The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 251 - 275 of 293
Pebble Limited Partnership has taken another step toward gaining the permits needed to develop a mine at its large copper-gold-molybdenum project in Southwest Alaska. On Feb. 20, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers – Alaska District announced that it has published the draft environmental impact statement for a proposed 20-year mine at this world-class deposit that could help fill the United States' increasing need for copper, a demand that is being driven by the expanding e...
When Northern Star Resources Ltd. acquired the Pogo Mine, the Perth-based miner believed it could apply its underground mining experience in Australia to increasing high-grade gold resource and boosting production at its new Alaska asset. Five months into its official ownership of Pogo, Northern Star's exploration is generating outstanding results which are oft exceeding the company's already high expectations. "Pogo is fast turning out to be everything we expected and more,"...
Will the new Barrick Gold Corp. sell its 50 percent stake in the Donlin Gold project? This is the question on the minds of many Donlin Gold stakeholders and Novagold Resources Inc. shareholders following Barrick Gold's merger with Randgold Resources Ltd. Currently, Barrick and Novagold are 50-50 co-owners of Donlin Gold, a 39-million-ounce gold project in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region of Southwest Alaska. While the size of this deposit is definitely world-class and the resource...
Alaska Peninsula Corp., which represents five Alaska Native village corporations in the Bristol Bay region of Southwest Alaska, has reached an agreement with the Pebble Limited Partnership to provide transportation corridor access across its lands to support construction and operation of the proposed Pebble mine. Formed as a merger between the South Naknek, Port Heiden, Ugashik, Kokhanok and Newhalen village corporations, Alaska Peninsula Corp. owns the surface rights to...
Members of the Kaminak Gold Corp. executive team have reunited to form Tectonic Metals Corp., a private exploration company that has acquired three overlooked gold exploration properties in Alaska's Eastern Interior. While with Kaminak, this team advanced the Coffee project in the Yukon from a grassroots discovery to a roughly 5-million-ounce gold mine project that Goldcorp Inc. acquired in 2017 for C$520 million. Cashing in on Coffee, several of the Kaminak executives moved...
Excited about the robust economics outlined in a preliminary economic assessment finalized in October, Peak Gold partners – Contango ORE Inc. (60 percent) and Royal Gold Inc. (40 percent) are now looking at the potential of bringing on a partner to advance their high-grade gold deposit in eastern Alaska toward development. "We are at a point I think where it would be healthy to have somebody else come in and move the project forward with their skill set," Royal Gold P...
DENA'INA CENTER, ANCHORAGE: Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018 likely marks a crucial turning point for Alaska's mining industry. As the state's mining community gathered for the Alaska Miners Association (AMA) annual convention to celebrate one of the best years for the sector in recent memory, Alaska voters were making decisions that would shape the future of the more than 1,000 people gathered at the Dena'ina Center. In terms of the state economy, the most crucial decision put before...
While claim staking and mineral exploration has rocketed in Yukon's famed White Gold and Klondike districts, this prolific action nearly comes to a halt at the territory's western border with Alaska. This has given rise to a tongue-in-cheek theory that there must be a major fault separating the mineral rich lands in western Yukon from the barren lands west of the border. This "Border Fault" apparently does exist. It is not, however, a major geological structure separating...
Less than a month after closing a deal to acquire Pogo, Northern Star Resources Ltd. has published an Australian Joint Ore Reserves Committee- (JORC) compliant resource for this high-grade underground gold mine in Interior Alaska. According to the new calculation, Pogo hosts 8.8 million metric tons averaging 14.7 grams per metric ton (4.15 million ounces) gold. This includes 3.3 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 15.7 g/t (1.67 million oz) gold; and 5.48...
Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. has substantially increased the resources at Palmer, including the first indicated resource and inaugural estimate of the barite that makes up a large percentage of this zinc- and copper-rich volcanogenic massive sulfide deposit in Southeast Alaska. According to the new calculation released on Sept. 27, the South Wall-RW deposit at Palmer now hosts 4.68 million metric tons of indicated resource averaging 5.23 percent (539 million pounds) zinc,...
The verdict is in – the economics of developing an open-pit mine at Peak Gold look tantalizing and Royal Gold Inc. is committed to being involved with this Eastern Interior Alaska gold-silver project for the long haul. Discovered by Contango ORE Inc. in 2009, the Peak Gold project hosts two skarn deposits – Main Peak and North Peak – on an underexplored property that covers roughly 850,000 acres west and south of Tok, a crossroads town on the Alaska Highway. A preli...
A group of Alaskans led by renowned geologist Curt Freeman have created Valhalla Metals Inc., a private Alaska exploration company that has nabbed exciting volcanogenic massive sulfide projects that bookend the Ambler Mining District, one of the richest known undeveloped mineral regions on Earth. Anchored by the Arctic deposit on lands held by Trilogy Metals Inc., this region of Northwest Alaska is celebrated for a 70-mile- (110 kilometers) long belt of world-class VMS...
