The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Lack of domestic critical mineral supplies weakens US clean energy ambitions The White House and lawmakers on Capitol Hill are becoming increasingly aware that a lack of secure supplies of critical minerals and metals may be the kryptonite that weakens America's economy, national security, and clean energy ambitions. "The more we dive into this topic of critical minerals, the more I'm certain Superman isn't the only one who can be brought to his knees by rare minerals,"...
Tesla and other automakers clamor for nickel suppliers with low CO2 footprint Tesla CEO Elon Musk's 2020 appeal to "please mine more nickel" served as a rallying cry for mining companies with projects positioned to deliver this critical battery metal into global markets. Going into 2022, however, the electric vehicle trailblazer's words were echoing in nearly empty warehouses as the lithium-ion batteries that power EVs are demanding more nickel than global miners can supply....
Russia's invasion of Ukraine, America's tenuous relationship with China, and global competition for the enormous volume of mined materials needed to build the envisioned clean energy future has elevated the urgency for the United States to bolster domestic critical mineral supply chains. For many, these geopolitical and economic realities have elevated the development of Alaska's incredible critical mineral resources to a national imperative. The urgency of this matter is why... Full story
The White House's bold clean energy ambitions, which are intricately linked to the availability of reliable supplies of the metals needed to build electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure, are being slowed by a tug-o-war between departments within the Biden administration. While the departments of Commerce, Defense, and Energy are forging ahead with programs and investments aimed at ensuring America has the minerals and metals needed to support the clean energy...
Russia and China's control of global supplies worry DC lawmakers From its uses in flame retardants that have saved countless American lives to being an important ingredient in batteries poised to be the answer to the challenge of storing intermittent renewable energy, few metals are more critical to the national security and economic wellbeing of the United States than antimony. Described as a metalloid, which means it falls somewhere between metals such as zinc and solid...
American West Metals Ltd. Sept. 8 reported additional high-grade assay results from shallow drilling at the Storm Copper project on Somerset Island in northern Nunavut. American West's primary goal at Storm is to build a high-grade copper resource that can be upgraded to direct shipping ore with simple and low-cost ore sorting technology. Toward this objective, the Australia-based company launched its inaugural drill program at Storm with holes testing the 2750N zone, where...
American West encouraged about direct shipping copper ore American West Metals Ltd. Sept. 1 announced spectacular copper grades from the first assays of its 2022 drill program at the Storm Copper project in Nunavut. Since optioning Storm from Aston Bay Holdings Ltd. last year, American West has been pursuing the idea of upgrading shallow high-grade copper mineralization identified in several zones on this northern Canada project to direct shipping ore with simple and low-cost...
Alaska is known to be a trove of the minerals and metals critical to every segment of the American economy. This critical mineral richness is despite the fact that Alaska is a vast state that remains largely underexplored. To help gain a better understanding of the Last Frontier State's potential to provide domestic supplies of the 50 critical minerals, the U.S. Geological Survey has allotted $6.75 million to explore specific regions of the state for 29 critical minerals. The...
"Grade is king" is an adage that guides mineral exploration and mining. The premise behind this basic axiom of the mining business is the less ore that needs to be mined and processed per ounce of precious metals, pound of base metals, kilogram of critical minerals, or carat of gemstones produced, the more profitable an operation will be. The kingliest of orebodies would be of such high grade that a mining company would simply need to dig up the ore, crush it, and then ship it...
American West Metals Ltd. Aug. 23 announced that its drilling to test deep electromagnetic anomalies at Storm cut 68.8 meters of strong copper mineralization on this high-grade project on Somerset Island in the northern reaches of Nunavut, Canada. "This is a game changing discovery at the Storm Copper Project," said American West Metals Managing Director Dave O'Neill. "Exploration drilling has intersected stratiform copper sulphide mineralisation at depth which supports our ge...
American West Metals Ltd. Aug. 8 reported that strong copper mineralization has been observed in the core from four additional holes drilled at the Storm Copper project on Somerset Island in the northern reaches of Nunavut, Canada. American West optioned Storm and the neighboring Seal Zinc project from Aston Bay Holdings Ltd. early last year. The Australia-based mineral exploration company launched a drill program earlier this year focused on zones of near-surface, high-grade...
Aston Bay Holdings Ltd. shares rocketed 33% on Monday on the news of visual confirmation of strong copper mineralization encountered in the first two holes American West Metals Ltd. drilled this year at Aston's high-grade Storm Copper Project on Somerset Island, Nunavut. Australia-based American West, which optioned Storm and the neighboring Seal Zinc project from Aston Bay early last year, recently launched its first drill program at Storm. The primary objective of this drill...
