The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 1 - 25 of 111
Still overshadowed by lithium but no less significant, cobalt falls within a unique category as a critical mineral not only for its properties but also for its controversial supply. As a fundamental component necessary for nickel-cobalt-manganese (NMC) lithium-ion batteries, cobalt warranted its place as a critical mineral vital to the zero-carbon transition due to the necessity of those batteries to power a clean, emission-free future. Its critical uses, however, go far... Full story
PhotonAssay tech offers a modern, faster alternative to fire assaying for gold analysis. Assays are the very crux of mineral exploration – timely results returned from the lab help guide the search for orebodies and let investors know that the dollars being poured into drilling and sampling is money well spent. With assay lab turnaround times in a post-COVID world being measured in months instead of weeks, mineral exploration geologists are without an important tool for v...
Noted Alaskan prospector Rudy Vetter once told me, "At my age, I don't even buy green bananas anymore." I heard this sage remark during a mineral property lease negotiation after I offered Mr. Vetter a production royalty, rather than the cold, hard cash he wanted. Mr. Vetter was in his 80s at the time and clearly knew his own investment risk timeline. He also clearly knew that Alaskan mines require a number of years to move from discovery to production. So not surprisingly,... Full story
With the recently completed feasibility study showing an economically robust project, Kinross Gold Corp. has officially decided to move forward with developing a mine at the Manh Choh gold-silver project near the Village of Tetlin, Alaska. "At Manh Choh in Alaska, we completed a feasibility study ahead of schedule, and are proceeding with a project that we expect will add approximately 640,000 lower-cost gold ounces to our production profile over its life of mine in one of...
I know, I know, I promised to shut up and go away a long time ago. But I lied, so sue me! Just be glad I didn't title this ramble "Is it time for Format-C?" after all, most of the young-uns would have to Google that term to see what in tarnation it meant! And even then, many would ask "what is a hard drive?" But I digress, which by the way, has a Latin derivation that means "step away," which I supposedly did some time ago (see above). Ironic, eh? But I am digressing about... Full story
With an earlier than expected feasibility study on its way for Manh Choh, drilling started at Lucky Shot, and the addition of geologist Curt Freeman to its board of directors, Contango ORE Inc. has a lot to look forward to as 2022 progresses. Freeman's addition to the Contango ORE board coincides with the departure of Joseph Greenberg, an oil and gas executive that has been a director of CORE since it was spun out of Texas-based Contango Oil and into a public company in 2010....
Contango ORE Inc. April 9 announced that it has entered into a binding agreement to raise US$20 million through the issuance of debenture, an unsecured loan that can be converted into shares, to fund its commitments at the Manh Choh gold project in eastern Alaska and for exploration and development on its Lucky Shot gold mine properties in the Southcentral region of the state. "With strong fundamentals in the gold market, management is excited to advance our portfolio of...
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... Full story
Kinross Gold Corp.'s strategy to leverage the underutilized 14-million-metric-ton-per-year mill and enormous tailings storage capacity at its Fort Knox gold mine to process higher-grade ore from projects within a roughly 300-mile radius of the Interior Alaska operation is a gamechanger for smaller high-grade gold projects and how the global mining company approaches exploration in the state. Prior to the Kinross Alaska strategy, Fort Knox mill production was winding down.... Full story
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.... Full story
New Age Metals Inc. Sept. 20 reported that Aurora Geosciences Ltd. is carrying out mapping and sampling at the Bernard Mountain and Sheep Hill areas of New Age's Genesis platinum group metal-nickel-copper project in Southcentral Alaska. Lying alongside the Richardson Highway about 75 highway miles north of the deep-water port city of Valdez, Genesis is an under-explored palladium-platinum-nickel-copper property with great infrastructure. Previous sampling at Sheep Hill, one... Full story
Peak Gold LLC, a joint venture between Kinross Gold Corp. (70%) and Contango ORE Inc. (30%), have agreed to invest US$18 million during 2021 to carry out the work needed to complete a feasibility level study for establishing a mine at Peak Gold project in eastern Alaska. Toward a new strategy of acquiring high-grade gold from projects across Alaska to provide feedstock for the mill at its Fort Knox Mine about 25 miles north of Fairbanks, Kinross acquired a 70% JV interest in... Full story
In the few months since taking the helm at Contango ORE Inc., Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse has steered this unconventional mineral exploration company toward being the 30% owner of Alaska's next million-ounce gold producing mine. This coming mine at Contango ORE's Peak Gold deposit quickly surpassed Donlin Gold, Livengood, and other top contenders for Alaska's next large gold operation when Kinross Gold Corp. acquired a 70% interest in the high-grade gold project and unveiled a... Full story
A look at Kinross Gold Corp.'s newly optimized strategy for Fort Knox indicates that the iconic mine about 20 miles north of Fairbanks, Alaska will be producing upwards of 400,000 ounces of gold per year for most of the coming decade. The global gold producer introduced its new plans for Fort Knox during an Oct. 20 presentation that provided a more in-depth look into its plan to increase companywide gold output by 500,000 oz/year by 2023. This production growth strategy,... Full story
Tectonic Metals Inc. June 25 announced that it has added a new gold property in the Goodpaster Mining District and acquired a dataset that will assist the company's exploration across this gold-rich region of Alaska's Interior. The new property, known as Maple Leaf, is roughly nine miles (15 kilometers) northeast of Tectonic's Tibbs project and about 31 miles (50 kilometers) east of Northern Star Resources Ltd.'s Pogo gold mine. The Tectonic team staked this 11,840-acre...
