The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
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Separation and processing are the master link of US supply chain. From tech devices such as smartphones and computer monitors to clean energy products like electric vehicles and wind turbines, household goods like vacuum cleaners and refrigerators, and military hardware such as F-35 fighters and communications equipment, rare earths have a critical role to play in nearly every facet of America's economy and security. The United States, however, currently relies on China for ne...
Tin is indispensable today and shapes innovation of tomorrow. From $5 flashlightS to multi-million-dollar super computers, virtually all electronics rely on tin, primarily because of its use in soldering. If circuit boards are considered the backbone of technology, then tin-based solder could be seen as the connective tissue that holds the industry together. Despite its fundamental role in the Digital Age, tin is often overshadowed by other critical minerals and contends with...
Projects, initiatives, and technology expand scandium supply chain security. While it may not have quite as strong a chemical bond to its adopted lanthanide siblings as they do each other, scandium does possess similar enough characteristics and is almost always found at the same geological gatherings (deposits) as the rest of its rare earth family. Named for the Latin word for Scandinavia, "Scandia," – as the mineral was thought to only dwell off the Nordic peninsula – sca...
An all-of-government strategy is beginning to unfold in the US. Over the first two years following the passage of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, the U.S. Department of Energy has invested billions of dollars into establishing a clean energy supply chain in the United States. These heavy investments, however, have neglected one vital link – the domestic mines needed to supply the processing facilities, battery plants, and other energy t...
Import-reliance a top concern for national security officials. America's heavy reliance on China and others for the minerals and metals critical to the nation's economic competitiveness, military strength, and clean energy future is high on the list of strategic concerns for top brass at the U.S. departments of Defense and Homeland Security. While much of this concern is rooted in the fact that the United States' ability to defend its strategic interests at home and abroad...
Calculating a new resource for Niblack, growing its management, organizing talks of a centralized mill in Northern British Columbia, and drilling bonanza-grade gold at its first Golden Triangle project on the British Columbia side of the border, last year's hunt was plentiful for Blackwolf Copper and Gold Ltd. Early last year, Blackwolf announced an agreement with Dolly Varden Silver Corp. and New Moly LLC to explore the possibility of building a centralized mill on New...
As the White House continues to dole out hundreds of billions of dollars to position America as the global leader in clean energy and digital technologies, Beijing initiates a strategy to put America in check with the global economy equivalent of pawns. These pawns in the technology chess match between the U.S. and China are gallium and germanium, a pair of semiconductor metals used to make the computer chips essential to every facet of modern life. Before all the major news o...
As it enters into an accelerated period of growth, Blackwolf Copper and Gold Ltd. has made an offer to buy out Northern British Columbia-focused gold and silver exploration company Optimum Ventures Ltd. and is shifting around some management positions to better facilitate the surplus of properties it has accumulated in recent years. Initially exploring its flagship historic Niblack copper-gold-silver-zinc project located on the southern end of Prince of Wales Island in...
More gold, strong zinc prices helped push value higher; critical minerals could add a boost moving forward. Alaska mines produced approximately $4.51 billion worth of nonfuel minerals last year, a 16% increase over the $3.89 billion in 2021, and an impressive 42.7% jump over the $3.16 billion of mined products during 2020, according to the U.S. Geological Survey's Mineral Commodity Summaries 2023 report. The rise in Alaska mine production value is largely due to increased...
In what could be the most consequential "pollice verso" for Alaska, in a time when the federal government is seeking to shift the paradigm from more than a century of petroleum dependency to clean renewable energy, the Environmental Protection Agency issued its final determination under the Clean Water Act to help protect Bristol Bay, invariably crippling the more than two decades of effort toward establishing a mine at the world-class copper-gold-molybdenum-silver-rhenium...
While its Niblack copper-gold-silver-zinc project continues to be a mainstay for Blackwolf Copper and Gold Ltd., several newcomers to its holdings throughout the year have greatly expanded the potential of this Alaska miner. Located at the end of the Alaskan Panhandle, on Prince of Wales Island, the historic Niblack Mine is found over 1,000 meters north of the current NI-43-101 mineral resources in the Lookout and Trio zones of the property. Copper production occurred at the...
Blackwolf Copper and Gold Ltd. June 8 reported that permitting for its Niblack project has been granted, allowing surface exploration work to begin at this Southeast Alaska polymetallic property. "This authorization now permits Blackwolf to drill from surface to expand current resources, to continue testing our successful new geological model for VMS mineralization, to complete IP geophysical work to explore for buried massive sulphides along the productive host horizon and...
