The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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About face; forward; march! The U.S. Department of Defense recently issued this order in the field of rare earth elements. The unique properties of REEs - a group of 17 previously obscure metals that include scandium, yttrium and the 15 lanthanides - are key ingredients in a number of military applications such as guided missiles, lasers, radar systems, night vision equipment and battlefield communications. China is estimated to supply between 90 and 95 percent of the world's... Full story
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...
The Government of British Columbia's push in recent years for mine exploration and development in the northern region of the province is slowly bearing fruit. An early plum is Thompson Creek Metals Co. Inc.'s Mount Milligan copper-gold mine in north-central B.C., which is rolling toward startup in August and commercial production in the fourth quarter. Terrane Metals Corp., a subsidiary of Thompson Creek, reports that construction of the 60,000-metric-tons-per-day open pit mine, which is located 155 kilometers (about 96...
The 28th Alaska Legislature has forwarded a slew of bills to the desk of Gov. Sean Parnell that are aimed at recognizing the Last Frontier's rich mining history and ensuring the industry is a key component of the state's economic future. Senate Bill 1, which designates May 10 of every year as Alaska Mining Day, was the first of these to garner Parnell's endorsement. May 10 was chosen to coincide with the day the General Mining Act of the United States was adopted in 1872....
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...
About 2,500 years ago, Heraclitus of Ephesus observed that the only constant is change. Looking out the window on a snowy Alaska April morning brings this observation home once again. It is amusing to reflect on the acrimony associated with "global warming," which was renamed "climate change" when it became apparent that the last decade has not proven to be as warm as the preceding decade. As one observer put it, "global temperatures are warmer than about 75 percent of... Full story
With the goal of filing for permits by the end of the year, the Pebble Limited Partnership has agreed to a budget of roughly US$80 million for Pebble in 2013, which will push the total investment in the Southwest Alaska copper-gold-molybdenum deposit above US$750 million. "By the time the Pebble Partnership triggers permitting under NEPA (National Environmental Policy Act), more than US$700 million will have been invested to ensure a robust project design from a technical,... Full story
Copper Fox Metals Corp. recently completed a positive feasibility study of its Schaft Creek porphyry copper, gold, molybdenum and silver project in northwestern British Columbia that could mark an important turning point for the project. The Calgary, Alberta-based company holds title and a 100 percent working interest in Schaft Creek, which is located due east-northeast of Petersburg, Alaska, about 61 kilometers (38 miles) south of the village of Telegraph Creek. The feasibility study prepared by Tetra Tech in late December...
The Government of Yukon received comments from around the globe during recent public consultation in the prolonged land-use debate over the Peel Watershed, a 77,000 square kilometer mountainous and wild expanse in the northern part of the territory that also extends across the border into central Northwest Territories. The Yukon portion of the watershed, 68,000 square kilometers (26,255 square miles), an area roughly the size of West Virginia and Delaware combined, is undergoing land-use planning in a process laid out in...
The mining industry in northern Canada is expected to continue to flourish in 2013 despite current challenges, including slow economic growth, lower commodity prices and dismal financial markets, according to economists at The Conference Board of Canada. "The territories are not immune to the vulnerability of the global economy," said Marie-Christine Bernard, associate director, forecasting and analysis at The Conference Board. "New mine development and production will provide a solid economic foundation for Canada's territor...
Churning out 25,506 ounces of gold during the first three months of 2013, Coeur d'Alene Mines Corp.'s retooled Kensington Mine in Southeast Alaska is on pace to surpass 100,000 ounces of production in 2013. Late in 2011, Coeur cut processing rates in half to undertake several key initiatives aimed at improving the mine's safety and production profile. "We went through a pretty massive retooling of Kensington over the past year-and-a-half, and I am pleased to see the results fr...
In a year that has started off with more than its share of mining industry gloom and doom, this year's Fraser Institute "Survey of Mining Companies, 2012/2013" provided a bit of sunshine for Alaska. The annual survey of exploration and mining companies gauges the pros and cons of working in various political jurisdictions around the world. This year's results came from 742 mineral industry companies working in 96 jurisdictions worldwide and represented cumulative 2012 explorat... Full story
There's nothing like getting an early start, especially when it comes to mining exploration in Canada's Far North. Literally, there's nothing like the 2013 program that Prosperity Goldfields Corp. kicked off in late February at its Kiyuk Lake Project to the east in southern Nunavut nor the 2013 field campaign launched about the same time by Kaminak Gold Corp. at the Coffee Gold Project in Yukon Territory. In a year when many mining companies are having to scrape together enough exploration funds to even mount a field program...