American West Metals Ltd. June 22 announced plans for its 2022 exploration program at the high-grade Storm Copper and Seal Zinc projects on Somerset Island, Nunavut. Australia-based American West, which optioned Storm and Seal from Aston Bay Holdings Ltd. early last year, plans to launch a major diamond drill program in July to test high-grade copper targets at Storm. One of the primary targets will be to define areas of high-grade copper mineralization with the potential to...
American West Metals Ltd., a junior led by two mining industry veterans from Australia, has returned to the Arctic this year for a second field season in pursuit of rich deposits at the Storm Copper project on Somerset Island in northeastern Nunavut. Storm hosts a 120-kilometer (75 miles) mineralized trend within an extensive 4,145-square-kilometer (1,600 square miles) land package that covers multiple copper and zinc geochemical anomalies along strike. In March 2021,...
May 10, 2022, celebrates the ninth annual Alaska Mining Day. Established in 2013, Alaska Mining Day was created through legislation sponsored by Sen. Cathy Giessel, R-Anchorage, "to recognize and honor the intrepid individuals and industry that played an enormous role in settling and developing the territory and the state that continue to contribute to the economy of the state." Why May 10? On this day in 1872, the General Mining Act of the United States was approved – w... Full story
Fortune Minerals Ltd. April 20 reported that its 2021 drilling cut strong cobalt-gold-bismuth mineralization in the Peanut Lake zone on its Nico project in Canada's Northwest Territories. Nico hosts 33.1 million metric tons of proven and probable reserves averaging 0.11% (82 million pounds) cobalt, 0.14% (110 million lb) bismuth, 0.04% (27 million lb) copper, and 1.03 grams per metric ton (1.1 million ounces) gold. Peanut Lake is a strong magnetic anomaly about 2,000 meters...
While hailing President Joe Biden's use of the Defense Production Act to bolster domestic production of critical lithium-ion battery minerals and metals as good news for the Far North State's mining sector, Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy says this move contradicts actions taken by the administration to reevaluate a road to the Ambler Mining District. "I fully support the President making the development of these minerals a priority in our nation's interest. But the Biden...
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... Full story
Engage. Connect. Evolve. – this theme of AME Roundup 2022 is the perfect reflection of a mineral exploration sector that is adapting to a world in which Zoom meetings and webinars must often replace boardroom meetings and live conferences as a means of engaging investors, shareholders, and stakeholders. "As society recovers and evolves from the disruption caused by the global pandemic, so does our industry," said AME President and CEO Kendra Johnston. "At AME Roundup, you w...
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... Full story
"During the two decades preceding and those following World War I, when the United States produced more than half the world's copper, the mines at Kennecott, Alaska were among the nation's largest, and contained the last of the great high grade copper ore deposits discovered in the American West. Just as mining technology was gearing up to exploit the low-grade ores that remained in the West, the Kennecott mines exposed an ore deposit of quality unequaled anywhere in the... Full story
Home of the famed golden beaches of Nome that has captured the imagination of millions over the past 120 years, the Bering Straits Native Corporation (BSNC) region covers the Seward Peninsula and coastal lands arcing around the eastern and southern coast of the Norton Sound in the far western reaches of Alaska. While this region may be 300 miles beyond North America's highway system, it has served as a crossroads for human activity for at least 15 millennia and will continue... Full story
The Bristol Bay region is home to two resources that beyond a doubt earn the moniker "world-class" – an annual run of sockeye salmon that is second to none and Pebble, the largest undeveloped copper and gold deposits known to exist on Earth. These world-renowned resources, however, have stirred up controversy in this Oklahoma-sized region of Southwest Alaska, as many of the roughly 7,400 Bristol Bay residents are concerned that mining the copper, gold, molybdenum, rhenium, and... Full story
Aston Bay Holdings Ltd. Dec. 13 announced that the preliminary results of recent ground electromagnetic geophysical surveys identified numerous conductive anomalies across its high-grade Storm Copper project on Somerset Island, Nunavut. "The initial results of the 2021 geophysical surveys demonstrate the efficacy of ground EM as an exploration tool at Storm, and further reinforce our belief that undiscovered, blind zones of high-grade copper mineralization exist in...
A recent agreement between Vital Metals Ltd. and Ucore Rare Metals Inc. marks a major milestone in establishing a complete North American rare earths supply chain with links in Northwest Territories, Saskatchewan, and Alaska. Vital has already established Canada's only rare earths mine at its Nechalacho project in Northwest Territories and is building a processing facility in Saskatchewan to upgrade the high-grade ore into a midstream carbonated product with a mix of rare...
