The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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While many of its peers are struggling to find money to continue exploration at their promising mineral prospects and deposits, Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. has managed to forge ahead with hefty programs at its copper- and zinc-rich Palmer project in Southeast Alaska. This includes C$7.13 million invested in exploring the volcanogenic massive sulphide deposit in 2014. Last year's program, funded by Dowa Metals & Mining Co. Ltd., along with drilling completed at Palmer in...
PolarX Ltd. Nov. 12 reported strong copper-gold results from another hole drilled in an area about 850 meters east of the Zackly skarn deposit that is emerging as a potential open pit mine on the Australian company's Alaska Range project. This hole, ZX‐18021, cut 20.2 meters averaging 0.3 percent copper, 1.1 grams per metric ton gold and 5.3 g/t silver. While not the highest grade or thickest intercept encountered this year, its proximity to holes that meet that criteria a...
With a melting point of 5,756 degrees Fahrenheit and a heat-stable crystalline structure, rhenium is extremely resistant to both heat and wear. This durability makes it a vital element in superalloys used in jet and industrial gas turbine engines. "The high-temperature properties of rhenium allow turbine engines to be designed with finer tolerances and operate at temperatures higher than those of engines constructed with other materials," the United States Geological Survey...
While not the flashiest of the 35 minerals on the United States Geological Survey's critical list, barite plays an essential role in America's energy sector. Barite got its name from the Ancient Greek word for heavy, barús, and it is the high specific gravity that earned this mineral its name that makes it a critical mineral. Added to drill mud, a solution that serves multiple purposes in bore drilling, barite's weight helps maintain the integrity of the drill hole and...
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...
The summer field season is in full bloom across Alaska with programs stretching from the Brooks Range to southeastern Alaska, and from the Yukon border to southwestern Alaska. Exploration targets range from grassroots to mine-site, focused on commodities including gold, silver, lead, zinc, copper, cobalt and graphite. For Alaska's exploration industry, planned, announced and estimated expenditures are well over the $100 million mark for 2018. This expenditure level is well... Full story
One of the most common complaints I hear from companies and individuals working in the mineral industry in Alaska is our deplorable lack of modern, usable-scale digital geophysical and geologic maps. How bad is it? Consider this: the U.S. Geological Survey has estimated that less than 2 percent of Alaska has acceptable geophysical data coverage, and less than 20 percent has been geologically mapped at a scale useful to evaluate the state's mineral resources. Nobody will deny... Full story
Cobalt is an essential ingredient to optimizing the performance of batteries in the growing number of electric vehicles on global highways, yet essentially none of this battery metal is mined in the United States. With at least one advanced stage exploration project in Alaska looking into the potential of producing cobalt alongside its copper, America's 49th State could provide a domestic source for this critical metal. In its annual report, Mineral Commodity Summaries 2018,...
Seven days of near-continuous rain did nothing to dampen the mood at the recently concluded Cordilleran Roundup Convention in Vancouver. The event was buoyed by a realistic optimism we have not seen in over five years. This change from half-empty to half-full glasses is due to a number of things including strong commodities prices, increasing global demand for metals and current or looming supply shortfalls in many of the metals produced by this industry. The event was... Full story
Canada is the world's top destination for mining exploration spending, attracting more than 14 percent of global budgeted expenditures from explorers seeking to tap the country's vast mineral wealth. Yet in 2017, the three huge mineral-rich territories to the north, Nunavut, Northwest Territories and Yukon Territory, lured only about C$360 million, or less than one-fifth of the roughly $2.1 billion that junior and senior mining companies invested in mineral exploration and dep... Full story
More than three dozen explorers chased lucrative mineral deposits in Yukon Territory in 2017 and most of these junior and senior companies returned to the northern jurisdiction this year to take another crack at hitting the jackpot. Known for its rich and storied gold mining history as well as its rugged mountain peaks, Yukon is roughly 15 percent larger than California, covering more than 482,000 square kilometers (186,272 square miles). Split off from the Northwest... Full story
Thanks to its own rich mineral endowment, Australia is a juggernaut in the world of mining, especially across the Southern Hemisphere. Over the past couple of years, however, a growing number of Aussie mining companies are looking north to Alaska, another minerals-rich land way north of the Equator. At least four Aussie juniors – White Rock Minerals Ltd., PolarX Ltd., Nova Minerals Ltd. and Riversgold Ltd. – and three Australia-based metals producers – South32 Ltd., North... Full story
With the opening late last month of a public comment period for the environmental impact statement on the proposed Ambler Mining District Industrial Access Project, I am cautiously optimistic that this time, Sisyphus will get the boulder up the hill. As a lowly graduate student at the University of Alaska Fairbanks back in 1979, I helped a crew from Anaconda Minerals color township-size blocks on a huge paper map of the Brooks Range. At the time, Anaconda and numerous other...
