The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 851 - 875 of 3020
On July 13, a fountain of molten gold cascades into awaiting molds at the Fort Knox Mine, which is among the largest and lowest-cost gold operations owned by Kinross Gold Corp. While gold pours such as this one are a regular occurrence at this roughly 1,100-ounce-per-day operation, somewhere in this particular glowing stream was the seven-millionth ounce of gold produced at the iconic mine, located a few miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska. Fort Knox General Manager Eric Hill wou...
Miners see mountains of federal regulations standing between them and the development of Alaska’s unparalleled mineral wealth. In the recently published Fraser Institute Survey of Mining Companies, 449 global mining executives ranked Alaska 59th, right below Zimbabwe, when it comes to uncertainty concerning environmental regulations. This perception is not just that of those observing Alaska from afar, but also one shared by the miners who are trying to develop and operate m...
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has added 33 days to the comment period for the draft environmental impact statement for Donlin Gold, providing area residents and other interested parties more time to review the lengthy document and offer informed input on the enormous gold mine project proposed for the Yukon-Kuskokwim region of Southwest Alaska. The Donlin Gold Mine being considered in the draft EIS includes a 53,500-metric-ton-per-day mill that is expected to produce an...
Novagold Resources Inc. and Barrick Gold Corp. – equal co-owners of the Donlin Gold project – have both said they are unwilling to develop the 40-million-ounce gold deposit in a weak gold price environment. So, with Donlin entering the final phase of a five-year permitting process, are the partners ready to build a world-class gold mine in Southwest Alaska? With gold prices up roughly 16 percent since the start of the year and showing resilience at around US$1,250 per oun...
ILLINOIS CREEK CAMP: Maps spread out here on a pool table and laptops filled with geophysical and geochemical data collected at the Round Top copper project line up on a makeshift desk against the wall – an air of optimism and excitement fills the former recreation room for the past-producing Illinois Creek Mine that now serves as the headquarters for Western Alaska Copper & Gold Company. The source of the excitement is a drill tapping into a potentially large and robust p...
Alaska’s congressional delegation is once again eliciting greater Obama Administration involvement in the potential development of numerous mines being considered on northwestern British Columbia waterways that drain through Southeast Alaska. “Like most Alaskans, we strongly support responsible mining, including mines in Southeast Alaska, but Alaskans need to have every confidence that mining activity in Canada is carried out just as safely as in our state,” the trio of Alask...
Tesla Motors is on the cusp of unveiling its Model 3, an affordable mid-size sedan that is the key to the company's goal of producing 500,000 all-electric vehicles per year by 2017 – welcome news for those who want to own a Tesla but can't afford the two more luxurious models released by the company. A half-million Teslas rolling off of assembly-lines each year also could be good news for Graphite One Resources Inc., a junior mining company aspiring to supply some of the rough...
The more that is known about Graphite Creek, the more this enormous deposit in western Alaska seems ideally suited to fill the growing need for graphite in electric vehicle batteries and other technology applications. Though Graphite One Resources Inc. has only systematically drilled a small section of the 11 miles of known near-surface mineralization at Graphite Creek, the Vancouver B.C.-based company has already outlined 17.95 million metric tons of indicated resource...
It has been several years since Zazu Metals Corp. has made any significant investments in its Lik zinc-lead-silver project in Northwest Alaska, a situation that is threatening the company’s eligibility to be listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange. According to exchange rules, a company must spend at least C$350,000 on its core projects during the previous year to be eligible to continue listing its shares on the TSX. Zazu, however, has reined in its cash outlay until zinc p...
NovaCopper Inc. is exercising the discipline of a marathon runner as it paces towards the finish line - developing the high-grade copper deposits at its Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in Northwest Alaska into world-class mines. This year's US$5.5 million program for UKMP - a budget identical to 2015 - will continue to collect the data needed to complete a prefeasibility study for an open-pit mine at the Arctic deposit, while continuing to seek areas to expand upon the more than...
Though it will likely take years for Britain to fully disengage itself from the European Union, if it does at all, the implications of the Brexit vote was enough to hurdle gold through US$1,300 per troy ounce. Up nearly US$300/oz. since the start of 2016, the safe-haven metal is making strides towards testing the US$1,400/oz. threshold. Robin Bhar, head of metals research at Societe Generale, a French multinational banking and financial services company, believes gold and its...
From a Texas oilman discovering rich mineral prospects at Tetlin while investigating the natural gas potential of these Native owned lands to a royalty company setting aside its business model to get in on the ground floor of what is shaping up to be a multimillion-ounce deposit of high-grade gold lying alongside the Alaska Highway, Contango Ore Inc. is adding some intriguing new entries to the annals of Alaska geology. The latest chapter of the Tetlin story includes a US$11...
The U. S. Department of Labor Mine Safety and Health Administration is proposing a new rule that would require mine operators to identify and correct unsafe conditions prior to allowing miners into a work area. MSHA already requires mine operators to carry out safety examinations at some point during each shift. A run of 60 fatalities at U.S. mines since October 2013, however, has prompted the mine safety administration to propose more proactive examinations. Introducing the...
