B2Gold Corp said it would consider further opportunities to acquire gold assets to accelerate growth even after its recent purchase of Sabina Gold, which gave it its first project in home country Canada.
B2Gold’s C$1.1 billion ($832.1 million) acquisition of Sabina Gold, completed in April, included Sabina’s untapped mineral-heavy Back River Gold district in Nunavut, Canada, which is expected to start production in 2025.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/
New owners want to extend mine life, hire more northerners
The Ekati diamond mine officially has new owners. The sale, which carries a price tag of $150 million US, was finalized on Tuesday — transferring 100 per cent of the Arctic Diamond Company Limited shares to Burgundy Diamond Mines, an Australian-based company. It is the third company to own the mine since 2017.
“I think it is exciting for everyone,” Kim Truter, CEO of Burgundy Diamond Mines told CBC News. The company wants to extend Ekati’s mining life and hire more northerners. “I think the North desperately needs these diamond mines to continue,” Truter said.
https://www.miningnewsnorth.com/
Acquires diamond mine from Arctic Canadian for US$136M
Burgundy Diamond Mines Ltd. has finalized its acquisition of the Ekati diamond mine in Canada’s Northwest Territories, adding another precious stone mine to its portfolio.
Already a 40% partner with North Arrow Minerals Inc. at the Naujaat diamond project in Nunavut, Burgundy closed a transaction on July 4 that provides the Australian diamond company full ownership of the world-class Ekati Mine, which will significantly elevate Burgundy’s efforts to deliver high-end cut and polished diamonds mined in Canada’s Arctic to global markets.
Arctic security is under renewed focus as Russia and China eye the region, but leaders in the North say Canada won’t be able to exert sovereignty if their communities aren’t built up properly. The premiers from all three Northern territories say the federal government, while mindful of the need to strengthen Arctic security, has lacked a cohesive infrastructure plan to construct the foundation required to reach that goal.
Northwest Territories Premier Caroline Cochrane said in an interview that while policymakers have increased talks of building up the North, few concrete plans for key infrastructure such as hospitals, telecommunications, airports and road systems have emerged.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/
Territory takes company to court, saying it owes close to $2.5M from abandoned mine
The Yukon government says Minto Metals, which abruptly abandoned its mine near Pelly Crossing, Yukon, in May, hasn’t paid mining royalties in two years.
That would be a direct breach of Yukon mining legislation. Under the territory’s Quartz Mining Act, any mine that falls within the Act’s jurisdiction — like Minto’s former copper mine — must pay an annual royalty on profits that exceed $10,000. The percentage depends on the profit, but starts at three per cent.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
The Yukon government raised red flags about a copper mine’s environmental infractions days before the owner abandoned the site last month, an inspection report shows.
The new report filed this month by two employees of the territory’s Department of Energy, Mines and Resources says they inspected Minto Metals Corp.’s mining site on April 26, finding that its storage capacity for contaminated water in an open pit and tailings waste management were unsatisfactory.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/
Deal includes tougher penalties for companies that fail to meet Indigenous hiring commitments
The federal government and Yellowknives Dene First Nation have signed a procurement framework agreement for the cleanup of Giant Mine, one of Canada’s most contaminated sites. Ottawa says the agreement confirms its commitment to increase procurement opportunities for Indigenous people through the more than $4-billion Giant Mine Remediation Project, including prioritizing contracts with Indigenous-owned businesses.
The First Nation says the deal will increase its oversight of how the project awards contracts and provides for tougher penalties for companies that fail to meet Indigenous hiring commitments.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/
Company ordered to comply with its permits to operate, or face penalties
The federal government says Agnico Eagle Mines is not doing what it has promised to protect migrating caribou at the Meadowbank gold mine in Nunavut.
An order issued last month by Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) says the company has failed “on multiple occasions” to meet its obligations under its project certificates for the mine, and under the Nunavut Planning and Project Assessment Act. The order requires the company to comply with its permits to operate or face potential penalties.
