The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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While copper has the potential to be a major contributor to Alaska's economic future, this "new oil" of the low-carbon economy will be hard-pressed to beat out the old money being produced at current and coming gold mines across the Last Frontier. This is due in large part to Kinross Gold Corp.'s new "Kinross Alaska" strategy that is leveraging the underutilized 14-million-metric-ton-per-year mill and storage capacity at Fort Knox to process higher-grade ore mined from...
When Vital Metals Ltd. purchased the rights to mine the mineral resources in the upper zones of the Nechalacho rare earth project from Avalon Rare Metals Inc. in 2019, the Australian junior hit the ground running. And the rest is history. Literally. In July, Vital Metals became the first company to produce rare earth minerals in Canada – a country known to host vast undeveloped quantities of this suite of coveted elements. Vital is also only the second company to mine rare e...
With its sights set on revitalizing the historic Eskay Creek and Snip gold mines, Skeena Resources Ltd. is expanding resources and building strong partnerships at these exceptional precious metal projects in British Columbia's Golden Triangle. As a testament to the enormous potential of Eskay Creek and Snip, as well as Skeena's responsible approach to bringing them back into production, Tahltan Central Government invested C$5 million to acquire 1.6 million shares of this...
Mineral exploration activity in Nunavut intensified in 2021 as mining companies mounted larger and more extensive programs in response to stronger capital markets, government infrastructure initiatives, and the easing of restrictions imposed to curb effects of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic. Spanning 2 million square kilometers (about 782,000 square miles), the territory has 25 communities and about 39,353 residents, of whom 84% are Inuit. Nunavut has no roads, and all but one...
"Due to significant backlogs at assay labs, the results from this program are pending" is the theme for the 2021 mineral exploration season across Alaska and Canada's North. The turnaround times for assay results descended from long during the first half of the year to ad absurdum during the latter half. Backlogs at assay labs are nothing new for mineral explorers in the North of 60 Mining News coverage area. In fact, the ability to completely overwhelm the sample prep...
Mineral exploration activity in Northwest Territories showed signs of revival in 2021, coming on the heels of the slowest year in recent memory. Excited by renewed interest in gold deposits in and around the capital city of Yellowknife and other hot spots after the pandemic-related restrictions of 2020, juniors joined longtime explorers Nighthawk Gold Corp. and Gold Terra Resource Corp. (formerly TerraX Minerals) in hunting for the yellow metal across the 1.14...
The product of a 2020 merger between Redstar Gold Corp. and Heliodor Metals Ltd., Heliostar Metals Ltd. is a junior exploration and development company with three gold and silver projects in Mexico and its flagship Unga gold project in Alaska. Covering roughly 93 square miles (240 square kilometers) of the Unga and Popof islands off the southern coast of the Alaska Peninsula, the Unga project hosts the historic Apollo and Sitka mines, which produced roughly 150,000 ounces of...
Kenorland Minerals Ltd., which has been exploring the Tanacross porphyry copper-gold project in eastern Alaska as a private company for several years, is now a publicly listed company with a strong treasury and extensive portfolio of mineral exploration projects in Alaska, Quebec, and Ontario. As a private project-generating explorer, Kenorland entered into an agreement with Freeport-McMoRan to further investigate the potential at Tanacross, a more than 100,000-acre property...
After investing a record US$50.6 million in exploration during 2020, Coeur Mining Inc. set the bar even higher with a roughly US$75 million investment in exploration spending during 2021. "We expect to complete roughly 1.2 million feet (365,750 meters) of drilling by the end of the year, with the primary objective of further extending mine lives across our portfolio," Coeur Mining Senior Vice President of Exploration Hans Rasmussen said in September. Roughly US$13 million of...
Donlin Gold LLC partners Novagold Resources Inc. and Barrick Gold Corp. completed a roughly 24,200-meter drill program during 2021 that will likely provide the final data needed for an optimized plan for a mine at the world-class gold project in Southwest Alaska. With 504.81 million metric tons of proven and probable reserves averaging 2.09 grams per metric ton (33.9 million oz) gold, the Donlin Gold deposit is already particularly high-grade when you consider its magnitude. O...
Building upon the golden success of its 2020 exploration, Freegold Ventures Ltd. struck more bonanza gold while expanding upon the multi-million-ounce Dolphin deposit with a more than 38,000-meter drill program carried out during the 2021 program at its road accessible Golden Summit project about 25 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska. Prior to 2020, most of the drilling at Golden Summit focused on Dolphin, a deposit that hosts 61.5 million metric tons of indicated resource...
Southeast Alaska explorer Grande Portage Resources Ltd. is advancing its Herbert Gold project roughly 16 miles north of Juneau toward permitting and potential development. Following a significant investment by Eric Sprott in mid-2020 that helped fund a 21-hole drill program, Grande Portage is confident that a mine of significant return could be built at Herbert Gold. The 2020 program encountered gold in the Goat, Main, Deep Trench, and Elusive veins, plus Sleeping Giant,...