Australia-based Coventry Resources Inc. has kicked off an extensive exploration program aimed at expanding zones of high-grade copper at Caribou Dome, a road-accessible property located about 155 miles north of Anchorage. "We anticipate spending around AU$2 million on the current work program that will comprise circa 8,000 meters of drilling, an extensive (induced polarization) survey, and further soil sampling/mapping in prioritized areas where previously very little, if...
U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason slammed federal attorneys representing the U.S. Bureau of Land Management for acting in "bad faith" while stalling the resolution of Alaska's ownership of lands under the navigable Mosquito Fork in the Fortymile Mining District. Alaska, like all other states in union, owns the beds of navigable waters within its borders. This state ownership of these important trade transportation routes is protected by the United States Constitution....
TerraX Minerals Inc. May 4 reported results from a six-hole drill program at Homer Lake area of its Yellowknife City Gold Project in the Northwest Territories. Two holes targeted a previously untested north-striking quartz vein and sulfide gold zone that crosses the Homer Lake base metal structure. THL16-008 cut 15.91 meters averaging 1.78 grams per metric ton gold; and THL16-009 cut 18.19 meters averaging 1.2 g/t gold. These holes, testing a gold-silver zone identified in...
Stakeholder Gold Corp. May 5 said GroundTruth Exploration Inc. will be carrying out exploration at its Ballarat gold project located in the White Gold District of Yukon Territory. The work will start with a drone-generated, high-resolution topographic survey of the entire property. The Northwest zone - which has seen detailed conventional soil sampling, limited trenching and diamond drilling - will be further tested along two mineralized trends. Only a portion of a...
Athabasca Nuclear Corp. May 2 said it has entered into a binding letter of intent with North Arrow Minerals Inc. to acquire the Torp Lake and Phoenix lithium properties. The Torp Lake project covers 1,003 hectares (2,478 acres) near tidewater in the north Slave region of Nunavut. The Torp Lake Project hosts the McAvoy lithium-rich pegmatite contained in the mineral spodumene. Past channel sampling of pegmatite at McAvoy has returned six meters grading 4.5 percent lithium...
Teck Resources Ltd. April 26 reported its Red Dog Mine in Northwest Alaska produced record amounts of combined zinc and lead concentrates during the first quarter of 2016. During the first three months of the year, 1.08 million metric tons of ore averaging 17.4 percent zinc and 5.2 percent lead was milled at Red Dog, compared with 1.06 million metric tons averaging 16.5 percent zinc and 4.6 percent lead during the same period a year earlier. As a result, the mine produced...
During an era of partisan gridlock on Capitol Hill, U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, has managed to garner broad support for an energy bill aimed at modernizing the way power is produced in the United States, including numerous provisions important to Alaska. The legislation, which was passed out of the U.S. Senate with an 85-12 vote, also contains provisions to improve access to the U.S. mineral resources supply by streamlining the minerals mine permitting process. "My...
How much copper, gold and silver have been identified so far at the Island Mountain deposit? Thanks to Brazil Resources Inc., the new owner of the expansive Whistler property in Southcentral Alaska, we have the answer to this question which has lingered for the past five years. According to a maiden resource published April 18, Island Mountain adds 1.56 million ounces of gold, 3.34 million oz. of silver and 125.7 million pounds of copper to resources already identified at...
While not the official theme of the Arctic International Mining Symposium, the notion that Alaska is different was an undertone that permeated every facet of the Alaska Miners Association's spring mining convention in Fairbanks. Alaska's extraordinary mineral endowment and the unique physical challenges of realizing this potential in a vast and underdeveloped Arctic state are traditional topics for discussion at this biennial gathering in the "Golden Heart City." This year,...
Alaska's mining sector is the target of a potential tax hike as lawmakers look for new revenues to help close the state's nearly US$4 billion budget deficit. For perspective, this fiscal gap is roughly 35 percent larger than the worth of all the zinc, gold, silver and lead mined in Alaska during 2015. The proposed mining tax increase is part of Gov. Bill Walker's larger budget balancing plan that includes cutting state spending, restructuring the Alaska Permanent Fund, and...
Long, grueling, arduous, treacherous and painful are among the many adjectives, and sometimes expletives, used to describe the mining sector's nearly four-year bear market that is showing signs it is ready to hibernate. While Alaska's metal mines have not emerged from this enduring downturn unscathed, the sector remains largely intact and ready to ride metals prices higher. Together, Alaska's mines produced roughly US$2.76 billion of precious and base metals during 2015, down...
As in the recent past, the state of the world's exploration industry was summarized in SNL Metal & Mining's annual "Corporate Exploration Strategies" publication, released at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention in Toronto earlier this month. Not surprisingly, it painted a grim picture of 2015, the worst year for exploration since 2009. The statistics indicate that worldwide exploration expenditures declined a further 19 percent to $9.2 billion...