The 6.4 million ounces of low-cost silver recovered from the Greens Creek Mine in Southeast Alaska during 2012 is funding growth aspirations at Hecla Mining Co., including a foray into Canada's mining sector. "This past year, with the Lucky Friday down, Greens Creek generated strong silver production and cash flow to allow record capital investments that are expected to generate not only higher silver production in 2013, but expected organic growth well into the future," said... Full story
The huge Selwyn lead-zinc project in eastern Yukon Territory is one of the latest on a growing list of resource developments attracting mega-investments from Chinese companies to Canada. Selwyn, perhaps the largest undeveloped zinc-lead deposit in the world, is located in the heart of the Yukon's mineral-rich Selwyn Basin. After an aggressive multi-year exploration program, junior miner Selwyn Resources Ltd. attracted a C$100 million investment in June 2010 from Yunnan Chihong Zinc & Germanium Co. Ltd., a fully integrated min... Full story
URU Metals Ltd., a base metals and uranium explorer with interests in Africa and South America, is making a bold foray into Canada in 2013 to investigate the potential of the Nueltin Lake gold-uranium project held by Cameco Corp., one of the world's largest uranium producers. URU has signed an option with Cameco to earn a majority interest in the project, which is located in the Kivalliq region of southern Nunavut about 10 kilometers (six miles) north of the Manitoba border. The Nueltin Lake granite terrane straddles the...
The right size operation, recovering the right rare earth elements in the right location; this is how market experts and policymakers are describing Ucore Rare Metals' Bokan Mountain REE project in Southeast Alaska. In a March 9 article, "The Rare Earth Space, 'A Culling of the Herd, and the Survivors' (Part 1: North America)," pre-eminent technology metals expert Jack Lifton said Ucore and its Bokan Mountain project has the right elements to survive "the Darwinian nature of... Full story
The annual Cordilleran Roundup Mining Convention is held in Vancouver at the end of January each year, and this year's convention was unlike any of the nearly 20 such conventions I have attended. The norm for this convention is a sort of anticipatory excitement that permeates every facet of the event. Mineral exploration is the focus of this gathering, and explorationists are by and large optimistic people. While there was no lack of optimism at the 2013 convention, if you...
It has been a long time since we have had a president who has hailed from a public lands state and, even though we have had some secretaries of the Interior from the West, they have ranged from the inept to total disaster. For reasons that are undoubtedly our own fault, not only do the unscrubbed masses seem not to know or care where the raw materials that make our modern community work come from, but the intelligentsia in command seem blithely indifferent to the health and...
NovaCopper Inc. is 2.4 billion pounds closer to reaching its goal of defining a 10-billion-pound copper camp in the Ambler Mining District of Northwest Alaska. "In our first season of drilling at South Reef, we have defined 2.4 billion pounds of high-grade copper and the mineralized system is wide open for expansion," NovaCopper CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse said. South Reef, with an inferred resource of 43.1 million metric tons of material averaging 2.54 percent copper, is the... Full story
Fortune Minerals Ltd. is advancing two mineral projects involving three different jurisdictions of Canada and doing much of it with the same timeframe. On the heels of development of its Nico gold-cobalt-bismuth-copper project in Northwest Territories, Fortune is also targeting commercial production at the Arctos Anthracite Project, formerly Mount Klappan Anthracite Coal Project, in Northwest British Columbia within the next four years. Management is shooting for the last half of 2015 and the first quarter of 2016 for...
While others may have encountered insurmountable challenges, the new producers of precious and base metals in Canada's Far North achieved solid and, in some cases outstanding, performance results in 2012. The Meadowbank Mine in Nunavut and the three operating mines in Yukon Territory - Minto, Bellekeno and Wolverine, that began commercial production in recent years, posted results for the fourth quarter and full year of 2012 as well as guidelines for positive outcomes in 2013. Nunavut gold The Meadowbank Mine is the largest o... Full story
Trepidation over scarce venture capital tempered the inherent ability of mineral explorers to envision the prospectivity of what lies over the horizon, resulting in an aura of guarded optimism during the 2013 Mineral Exploration Roundup, held Jan. 28-31 in Vancouver, B.C. Teck Resources Ltd. President and CEO Don Lindsay addressed the anxiety and resilience of the explorers and miners attending the annual gathering. "The mining industry is all about a license to dream," Lindsa...
Claim-staking and other mineral tenure activity in Canada's Far North appears to be following the downward trend seen in recent exploration spending. Officials report that the number of mineral claims and leases and prospecting permits issued in 2012, generally, have plummeted from comparable activity a year earlier, reflecting not only the dearth of financing available for new mining ventures but also new worries about future access to mineral prospects across Yukon Territory, Northwest Territories and Nunavut. Several... Full story