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/
Sean Boyd is executive chair of the board of Agnico Eagle Mines Ltd.
Canada launched a new Arctic and Northern Policy Framework in 2019, supported by $700-million in dedicated funding. It correctly calls on all of Canada to strengthen our sovereignty, while building the kind of economic future northerners want, and doing it in a way that protects the environment. This was a positive first step.
But it is missing a component: the development of the Arctic’s abundant mineral resources, including critical minerals crucial for the decarbonized economy of the future. That must be an essential element of any Arctic strategy.
The latest sale of the Northwest Territories’ Ekati diamond mine is expected to be finalized before the end of the month, the current owners say. In a presentation posted to a public registry, Arctic Canadian says the “expected transition close-out” of Ekati’s sale to Burgundy Diamond Mines, an Australian company, is anticipated on June 30.
The deal is valued at almost $200 million. Ekati was last sold in February 2021, when financially troubled Dominion Diamond Mines offloaded the mine to Arctic Canadian, a company formed by some of Dominion’s creditors.
Lithium was once a forgotten element in the Northwest Territories. This summer, it’s sparking a hunt for profit.
For decades, nobody did much with the lithium-rich region east of Yellowknife. Suddenly, multiple companies are taking up the quest to find lithium and sending scouts to drill.
Drilling small holes across a property allows companies to get a sense of how large the deposit is beneath, and analyze samples for their lithium content.
For around half a dozen companies, that’s top of the to-do list. At least seven companies have NWT lithium projects in their early stages, most of them near Yellowknife. They hope to strike while the lithium iron is hot as demand skyrockets for the element’s use in the likes of electric vehicles.
https://www.miningnewsnorth.com/
Six months after the Canadian government rejected a plan to double approved output from the Mary River iron mine on Nunavut’s Baffin Island, the mine’s operator, Baffinland Iron Mines Corp., is working to get the green light to move ahead with a different proposal.
The new plan, which the company calls a “Sustaining Operations Proposal,” surfaced in December, about a month after federal Northern Affairs Minister Daniel Vandal rejected the earlier plan Nov. 16 to expand operations and double approved shipping output from the mine to 12 million metric tons of iron ore annually.
Dr. Warren Bernauer will be touring three locations in northwestern Ontario to promote his new book I Will Live for Both of Us: A History of Colonialism, Uranium Mining, and Inuit Resistance.
WINNIPEG – For those living in Dryden, Ignace and Thunder Bay, Dr. Warren Bernauer will be touring Northwestern Ontario to speak about a book he co-authored with Joan Scottie and Jack Hicks, called I Will Live for Both of Us: A History of Colonialism, Uranium Mining, and Inuit Resistance.
Bernauer, who currently working as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Manitoba in the Department of Environment and Geography and the Natural Resources Institute, still calls Northwestern Ontario his home.
https://www.northernminer.com/
Osisko Metals (TSX: OM; US-OTC: OMZNF) is part of a rising trend tapping private equity to help build projects, but it’s wary of the growing role of “predatory” debt financing.
Appian Capital Advisory, a London-based private equity firm with mining projects valued at US$3.6 billion, is investing $25 million for a quarter of Osisko’s Pine Point zinc-lead mine in the Northwest Territories.
https://www.miningnewsnorth.com/
The North of 60 Mining area hosts billions of pounds of copper ready to be delivered to a world craving this metal in sky-high demand for wiring the electric vehicles and renewable energy infrastructure that would enable the envisioned low-carbon future. Whether enough of these copper-rich projects are developed in time to circumvent a short circuit of the clean energy transition remains to be seen.
Global Market analysts such as S&P Global have predicted that copper production will need to double by 2035 to meet demands driven by global net-zero emission goals. This means that even if every current copper mine was still producing at today’s capacity in 12 years, enough new mines would need to come online to match that production – both highly unlikely scenarios.