Alaska is rich in mineral potential but poor in the critical infrastructure needed to fully realize this potential, that was the message Alaska Division of Geological and Geological Surveys Director Steve Masterman delivered to lawmakers on Capitol Hill. During a March 30 hearing, Masterman informed member of the U.S. Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources that Alaska could be the answer to the United States growing dependence on foreign suppliers for minerals....
In early November, the Alaska Miners Association will hold its annual convention in Anchorage. Unlike the past four or five years, the excitement surrounding the convention this year is palpable due to the steady increase in exploration, development and production activities in Alaska in 2017. Clear signs of the industry's long-awaited revival include the fact that 11 new project acquisitions have taken place in 2017, half of which involve companies that are newcomers to the...
As the first snows of the coming winter began to fall at high elevations across Alaska, results of summer programs likewise began to trickle in from far-flung areas of the state. Meanwhile, second- and third-quarter production data began to show up and mining industry analysts released a series of reports covering a wide range of industry-wide trends. For example, SNL Metals and Mining Research released information on how long it takes to move a new discovery to production.... Full story
White Rock Minerals Ltd. March 28 said it has significantly expanded its Red Mountain volcanogenic massive sulphide project in the Bonnifield District of central Alaska by adding 85 mining claims to the original 25 mining claims that made up the project. The company said VMS deposits typically occur in clusters and the known deposits already identified within the Red Mountain project - Dry Creek and West Tundra Flats - provide valuable information with which to target...
As in the recent past, the state of the world's exploration industry was summarized in SNL Metal & Mining's annual "Corporate Exploration Strategies" publication, released at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention in Toronto earlier this month. Not surprisingly, it painted a grim picture of 2015, the worst year for exploration since 2009. The statistics indicate that worldwide exploration expenditures declined a further 19 percent to $9.2 billion...
Although there is plenty of Alaska mining industry news this month, the big dog in the pen is the dramatic and unexpected run-up in the price of gold, which moved from a low of $1,078 per ounce to a high of $1,246/oz., most of which occurred after Feb. 1. Although profit-taking and other factors have caused the price to back off a bit, the move was both dramatic and unexpected. As you might guess, the ether is full of talking heads telling us why it went up, why it either won'... Full story
In 2015, junior exploration companies working in Yukon continued to weather the storm of depressed metal prices and cautious markets. Despite the lack of market enthusiasm, exploration spending maintained historically high levels at C$100 million; although one project, the Selwyn-Chihong Selwyn lead-zinc project in eastern Yukon, accounted for 40 percent of the spending. More than 80 exploration programs were undertaken in the territory, ranging from small grassroots projects to multimillion-dollar programs on advanced...
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...
The world's mining industry has once again transmogrified itself in the face of changing global metals markets and investor expectations. In a recent Reuters report, several companies, including Newmont Mining Corp., Goldcorp Inc. and Yamana Gold Inc., were singled out as having taken steps to bring smaller, leaner, lower output projects into production to avoid the cost over-runs which have plagued the large multibillion-dollar projects in recent years. The same large mine... Full story
While many of its peers are struggling to find money to continue exploration at their promising mineral prospects and deposits, Constantine Metal Resources Ltd. has managed to forge ahead with hefty programs at its copper- and zinc-rich Palmer project in Southeast Alaska. This includes C$7.13 million invested in exploring the volcanogenic massive sulphide deposit in 2014. Last year's program, funded by Dowa Metals & Mining Co. Ltd., along with drilling completed at Palmer in...
The state of the world's exploration industry was recently summarized in SNL Metal & Mining's annual "World Exploration Trends" publication, released at the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada convention in Toronto. Not surprisingly, it painted a grim picture of 2014, a year we are all glad to have behind us. The statistics indicate that worldwide exploration expenditures declined a further 26 percent to $11.4 billion, compared with $15.2 billion in 2013 and... Full story
Several events have dramatically affected Alaska's mining industry in recent weeks, underscoring critical links between Alaska and the global economy. First came bad news for newly-elected Gov. Bill Walker: The plunge in world oil prices pushed Alaska's coming-year budget projections about $3.5 billion into the red. The ripple effect of this was a slashing of everything not required and one of the cuts, temporarily at least, was state funding of the Ambler District Road.... Full story