Contango ORE Inc. May 6 announced that management of the Peak Gold joint venture – Contango ORE (60%) and Royal Gold Inc. (40%) – has decided to postpone exploration on the Tetlin gold project in eastern Alaska in order to protect the health of workers and stakeholder during the COVID-19 outbreak. "These are certainly difficult times for everyone, and our primary concern is to ensure that our employees, contractors and community members remain safe and healthy," said Con... Full story
Avalon Advanced Materials Inc. Feb. 6 reported that headway is being made at its Will Scarlett rare earth elements recovery project in Illinois and Nechalacho REE Mine project in Northwest Territories. Avalon said the December agreement by Canada and the United States to co-operate on critical minerals supply chain development, particularly rare earths, has resulted in new government initiatives in both countries to support the creation of these supply chains. The critical...
North of 60 Mining News is proud to introduce 20 questions for 2020. Over the course of this series, Mining News will interview mining and political leaders from Alaska, British Columbia, Northwest Territories, Nunavut and Yukon. Each interview will include 20 questions on mining, markets and doing business across Alaska and Canada's North. For the inaugural 20 questions for 2020, Mining News talks with Contango ORE Inc. CEO Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, a longtime mining executive... Full story
Investors looking for mineral exploration companies boasting a team with a proven track record and gold properties in safe and mineral-rich jurisdictions have a new choice with the Tectonic Metals Inc. symbol, TECT, listed on the TSX Venture Exchange at the opening of trading on Nov. 18. While Tectonic may be the newest mineral explorer on the TSX Venture Exchange, the company has been acquiring and assessing gold properties in Alaska for the past two years as a privately...
An abnormally long fall has allowed the Alaska mining industry to extend seasonal work well into mid-October, creating a lot of new information about project work conducted around the state. Exploration efforts, in particular, benefitted from this additional field time. Based on information available to date, 2019 exploration expenditures are expected to be in the $135-140 million range, well ahead of the $120-125 million exploration spending tracked for 2018. In addition,...
New Age Metals Inc. Oct. 8 reported that the 2019 Genesis exploration program has significantly expanded the platinum group element-nickel-copper exploration targets on this project in Southcentral Alaska. "We are pleased to announce that this summer's exploration efforts have doubled the strike length of prospective mineralization at our road accessible Genesis PGE-nickel-copper project in Alaska," said New Age Metals Chairman and CEO Harry Barr. Situated along the...
If you have watched the metals markets over the last month, you know why Alaska's mineral industry has surged, stalled, swerved, swooped, slowed, shelved and stuttered, sometimes all at the same time! Gold has gone above US$1,500 per ounce; copper pundits are predicting an increasingly dour future; zinc markets are looking to dive below $1.00 per pound; tin markets have marched strongly upward due to supply disruptions; and silver bulls are calling for annual worldwide... Full story
While mining activity remained strong in the Northwest Territories in 2019, industry and government officials alike worried that the robust sector, driven largely by production at three diamond mines, has entered a prolonged downward slide. The near-term economic outlook for the territory, which covers 1.3 million square kilometers in Canada's central Arctic region, continues to be bleak as its diamond mines that have now passed peak production and replacement projects are in... Full story
Building upon the strong economics of developing a mine at the high-grade Peak Gold project, joint venture partners Contango ORE Inc. (60 percent) and Royal Gold Inc. (40 percent) are investing US$6.9 million on exploring some of the intriguing outlying targets across this highway-accessible property in eastern Alaska. Discovered by Contango ORE in 2009, Peak Gold (sometimes referred to as Tetlin) hosts two skarn deposits – Main Peak and North Peak – on an underexplored proper... Full story
Emerging on Alaska's exploration scene in 2018, Tectonic Metals Inc. is a new junior mining company that applies a business-first strategy to managing the risks inherent to advancing grassroots gold discoveries to a multi-million-ounce gold reserve that global mining companies want to buy and the local people want to see developed into a mine. "Junior mining is 99 percent risk, the failure rate is huge, yet nobody has any protocols in place for managing the risks," Tectonic... Full story