Despite a season challenged by heavy rains and an early snowstorm, the massive amount of exploration carried out in Northern British Columbia during 2021 piled loads of drill core and surface samples on assay labs already severely backlogged by COVID-19 protocols and restrictions that slowed the flow of samples in and data out of these facilities. Just how busy was the 2021 exploration season across the northern half of BC? According to North of 60 Mining News calculations,...
Mining exploration and production activity soared in Yukon Territory in 2021 thanks to high metals prices, pro-industry government policies, and mounting successes in the field. Bouncing back from some of the most challenging working conditions in modern history due to the COVID-19 pandemic, placer and hardrock miners stepped up the pace of their activities, posting record production numbers and promising exploration results. With the rollout of COVID vaccines and the prospect...
HighGold Mining Inc. is rapidly unlocking the potential of Johnson Tract, a high-grade polymetallic gold project that exemplifies the exceptional mineral exploration opportunities Alaska has to offer. A parcel of land privately-owned by Cook Inlet Regional Inc., an Alaska Native regional corporation more commonly known as CIRI, Johnson Tract is a moderately advanced gold project that has flown under the radar for more than two decades. By the 1990s, exploration by Anaconda...
With the goal of expanding the resource at AurMac to more than 3 million ounces of gold, Banyan Gold Corp.'s 2021 exploration consisted of a large and systematic step-out drill program at the Powerline deposit on this property about 40 kilometers (25 miles) south of Victoria Gold Corp.'s Eagle Gold Mine. Since its maiden resource estimate in 2020, Banyan determined that AurMac hosts 52.6 million metric tons of inferred resource averaging 0.54 grams per metric ton (903,945 oz)...
Exploring its Central Alaskan properties, Avidian Gold Corp. continued progressing its Fairbanks Mining District projects, Amanita and Amanita NE, as well as further exploring Golden Zone, a gold-rich polymetallic project about six miles (10 kilometers) west of the paved Parks Highway roughly midway between Anchorage and Fairbanks. Avidian kicked off 2021 with results from its 2020 drill program at Amanita, which lies next to Kinross Gold's Fort Knox Mine property. The best...
For Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd., 2021 proved to be a transformative year at its operations in Nunavut. The gold miner acquired a third mine in the Far North Canadian territory, completed extensive exploration programs at its mine properties in Nunavut, and edged closer to its goal of zero carbon emissions from its operations by 2050. Agnico also entered a proposed merger-of-equals agreement with Kirkland Lake Gold, a combination that would create the third-largest gold miner in...
President and CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse has positioned Contango ORE Inc. to be the next gold producing company in Alaska and has added projects that deepen the pipeline for this unique exploration and development company. CORE's primary asset is Manh Choh, a 675,000-acre land package leased from the Tetlin Alaska Native Tribe that hosts two adjacent, high-grade gold-silver deposits the company advanced from discovery to a project slated to be Alaska's next large gold mine....
With the lithium-ion batteries powering electric vehicles and storing intermittent renewable energy driving enormous new graphite demand, Graphite One Inc. focused its 2021 program on collecting the final bits of data needed to complete a feasibility study for developing a mine at its Graphite Creek project about 35 miles north of Nome, Alaska. According to a 2019 calculation, Graphite Creek hosts 10.95 million metric tons of measured and indicated resources averaging 7.8%...
Following a year that saw Hecla Mining Company scale back exploration as part of its response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Idaho-based silver miner is beginning to get back to its tradition of adding more ore to reserves than is processed through the mills at its mines in the United States and Canada. "While focused, our exploration efforts have spanned our three operating mines and eight of our exploration properties," Hecla Mining President and CEO Phillips Baker Jr. said...
Goldman Sachs' declaration that "copper is the new oil" may serve as a foreshadowing of Alaska's economic future, one that is not so heavily reliant on the revenues from petroleum flowing from the North Slope and leans more heavily on the state's rich endowment of precious, critical, and base metals. The investment bank's suggestion that copper is to become the strategically most important commodity on Earth is due to the vital role the conductive metal plays in global...
While copper may be the new oil of the green energy revolution, a wide variety of industrial minerals and metals found in abundance in Alaska will be needed to build the envisioned low-carbon future. In a 2021 report on the minerals and metals critical to low-carbon energy and transportation, the International Energy Agency estimates that a typical passenger electric vehicle requires six times the mineral inputs of a conventional internal combustion engine car and an onshore...
Under the new leadership of longtime Alaska and Northern British Columbia explorer Rob McLeod, Blackwolf Copper and Gold Ltd., formerly Heatherdale Resources Ltd., is bringing new vigor and geological ideas to the exploration of its Niblack copper-gold-silver-zinc project on Princes of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. "Our name change to Blackwolf Copper and Gold better reflects the company's spirit and vision, particularly with consultation and inclusion with indigenous...
With the goal of establishing an underground mine at the Palmer volcanogenic massive sulfide project in Southeast Alaska, Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. and its joint venture partner Dowa Metals & Mining Alaska Ltd. focused their 2021 field program on geotechnical and environmental drilling to support the development of an underground exploration ramp and feasibility-level studies for a mine at this zinc-copper-silver-gold-barite project. According to the most recent...
