The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 951 - 975 of 3020
What does Molycorp Inc.'s bankruptcy have to do with the price of rare earths in China? Some analysts say everything, while other experts in the field point to other weaknesses as the root cause of the American REE Goliath's undoing. When China put a chokehold on its exports of rare earth elements in 2010, Molycorp was already well on its way to seizing the opportunity to reopen the Mountain Pass Mine in California, an operation hailed for its ability to re-establishing an...
Freegold Ventures Ltd. is testing the idea that a large and previously unrecognized porphyry deposit could lie beneath its Shorty Creek property in the Livengood Mining District of Interior Alaska. Earlier this month, the exploration company raised C$1.35 million to fund a 3,000- meter drill program that could provide definitive evidence that various zones of copper, gold and molybdenum found across the 26,000-acre Shorty Creek land package are actually pieces of one porphyry...
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...
A Washington, D.C. think tank has weighed in on the question of whether the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency erred in conducting an assessment of large-scale mining in the Bristol Bay region of Alaska before such a project was even proposed, let alone engaged in the federal permitting process. EPA published its findings in a “Bristol Bay Assessment” and decided to place limits on development of the enormous and contentious Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum project in Sou...
While tough market conditions are forcing mining companies to tighten their belts, Teck Resources Ltd. does not see maintaining responsible and environmentally sound operations as an area in which it can afford to trim its budget. That commitment has propelled the diversified miner onto the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for six years running, ranking it among the top 10 percent of the 2,500 largest companies in the S&P Global Broad Market Index. "We know that the...
WG: TSX.V President and CEO: Greg Johnson Senior VP and COO: John Sagman VP, Corporate Development: Rob Bruggeman Wellgreen Platinum Ltd. is focused on advancing its namesake platinum group metals-copper-nickel project located near the Alaska Highway in southwestern Yukon Territory. In February, the company published the results of an updated preliminary economic assessment for the Wellgreen project that envisions a conventional open pit operation, with some selective higher grade underground mining. Milling would start at 25...
Given an abundance of cheap coal available on the Pacific Rim, Usibelli Coal Mine Inc. is focusing on its core business - delivering more than 1 million tons of ultra-low-sulfur coal mined at its Healy operation to electricity- and heat-generating customers in Interior Alaska. "Right now, we are sort of regrouping, focusing on our domestic customers," Usibelli Vice President of Government Affairs Lorali Simon told business and government leaders gathered for an Oct. 16...
Initial results from the 2015 drill program at the Tetlin project in eastern Alaska near Tok is providing some insight into why Royal Gold Inc. was eager to invest US$4 million to fund a second phase of drilling before winter sets in at the Interior Alaska project. Peak Gold - the limited liability joint venture company that Royal Gold joined earlier this year to follow up on the exploration success that Contango ORE Inc. had at Tetlin - completed 7,162 meters of core...
Goldrich NyacAu Placer LLC ramped up late-season production at Chandalar, a northern Alaska project that is shaping up to be one of the largest placer gold operations in North America. Goldrich Mining Co., which owns 50 percent of the partnership to mine the rich placer deposits at Chandalar, said the startup operation produced 4,400 ounces of alluvial gold over 35 days of production that began in August. "The beginning of mine production is a significant milestone for the...
Millrock Resources Inc. has cut a deal to buy the Apex-El Nido property, home to two historical high-grade gold mines in Southeast Alaska that have largely been forgotten. Located on Chichagof Island, about 70 miles southwest of Juneau and about the same distance northwest of Sitka, the Apex and El Nido mines churned out at least 17,000 ounces of gold from ore that averaged about 1.4 ounces per-ton gold during spurts of mining carried out between 1922 and 1940. While very...
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...
While tough market conditions are forcing mining companies to tighten their belts, Teck Resources Ltd. does not see maintaining responsible and environmentally sound operations as an area in which it can afford to trim its budget. That commitment has propelled the diversified miner onto the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index for six years running, ranking it among the top 10 percent of the 2,500 largest companies in the S&P Global Broad Market Index. "We know that the...