The increasing number of electric vehicles charged with renewable energy, connected to 5G networks, and boasting the computing power of 200 laptops to autonomously traverse global highways is creating a meteoric rise in demand for the minerals and metals critical to clean energy and high-tech. Benchmark Mineral Intelligence, the foremost authority on lithium battery supply chains, estimates that more than 300 new mines will need to come online by 2035 – just to produce the c...
Toward its foundational goal of being an ESG-focused gold exploration company that is a catalyst for economic development and improved social well-being in the areas where it works, Tectonic Metals Ltd. has built a strong partnership with Doyon Ltd., the Alaska Native corporation for the region of Alaska it is exploring for gold. The Doyon region blankets a mineral-rich swath of Alaska's Interior that is nearly the size of Texas. The Alaska Native corporation owns 12.5...
Says pending veto of Pebble copper mine permits sets a precedent with implications that go beyond Alaska. Alarmed by the precedent that would be set if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is successful in issuing a preemptive veto of the Pebble Mine through the extension of its authority under the federal Clean Water Act, Gov. Mike Dunleavy says his administration is prepared to defend Alaska's right and obligation to develop resources on state lands. "The State of...
With mineral exploration expenditures nearly doubling over the past year, Nunavut has dethroned Yukon as the most popular Canadian territory to discover and expand deposits of industrial, precious, and critical minerals. According to preliminary estimates published by Natural Resources Canada, roughly C$232.4 million (US$173.7 million) will be spent on exploration and deposit evaluation in Nunavut this year, a 95% leap from over the C$119.2 million (US$89.1 million) invested...
General Motors, Stellantis, and Tesla moving further up battery supply chain With the batteries powering the electric vehicle revolution demanding more lithium than miners can produce, the price of this lightest metal in the universe rocketed more than 1,000% over the span of two years. This has prompted automakers such as Tesla and General Motors to become more directly involved in the mining and refining of the lithium-ion battery namesake. "Price of lithium has gone to...
US invests heavily into developing domestic rare earth element processing plants Despite what their name suggests, rare earths are not all that scarce. An efficient and environmentally sound technology capable of separating this tightly bonded group into the 15 individual elements of innovation, however, is truly unique and the key to establishing a rare earths supply chain in North America. There are currently no commercial-scale rare earths separation facilities in North...
Coal ash, acid drainage, and tailings for future green economy As the world continues to prime itself for the global energy shift, academia, governments and the private sector are scrambling to extract the valuable minerals and metals necessary to power the low-carbon renewable future – resulting in some truly innovative and unconventional methods. In addition to the rare earths, cobalt, lithium, and other technology metals that capture headline attention, this list often miss...
Rare metalloid is key element of CdTe thin-film solar cell tech The rising popularity of thin-film solar cells as a highly effective means of converting sunlight into electricity is creating increased demand for tellurium, amongst the rarest of the stable elements on the periodic table. Tellurium is a metalloid, one of seven elements with properties that fall between metals like aluminum and tin and non-metals like carbon and phosphorus. These semimetals, which also include...
CO2 scrubbing liquid-metal catalyst is tech metal's latest amazing property From making smartphones smarter to transforming troublesome carbon dioxide into useful oxygen and high-value carbon products for batteries and other advanced products, gallium is an amazing tech metal lending its incredible qualities to high-performance computers, telecommunications, national security, and the environment. A soft silvery metal that will turn to liquid in the palm of your hand due to...
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....
Rare earths from the Nechalacho Mine being delivered into the supply chain marks the opening of a new critical minerals chapter in the story of mining in Northwest Territories – a saga that includes a 1930s gold rush to the territory's capital, a whole new town to support the Pine Point zinc mine, and the unlikely discovery of world-class diamond deposits in the famed Lac de Gras region. "We have an opportunity to add to our rich and long-standing mining story," Northwest Terr...
Blackwolf Copper and Gold Ltd. July 5 announced the beginning of surface exploration work on its recently staked Cantoo and Mineral Hill properties within the Alaskan region of the Golden Triangle near Hyder. "The wide, stacked veins identified by Blackwolf's crews in 2021 at the Cantoo property are the most compelling targets that I've seen in my career in the Golden Triangle," said Blackwolf Copper and Gold President and CEO Rob McLeod. In addition to Blackwolf's flagship...
Doyon Ltd., the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act regional corporation for Interior Alaska, is strengthening its partnership with Tectonic Metals Inc. with another investment into the equity of the company exploring for gold on Doyon and state lands in Alaska. "Working on Native Owned Land is one thing, but being funded by Alaska Natives to explore on their land is something completely different," said Tectonic Metals President and CEO Tony Reda. "It is truly an honour, a...
