The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Roughly 74 percent of U.S. Bureau of Land Management-administered lands in Alaska's Eastern Interior region will be off limits to mining, according to the preferred resource management plan published July 30 by the federal land manager. BLM is responsible for the management of 6.5 million acres in the federal government's Eastern Interior planning area, a roughly 30-million-acre, triangle-shaped expanse of eastern Alaska that stretches from the Yukon Territory border to a...
International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. has taken another step along the road to engineering the ideal mine for its Livengood gold project located some 70 road miles northeast of Fairbanks, Alaska. In 2013, the company published a feasibility study outlining a 100,000-metric-tons-per-day operation that would average 577,600 ounces of gold annually, or 8.1 million oz. over an estimated 14-year mine life. The project, however, was estimated to cost about US$2.8 billion to develop...
Reuters recently reported that the 10 largest gold-producing companies worldwide have steadily increased their near-mine exploration budgets over the past few years to 56 percent in 2015 from 45 percent in 2013. They also reduced their higher-risk greenfields exploration budgets to 21 percent from 25 percent in the same time period. This retrenchment of exploration by the larger producers is occurring, while global gold output is declining with an expected reduction of 9...
It is high summer in Alaska and the mining industry is busy breaking rocks, drilling holes, collecting baseline data, making upgrades to mine facilities and producing metal and coal across the state. The effects of declining prices for metals are starting to be felt at the operating metal mines and except for a few projects, the exploration sector continues to wallow in the doldrums, which have plagued the industry since 2013. That said, the tire-kicking of earlier this...
After raising C$7.3 million in May, Freegold Ventures Ltd. returned to work at its Shorty Creek and Golden Summit projects in Interior Alaska. The company kicked off drilling at Shorty Creek, a 26,000-acre porphyry copper-gold project located near Livengood, in July. Since securing a long-term lease with Fairbanks-based Gold Range Ltd. in 2014, Freegold has carried out systematic geophysics and soil sampling over two target areas - Hill 1835 and Hill 1710. Drilling in 2015 further demonstrated the copper-gold potential at...
The State of Alaska’s mining industry continues to be a bright spot for Alaska’s economy during difficult fiscal times. Thanks to our world-class natural resource endowment, investors continue to be interested in new exploration and development opportunities in Alaska, and our large mines are still running strong. Recently, our new Natural Resources Commissioner, Andy Mack, had the opportunity to visit the Fort Knox mine. This visit was a great opportunity for Commissioner Mack to become familiar with the operations of a lar...
Mineral exploration spending in Alaska hit an apex of US$365 million in 2011, but as venture capital for mining explorers dried these expenditures plummeted 78 percent to US$80 million in 2015. However, rising gold prices and a loosening of venture capital in 2016 seems to have marked an end to a painfully long bear market for mining explorers in Alaska. “After taking head shots for the past four years, the industry suddenly came to life over the past month, with new budgets,...
The owners of Alaska’s five large metal mines – Sumitomo Metal Mining Pogo, Hecla Mining Company, Kinross Gold Corp, Teck Resources Ltd. and Coeur Mining Inc. – accounted for nearly half the US$92 million of exploration spending in the state during 2014 and similar investments by these companies is providing solid footing for the Far North state’s mineral exploration sector this year. Avalon Development President Curt Freeman said he is seeing more mining majors shopping for d...
Freegold Ventures Ltd. is testing the idea that a large and previously unrecognized porphyry deposit could lie beneath its Shorty Creek property in the Livengood Mining District of Interior Alaska. Earlier this month, the exploration company raised C$1.35 million to fund a 3,000- meter drill program that could provide definitive evidence that various zones of copper, gold and molybdenum found across the 26,000-acre Shorty Creek land package are actually pieces of one porphyry...
Freegold Ventures Ltd. July 6 said drilling is about to begin at its Shorty Creek copper-gold project near Livengood, Alaska. The company acquired this project through a long-term lease with Fairbanks-based Gold Range Ltd. Freegold has carried out ground geophysics and soil sampling over the two target areas. This, in conjunction with compiling previous work and using State of Alaska airborne geophysical data, resulted in the identification of two significant target areas - Hill 1835 and Hill 1710. Drilling in 2015 indicates...
Earlier in November, the Alaska Miners Association held its annual convention and trade show in Anchorage and as always, the well-attended convention overlapped with election Tuesday. While the lead up to, and results of, the national and state elections were hot topics throughout the week, one comment I heard from a colleague on the morning after the elections distilled the feelings of a lot of people at the conference. When asked what he thought of the election results, he...
With metal prices stabilizing, physical stockpiles dwindling and demand again on the rise, things are beginning to look up for the beleagered mining industry. Gold's performance over the past several months is a case in point. The World Gold Council reported that during the first quarter, buying of exchange-traded gold funds rose to its highest level since early 2009, wiping out the deep sell-offs of 2014 and 2015 for this instrument. Uncertainties in the fiscal stability of...
As a follow-up to last month's realization that once again "the game is afoot" in the mining industry, major gold producer Goldcorp recently presented some arresting statistics at the Bank of America Merrill Lynch Global Metals, Mining and Steel Conference. The presentation showed gold discovery and production information for the global mining industry that indicated that peak gold discovery occurred in 1995, this despite three periods between 1995 and 2015 when exploration...