If another US$4 million investment by Royal Gold Inc. is any indication, drilling so far this season at the Tetlin gold property in Interior Alaska is a success. In January, Royal Gold and Contango Ore Inc. finalized an agreement that affords the Denver-based royalty company an opportunity to earn as much as a 40 percent joint venture interest in Contango's Tetlin project by investing up to US$30 million on the unique and promising gold properties near the crossroads town of...
On the final leg of his three-day tour of Alaska, President Barack Obama visited Dillingham and Kotzebue, two remote Alaska communities with starkly different views on the development of Alaska's rich mineral endowment. On Sept. 2, Obama travelled to Dillingham, the largest community in the Bristol Bay region of Southwest Alaska and ground zero of the movement to prevent the development of Pebble, a world-class mineral deposit that contains an estimated 81 billion pounds of...
Embattled federal employees conveniently losing emails that could bear witness to potentially negligent or illegal activities have become an increasingly frequent storyline. But seldom does the email's author disappear with the corrupted data. This seems to be the case with Phillip North, a former U.S. Environmental Protection Agency biologist accused of secretly colluding with private sector activists to stop the development of a mine at the Pebble copper-gold-molybdenum...
British Columbia Energy and Mines Minister Bill Bennett spent the week of Aug. 23 working to build bonds with Southeast Alaskans worried about potential downstream effects of mining copper- and gold-rich deposits located in northwestern B.C. Bennett's visit comes one year after a tailings dam burst at the Mount Polley Mine in central British Columbia, sending a deluge of mining waste and untreated water into the surrounding watershed. While the spill did not affect Alaska...
More gold and silver at lower costs is a common theme for the Greens Creek, Kensington and Fort Knox mines in 2015 and an important component of keeping these operations economically viable for their respective owners - Hecla Mining Co., Coeur Mining Inc. and Kinross Gold Corp. "Cost control is always a priority and ensures that operating mines can succeed even during downtimes in commodities cycles," said Karen Mathias, managing consultant, Council of Alaska Producers. This...
Mining is a notoriously cyclical business that generally ebbs and flows with the overall state of the global economy, and these cycles are amplified for junior mining companies charged with scouring the globe for the next generation of mines. Following a bull market that reached a crescendo at the end of 2010, the current bear market has been especially deep and painful for even seasoned mining sector veterans. "This has been a particularly treacherous bear market," longtime...
Less than three months after a pending sale of its Whistler property in Southcentral Alaska fell through, Kiska Metals Corp. has found a new buyer for the advanced-stage copper-gold exploration project. Under a binding agreement announced last week, Brazil Resources Inc. will issue Kiska 3.5 million shares in exchange for full ownership of Whistler, including the mining claims and other assets belonging to the project. Brazil Resources' shares were trading at C46 cents per...
The 40-million-ounce Donlin Gold project is more than midway through a roughly five-year permitting process, but gold prices are dipping to lows not seen in nearly five and a half years and trending downward. Will project owners Barrick Gold Corp. and Novagold Resources Inc. be willing to pull the trigger on development once the hard-earned permits are in hand? The Donlin Gold partners say it depends on where gold prices are headed and what the equity costs are for raising...
Alaska's highest court says the Lake and Peninsula Borough does not have the authority to enforce the ordinance resulting from the "Save Our Salmon" initiative passed by voters in 2011. The SOS Initiative, passed by Lake and Peninsula Borough voters in 2011, would have prohibited borough planners from issuing a permit to any project that would disturb more than one-square-mile of topsoil would be determined to have a "significant adverse impact" on waters supporting salmon....
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...
Alaska has joined 11 other states in challenging the "waters of the United States" rule recently adopted by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in one of a growing number of lawsuits seeking to overturn the onerous regulation. The 299-page Clean Water Rule unveiled by the Obama Administration in May attempts to define which waters are covered by the Clean Water Act, resulting in the need for a federal permit. However, instead of clarif...
Permitting delays are becoming the bane of companies endeavoring to develop mines in the United States, a country that is otherwise considered a stable and richly endowed mining jurisdiction. SNL Metals & Mining has published a report that shows a notoriously lengthy process is resulting in U. S. mines losing up to half their value before receiving final approvals for development. "The longer the wait, the more the value of the investment is reduced, even to the extent that...
