The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 76 - 100 of 107
Access to critical minerals and metals is vital to America's military strength and economic health. As we move further forward into the technology age, we need a range of non-fuel minerals - from antimony to zinc - for defense technologies that protect the homeland and project American power abroad. These same minerals and metals underpin our manufacturing sector too, and the cost of raw materials impacts everything from productivity and innovation to economic growth and job creation. Without smarter policies that increase...
As the first cooler days and termination dust start appearing across Alaska, seasonal exploration activities are winding down and operating mines are preparing for another winter. To be sure, less money was spent on fewer projects by the mineral industry exploring and developing Alaska's mineral resources in 2012 versus 2011. More advanced-stage projects that added ounces or pounds to their resource base had a better go of it than early-stage exploration projects which have...
In a long overdue step to bring Alaska into the 21st Century, state and federal agencies met in late June to discuss collaborative funding strategies for Alaska's Statewide Digital Mapping Initiative, an enterprise designed to create Alaska's first high-quality digital topographic map. The roundtable was convened by Alaska Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell and the Assistant Secretary for Water and Science, U.S. Department of Interior. Alaska remains the only state in the United States...
David Mate, chief geologist for the Canada Nunavut Geoscience Office, is part of a team of scientists venturing this field season into relatively unknown territory. Mate refers to the Hall Peninsula where he will be working this summer as "white space" on modern geological maps. "This is very exciting for a geologist. It's also interesting because it's in my backyard," Mate told Mining News April 22. Nunavut is Canada's northernmost and least-explored territory. About 1 ½ times the size of Alaska it is generally regarded as...
Whether it is multimillion-ounce gold discoveries, copper deposits that measure in the billions of pounds or massive ore-bodies of 20 percent zinc, Alaska is renowned for its mammoth deposits. The prospect of finding another Donlin, Pebble or Red Dog continues to draw explorers to this vast and underexplored corner of the United States. In the Survey of Mining Companies: 2010/2011, conducted by the Fraser Institute, top executives from 494 mining and mineral exploration...
Throughout the 2011 field season, explorers pushed the envelope in Yukon Territory, scrambling to target and assess rapidly increasing numbers of deposits of gold, silver and base metals mineralization being identified as the exploration rush that overtook the region in 2009 stretched into its third consecutive year. With gold prices climbing to new highs and a stable investment climate, the lure of the Yukon attracted miners and investors in numbers not seen in a century. "Both Yukon and Nunavut are entering a period of sust...
Every year about this time, I notice new ways to gauge just how busy the Alaska mining industry is. This year, it is the silence. Not the amazing silence of a mountaintop in the Alaska Range but the virtual and literal silence being practiced by the people who make up the industry. In an age where communications options are abundant and the opportunity to be "connected" is a 24-7 reality, people in the Alaska mining industry go silent in the depths of summer, primarily...
The last month has seen a massive transition in Alaska from planning to execution, from getting ready to go to the field to boots on the outcrop and drills in the ground. Each year the hustle and bustle of the Alaska summer exploration season subsumes virtually everything else (except the Stanley Cup) as field programs launch around the state. This year has been no different with base metal programs in the Brooks Range, gold programs in Interior Alaska and the Seward...
FVL: TSX-V President and CEO: Kristina Walcott Chief Financial Officer: Gordon Steblin Vice President, Exploration: Michael Gross Weighed down with about C$11 million in debt in mid-2009, it appeared Freegold Ventures Ltd. would become another casualty of the market collapse. Stepping into the leadership role, former Freegold Vice President of Corporate Development Kristina Walcott leveraged the value of the company's four gold assets in Alaska and Idaho. Over the course of a few short months, the new president and CEO...
While intrepid juniors are busy pursuing another season of uranium exploration in Nunavut, the Government of Nunavut, in partnership with the federal government through the Canada-Nunavut Geoscience Office are participating in a major collaboration between government, industry and academia in hopes of achieving similar objectives - gaining a better understanding of the region's prospectivity for the radioactive mineral. "In Nunavut much of this geology is poorly understood," says Peter Taptuna, Nunavut's Minister of Economic...
As we contemplate manned space flights to Mars, it may be hard to believe that there are still vast areas of the earth's surface that we have yet to explore. Believe it. The world's knowledge of the geology of Canada's Far North is very limited. To fill this knowledge gap, Canada's federal government embarked in 2008 on an aggressive C$100 million, five-year geological mapping program known as Geo-mapping for Energy and Minerals, or GEM, that at its halfway mark this summer is beginning to yield significant dividends in the...
No discussion of opening Canada's Far North to mineral resource development could get far without the focus turning to Nunavut, the nation's newest and least-explored territory. At one-fifth the size of Canada, Nunavut contains 1,994,000 million square kilometers, or 770,000 square miles, (nearly three times the size of Texas). Much of the territory is underlain by Archean-aged rocks similar to those found in the most productive geology in Ontario, Quebec, South Africa, Australia, and Brazil. But much of this geology is...