Australian gold miner Northern Star Resources Ltd. is adding the Pogo Mine in Alaska to its growing portfolio of low-cost, high-grade underground gold mines. In a deal announced on Aug. 30, the Perth-based miner has agreed to pay US$260 million to buy out Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo, a joint venture between Japanese firms Sumitomo Metal Mining Company (85 percent) and Sumitomo Corp. (15 percent) that owns and operates the mine. Pogo currently has roughly 4.1 million ounces of...
With initial results from the 2018 drilling at Bornite topping 5 percent copper, Trilogy Metals Inc. and South32 Ltd. have decided to extend this year's program at the Upper Kobuk Mineral Projects in the Ambler Mining District of Northwest Alaska. Trilogy has only received partial assay results from one hole drilled this year, but the results are impressive. This hole, RC18-0247, cut 16.4 meters grading 5.34 percent copper and 0.21 percent cobalt to the north of the...
FAIRBANKS: An Aug. 15 ceremonial groundbreaking for the Gilmore expansion at Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine marked a new chapter in the life of this important gold operation in the heart of Alaska's Interior. Lying immediately west of the Fort Knox pit, which has produced more than 7 million ounces of gold over the past 22 years, Gilmore is expected to add roughly 1.5 million ounces of gold to the Fairbanks-area operation and extend the life of the mine out to 2030....
Roughly six years after applications to federal authorities, Barrick Gold Corp. and Novagold Resources Inc. have crossed the finish line on gaining the key federal permits needed to build a mine at their 39-million-ounce Donlin Gold Mine project in Southwest Alaska. This major permitting milestone was reached on Aug. 13, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Bureau of Land Management issued a joint record of decision for Donlin Gold, marking the completion of a...
HEALY: Hundreds of friends, family and colleagues arrived at Usibelli Coal Mine Inc.'s Healy operation to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the longest lived large mining operation in Alaska – an event that highlighted the coal company's pioneering past, current growth and bright future. During a speech to kick off the celebration, Usibelli Coal President Joe Usibelli, Jr. said the Healy operation is currently delivering roughly 1 million tons of coal per year to five power p...
UPPER KOBUK MINERAL PROJECTS: A two-hour flight northwest of Fairbanks, Alaska lies one of the richest known undeveloped mining districts on Earth. This claim is evidenced by the rich deposits of copper, zinc, lead, cobalt, gold and silver outcropping from the Brooks Range mountains where this district is found; the copper-rich ore extracted from an exploration shaft dug by Kennecott in the 1960s; and the copper and cobalt mineralization that is easy for a journalist to...
The Trump Administration's latest round of tariffs on Chinese goods includes a 10 percent levy on rare earth elements, a group of 17 elements on the periodic table with unique properties that make them key ingredients in a wide array of modern high-tech products such as terabyte hard-drives that fit in the palm of your hand, high-efficiency green-power generation and sophisticated military hardware. For decades, China has dominated the REE market and has largely controlled...
MACLAREN RIVER: A cold summer rain drizzling down on the exploration camp does not dampen the spirits of PolarX Ltd. Executive Director Jason Berton ... and for good reason. Laid out across the tables in the core shack at the company's highway accessible exploration camp is gold- and copper-rich skarn mineralization from a hole drilled some 850 meters east of the current resource at the Zackly deposit on the company's Alaska Range project. If ongoing drilling can trace this...
Among his final acts before resigning as administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Scott Pruitt directed his agency's Office of Water to put together a proposal to update the regulations governing EPA's role in the permitting discharges of dredged or fill materials, including the elimination of the "preemptive veto" under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act. EPA's current interpretation of regulations on implementing CWA section 404(c) allows the agency to...
Alaska Gov. Bill Walker has called for a halt to an environmental review process aimed at determining whether a mine at Pebble can be developed in a way that protects the environment of the Bristol Bay region where the world-class copper-gold-molybdenum deposit is found. In a June 29 letter to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, also signed by Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, Walker questioned the "readiness of the proposed Pebble project to move forward." The governor cited the lack of...
Development of the high-grade Lucky Shot gold mine near Willow Alaska has been suspended and the future of the project is up to the Singapore-based equity firm that is the new owner. In a June 6 announcement, Miranda Gold Corp. reported that Gold Torrent Inc., the Idaho-based company seeking to develop a small but high-grade mine at Lucky Shot, had failed to complete a share financing required to hold ownership of the development project. Gold Torrent, which held a 70 percent...
Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. is working on a deal to lease Johnson Tract, a gold-rich polymetallic deposit in Southcentral Alaska, from Cook Inlet Region Inc., an Alaska Native regional corporation more commonly known as CIRI. Located about six miles west of Cook Inlet and roughly 125 miles southwest of Anchorage, the 20,942-acre Johnson Tract property hosts a gold and base metals deposit that is reminiscent of the historical Eskay Creek Mine in neighboring British...
The Fort Knox Mine will continue churning out gold until at least 2030, thanks to Kinross Gold Corp.'s decision to move ahead with the development of Gilmore, an expansion project immediately west of the open-pit mine that has provide ore to the Interior Alaska operation for 22 years. "This go-ahead decision for Gilmore represents collaboration, hard work and dedication coming to fruition, and it wouldn't have been possible without the contributions of many," said Fort Knox...