International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. Dec. 15 said it has arranged a US$22 million non-brokered private placement financing. The offering will consist of 45,833,334 company shares, or roughly 39.4 percent of the 116.4 million shares currently issued and outstanding, at US48 cents per share. Tower Hill intends to use the net proceeds of the private placement to pay a roughly US$14.8 million payment due in January for the acquisition of certain mining claims and related rights in the vicinity of the company's Livengood property;...
International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. Dec. 28 closed a US$22 million financing that involved the issuance of 45.83 million shares at US48 cents each. As a result of the financing, Paulson & Co. Inc., Tocqueville Asset Management, L.P. and AngloGold Ashanti (U.S.A.) Exploration Inc. own 34.2 percent, 19.7 percent and 9.5 percent of International Tower Hill Mines shares, respectively. Tower Hill intends to use the net proceeds from the financing to make a roughly US$14.7 million final payment due in January on certain claims...
Despite protests by Alaska miners and government, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has pushed ahead with a management plan that will place roughly 74 percent of BLM-administered lands in Alaska’s Eastern Interior region off limits to mining for decades to come. BLM is responsible for the management of 6.5 million acres in the federal government’s Eastern Interior planning area, a roughly 30-million-acre, triangle-shaped expanse of eastern Alaska that stretches from the Yuk...
The year just past was many things for the mining industry, but one of the bright spots came from the Mine Safety and Health Administration, an agency not known for awarding happy faces or gold stars. In 2016, the mining industry experienced only 25 deaths in U.S. mines, the lowest level ever recorded. This, despite the industry having more than 330,000 miners working in 13,000 mines across the country. The leading cause of death in both coal and metal/nonmetal mines was...
As the Alaska mining industry prepares for and kicks off exploration, development and production activities for 2017, the question on everyone’s lips at the recent Cordilleran Roundup mining convention in Vancouver, B. C., was the same: “Have we seen the bottom of this down cycle?” While signs of life were seen for short periods during the 2008 to 2015 period, the reality was an overall downward spiral of commodities prices and global demand. However, in a recent editi...
International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. Feb. 1 said it has paid the U$14.7 million payment due on certain claims associated with its Livengood gold project in Interior Alaska. Following the completion of the land payment, Tower Hill had US$7.5 million in cash, most of which the company will use to carry out a US$6.3 million work program focused largely on improving the economics of developing a mine at Livengood. In September, Tower Hill released results of an initial phase of...
Earlier this month, the Alaska Miners Association held its annual convention in Anchorage amid plummeting metals prices and an over-all atmosphere of economic uncertainty now stretching into its fourth year. Individuals from around North America and beyond were present and conversations outside of the technical sessions seemed to gravitate toward how best to climb out of the doldrums that seem to grip the mining industry on a global scale. One individual was heard to say that...
FVL: TSX President and CEO: Kristina Walcott VP, Exploration and Development: Alvin Jackson In recent years, Freegold Ventures Ltd. has focused its exploration primarily on Golden Summit, a 6-million-ounce bulk-tonnage gold project located roughly 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of Fairbanks and four miles (seven kilometers) from Kinross Gold Corp.'s Fort Knox Mine. In 2015, the company turned its attention to Shorty Creek, a copper-gold project in the Livengood region of Interior Alaska. For at least three decades,...
ITH: TSX / THM: NYSE-A Chairman: Stephen Lang President and CEO: Tom Irwin Chief Operating Officer: Karl Hanneman International Tower Hill Mines Ltd. plans to invest roughly US$10 million to support a 2015 work program that includes metallurgical, field and engineering work aimed at optimizing the mine plan for its 20-million-ounce Livengood gold project in Interior Alaska. Lying along the Elliot Highway about 70 miles northwest of Fairbanks, the Money Knob deposit at Livengood encompasses 15.7 million oz of gold in 802...
MRO: TSX.V President and CEO: Gregory Beischer Chief Exploration Officer: Philip St. George Through careful execution of the project generator model, Millrock Resources Inc. has built a portfolio of grassroots mineral prospects in Alaska, New Mexico and Mexico. In finding joint venture partners to help fund exploration, the project generator model lessens Millrock's need to raise money in tight equity markets, minimizes the risks involved with grassroots exploration and exposes shareholders to a larger amount of exploration e...
Mining is a notoriously cyclical business that generally ebbs and flows with the overall state of the global economy, and these cycles are amplified for junior mining companies charged with scouring the globe for the next generation of mines. Following a bull market that reached a crescendo at the end of 2010, the current bear market has been especially deep and painful for even seasoned mining sector veterans. "This has been a particularly treacherous bear market," longtime...
American billionaires John Paulson, Seth Klarman and Thomas Kaplan have taken a keen interest in Alaska's next generation of gold and copper mines. While it is natural for hedge fund managers such as Paulson and Klarman, and resource investors such as Kaplan, to hold mining stocks in their portfolios, this trio holds major positions in three of the top Alaska-focused mineral exploration and development companies. In fact, the companies founded and managed by these...
