold mineralization, Redstar Gold Corp. is preparing to launch an early 2015 drill program at its Unga project, found in the Aleutian Arc of Southwest Alaska. Unga - where Redstar's 2014 surface exploration program grabbed rock samples with grades of up to 401 grams per metric ton gold and 266 g/t silver - is a high-grade gold property that encompasses...
On the face of it, President Barack Obama's decision to place a ban on offshore oil and gas drilling in Alaska's Bristol Bay Region appears to have handed opponents of the Pebble Project another weapon in their ongoing fight to block development of the enormous copper-gold-molybdenum deposit. But Pebble supporters say a moratorium on petroleum exploration in Bristol Bay has little or no relationship to the merits of the mine project. Oil and gas drilling in Bristol Bay has long been a contentious issue, dating back to the...
