The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Goldrich Mining Co. completed a brief pilot program during the final weeks of the short Arctic placer mining season at Little Squaw Creek on the miner's 14,993-acre Chandalar property located in the foothills of the Brooks Range about 200 miles north of Fairbanks. The three-week trial run involved a full-scale mining test that produced 593.5 ounces of placer gold. The Spokane-based miner said the test also yielded valuable mining and engineering data that will enable it to... Full story
As the active exploration season winds down in Alaska, both good news and bad is afoot and both sets of news turn out to be the same data. Double speak you say? Read on and judge for yourself. Halifax-based Metals Economics Group announced some preliminary numbers relating to worldwide mineral industry exploration for 2009. The group estimates that worldwide exploration spending will drop to US$8.4 billion in 2009, a 40 percent decrease from the US$14 billion spent in 2008.... Full story
It seems that with the passage of time the concept of the common good, the general welfare and the public interest, all variations of the same theme, have become so diluted as to make them indecipherable. There was a time when charitable, educational, and eleemosynary entities were honored for their selfless contributions to the general welfare. Dedicated volunteers worked with trivial stipends or no recompense at all to attend to the poor and sickly. Tax benefits were extended toward charitable entities and, notwithstanding...
Canada's new economic development agency for the Far North has awarded a new round of mining research and business development grants, providing significant funding to key projects in Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Yukon Territory. Known as the Canadian Northern Economic Development Agency or CanNor, the agency is the outgrowth of the Canadian government's new Economic Action Plan and is designed to encourage future investments in resource exploration in the country's three northwestern territories. CanNor is responsible... Full story
For many undercapitalized junior mining companies, the past 12 months have been a sort of annus horribilis. As capital remains tight in the current economic climate, financing for speculative exploration projects continues to be hard to come by. While the mining industry overall is coping with the global shortage of capital, recent surges in gold prices are causing renewed activity (including mergers and acquisitions), helping that sector to buck the trend. Many mining companies were caught off guard by the economic events...
Decade Resources Inc.'s decision to option up to 80 percent of the Red Cliff property in the Stewart Mining Region last November is shaping up to be one of the best exploration plays in 2009 in northwestern British Columbia. The Vancouver, B.C.-based miner reported discovering a 28.4-meter interval of gold mineralization grading 7.3 grams per metric ton gold in September and followed up with more favorable drill results in October. The news has sparked a mini-staking rush with at least a half-dozen juniors scrambling in...
Thanks to one junior's report of encountering substantial gold mineralization this season near the old Red Cliff Mine in Northwest British Columbia's Stewart Mining District, a gaggle of excited juniors are grabbing up mineral claims and leases in the area. The small but growing stampede to Stewart surfaced in September after Decade Resources Inc. released assay results from the first few holes drilled in its 2009 exploration program. Vancouver, B.C.-based Decade reported intersecting 28.4 meters grading 7.3 grams per metric... Full story
Reclamation is a critical element of modern mining and mine planning. In Alaska, companies who wish to extract minerals from the earth must first present a plan on how they propose to return the disturbed land to a reusable state and post financial assurances that they will complete the job. Planning for what the site will look like and be used for begins before any mining is started. The information needed to design a successful reclamation plan is gathered from the...
Kinross Gold Corp. subsidiary, Fairbanks Gold Mining Inc., recently received accolades for its reclamation of Fish Creek, a stream draining the Fort Knox gold mine area. The Alaska Conservation Alliance and the Resource Development Council presented the Tileston Award, which celebrates resource developers whose success is measured both in their positive effect on Alaska jobs and economy as well as the state's environment, at a ceremony on Oct. 1. The reason the efforts by the...
Gold shone brightly through the financial tempest that caused base metal prices to plummet and sent stock markets tumbling during the past year. Neither the global financial meltdown of 2008, nor the market stabilization of 2009 has impeded the upward trend of gold prices as they have steadily climbed to new all-time highs. Gold has been running with the bulls since 2001 when the average ounce of the yellow metal sold for a mere US$271. The value of the precious metal has made...
After seven years of looking for gold to produce economically in the Yellowknife Gold Camp in Northwest Territories, Tyhee Development Corp. is closing in on a potentially lucrative payday. The Vancouver, B.C.-based junior has grown into the largest property holder in the historic gold camp with four properties encompassing 6,625 hectares, or 15,481 acres, in its Yellowknife Gold Project located 90 kilometers, or 56 miles, north of Yellowknife, NWT. In all, Tyhee controls more than 16,300 hectares, or 39,283 acres, in the...
For the past two years, mines in Alaska and Northwest Canada have encountered problems with unusually large volumes of stormwater runoff or snowmelt during spring breakup, but it's too soon to determine if it is a trend. This year, the Minto Mine just east of the Yukon River in west-central Yukon Territory, ran into troubles when excess water, over and above what could be contained in the mine's water storage pond, had to be diverted into its open pit during breakup in order to prevent a non-compliant discharge. Capstone... Full story
The gold resource at International Tower Hill Mines Ltd.'s Livengood property in Interior Alaska more than tripled to 12.5 million ounces in October from 4 million ounces going into 2009. The junior expects to add another million or so ounces when assay results from about 60 more drill holes are added to a new resource estimate due out by the end of the year. As Alaska's summer exploration season drew to a close, the Vancouver B.C.-based junior continued to discover potential...