Left leaderless and weighed down with about C$11 million in debt in mid-2009, it appeared Freegold Ventures Ltd. would become another casualty of the market collapse of 2008. Many believe this surely would have been the case if not for the tenacity of Kristina Walcott, then the company's vice president of corporate development. Stepping into the leadership role at Freegold, Walcott leveraged the value of the company's four gold assets in Alaska and Idaho. Over the course of a...
Among juniors actively working to attract majors to invest in mineral exploration projects scattered across Canada's Far North, one Vancouver, B.C.-based company leaped to the front of the pack recently in Nunavut Territory. Commander Resources Inc. is exploring the Baffin Island Gold Project, a district-scale project with multimillion-ounce potential covering an entire greenstone belt about 175 kilometers, or 105 miles, in length east to west. Baffin is one of at least four giant gold deposits currently being explored in...
Romios Gold Resources Inc. Nov. 11 reported the discovery of significant copper, gold and silver mineralization on its Dirk Property located about 37 kilometers, or 24 miles, southeast of NovaGold Resources Inc.-Teck Resources Ltd.'s giant Galore Creek deposit and 7 kilometers, or 4 miles, northwest of Romios' Newmont Lake Property in northwestern British Columbia. Only two zones, Dirk and Telena, of a number of mineralized zones indentified on the newly discovered Dirk property have been sampled to date. A total of 15...
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...
I have been reading the tea leaves and think there is an extremely important sequence of events unfolding that represents a golden opportunity for Alaska. Please bear with me as I try to wade through the logic of this and you can tell me what you think. About two months ago, Brent Cook, a well-known mining analyst and owner of Exploration Insights, published a rather illuminating article entitled "Where Have All the Gold Mines Gone?" The upshot of his article was that most...
If it were entirely up to Copper Ridge Explorations Inc., the project generator would explore most of its mineral properties in Yukon Territory, northern British Columbia and Alaska this summer. But tough economic times have forced the Vancouver, B.C.-based junior to pick and choose among its 12 key projects, betting precious dollars on a handful of ideas that could pay off with additional exploration by catching the eye of future partners or investors. Fortunately, some of Copper Ridge's projects have already hit that magic...
Last month we talked about economic impacts of the Alaska mining industry. This month, the world mineral exploration industry is in our crosshairs. Halifax-based Metals Economics Group reported that 2008 worldwide nonferrous mineral exploration reached $13.2 billion, more than 2.5 times the previous peak exploration spending level reached in 1997. Add uranium exploration expenditures, and the total expands to $14.4 billion. Exploration spending would have been even higher...
Canada Zinc Metals Corp. Oct. 8 said the first assay results of its 2008 drill program has significantly expanded the zinc-lead-silver bearing Cardiac Creek deposit on the Akie property in northeastern British Columbia. The news came less than two weeks after the feisty junior changed its name from Mantle Resources Inc. "to better reflect its major focus, being zinc-lead projects in northeastern British Columbia." A total of 5,161 meters, or 16,773 feet, in 12 drill holes had been completed as of Oct. 8 on the Cardiac Creek p...
HOWARD'S PASS, Yukon Territory - In this wide, alpine valley that snakes across the border into the Northwest Territories at its southeastern tip, one of the world's largest zinc-lead-silver properties may slumber. First drilled by a joint venture between Placer Dome and Cygnus Mines Ltd. in the 1970s and 1980s, the mineralized zones here are strung along 65 kilometers, or 40 miles. Junior Selwyn Resources Ltd, formerly Pacifica Resources Ltd., believes the property contains more than the 500 million metric tons of indicated...
Everyone who is planning to work on Alaska mineral projects in 2008 is busy doing just that as the longest day of summer quickly approaches. Programs ranging from grass-roots prospecting to multimillion-dollar feasibility studies are spread over the entire state with the most active areas being Western and Interior Alaska. With the new resources for Donlin Creek now out, my unofficial records show Alaska's total gold resources at more than 169 million ounces, with gold discovery rates during the past 10 years averaging more...
Rosie Barr, spokeswoman for NANA's "Voices of Reason Campaign," told Mining News that anti-mining initiatives expected to come before Alaska voters on this fall's ballot would shut down existing mines like the huge Red Dog zinc-lead mine in Northwest Alaska and prevent the permitting of future mines, many of which would be developed on Alaska Native corporation lands. In undertaking this campaign, NANA is fighting to retain the land ownership and mineral rights granted to all Alaska Natives under the Alaska Native Claims...
It is high summer in Alaska and the wheeling and dealing are nearly as frenetic as the exploration, development and production going on all around the state. New deals continue to be cut on old and new projects while more established projects are being subjected to the "truth machine," otherwise known as the drill. This time-tested application has proven many a cock-sure geologist or engineer dead wrong but that doesn't stop anyone in the industry from picking himself up,...
The exploration season has started but not before a bevy of new corporate competitors have entered the Alaska mineral scene and not before a number of past producing mines have been dragged into the 21st century. During the last month, three new companies have acquired properties in Alaska and two old Alaska producers have been brought out of mothballs to have new exploration done on them. This month's commodities of interest include gold, copper, lead, zinc, silver, uranium,...
