The Northwest Territories and Nunavut’s share of mining exploration spending is on the decline – by Walter Strong (CBC News North – March 28, 2018)

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/

The Northwest Territories and Nunavut’s share of expected spending on resource exploration and deposit appraisals in Canada is on the decline, and has been for a few years.

The most recent numbers from Natural Resources Canada indicate spending in the N.W.T. is expected to decline to $81.3 million this year, down from $90 million last year. Exploration spending in the territory peaked in 2007 at $194 million.

In Nunavut, the decline is more dramatic. Spending there is expected to decline by more than $58 million — from $169 million last year to $110.7 million this year. In 2007, companies spent $338 million on mining exploration in Nunavut.

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Unearthing Results from Idaho’s Cobalt Belt – by Jon Brown (Stockhouse.com – March 27, 2018)

http://www.stockhouse.com/

FULL DISCLOSURE: Hybrid Minerals Inc. is a paid client of Stockhouse Publishing.

The automotive industry has a serious problem. There is a push to turn production toward electric vehicles, but the batteries that will power these vehicles is short on one key ingredient – cobalt. The price of cobalt has quadrupled over the last two years to roughly $40 a pound ($85 a kilogram) thanks to its rarity.

Add to this the challenge of just getting access to the metal, as much as 60% of the world’s supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, an embattled region to say the least.

A Canadian-based exploration company is rising to meet this challenge and is one step closer to bringing the United States’ only cobalt mine into current production. Hybrid Minerals Inc. (TSX: V.HZ, Forum) is focused on the acquisition and development of production-grade cobalt deposits and has a 100% stake in the advanced exploration CAS cobalt and gold project located in the Idaho Cobalt Belt.

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Orefinders gets into the cobalt game – by Staff (Northern Ontario Business – March 26, 2018)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Power Ore is the name of the spinoff company being created by Orefinders Resources to work its cobalt properties in northeastern Ontario.

By way of a court-approved plan of arrangement, Power Ore picks up Orefinders’ silver-cobalt assets, the former Mann silver-cobalt mines, and MacMurchy nickel property in the Gowganda district.

The arrangement is subject to approval by the TSX Venture Exchange. Power Ore is targeting to list on the exchange soon after receiving approval from Orefinders’ shareholders at a special meeting on May 4.

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Exploration project’s purity surprises mining company: Frontier Lithium touts PAK project as a rare and valuable find – by Karen McKinley (Northern Ontario Business – March 23, 2018)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Garth Drever can’t hide his excitement over Frontier Lithium’s Pakeagama Lake Pegmatite (PAK) project’s initial findings and estimates. But he is reluctant to say it could be the first lithium mine in Canada.

“It could be a few years before we go into production, but we are very happy with what we are seeing,” said Drever, vice-president of exploration of the Sudbury-based junior mining company, formerly known as Houston Lake Mining.

“The deposits are very clean, very high grade and that’s generating a lot of interest.” He was speaking on the latest findings from the project at the monthly meeting of the Sudbury Prospectors and Developers Association on March 20.

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RNC mulls selling Aussie mine to focus on massive cobalt-nickel project in Quebec – by Cecilia Jamasmie (Mining.com – March 22, 2018)

http://www.mining.com/

Canada’s RNC Minerals (TSX: RNX) said Thursday it might sell all or part of its Beta Hunt gold and nickel mine in Western Australia to focus instead on its Dumont cobalt and nickel project in Quebec, the world’s largest undeveloped reserve of both metals.

The Toronto-based miner, which acquire Beta Hunt in 2016, said while it has grew the scale of the operation ever since, such asset is now considered to be non-core to RNC, particularly since Dumont’s potential value is significantly greater than the Australian mine’s current worth.

The company, however, did say it would consider other strategic alternatives for Beta Hunt, adding that no decision about the mine future has been made at the time.

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EV adoption rate reaching critical mass as search for ethical cobalt heats up – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – March 20, 2018)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Cobalt company Cobalt 27 is seeing an ideal storm brewing for its key commodity as the adoption rate of electric vehicles (EVs) accelerates faster than even optimistic forecasts had speculated.

“Cobalt 27 is a proxy for the adoption of the EV,” executive chairperson Anthony Milewski told Mining Weekly Online in an interview. “What our most recent raise tells one is that the thematic is picking up pace.”

He pointed to the EV adoption rate hitting 1.8% at the end of 2017. “Currently, Wall Street has projections for 2025 of an EV penetration rate of 15%.

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Klondex shares surge on news of Hecla acquisition – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – March 20, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

Shares in struggling Canadian junior gold producer Klondex Mines Ltd. surged after U.S.-based Hecla Mining Co. announced it intends to pay a premium of almost 80 per cent to acquire the company in a transaction worth US$462-million.

Idaho-based Hecla’s cash and stock offer is worth US$2.47 a share (about $3.23) – a roughly 79-per-cent premium compared with Friday’s closing price.

Under the transaction, Hecla is acquiring Klondex’s U.S. gold mines, but its Canadian assets are set to be spun out into a separate publicly traded company, to be owned by existing Klondex shareholders.

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First Cobalt Buys Idaho Explorer in Race to Supply Battery Boom – by Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – March 14, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

First Cobalt Corp. is seeking to speed up its timetable to begin producing cobalt, riding the wave of interest in the metal used in electric-vehicle batteries and smartphones.

The Vancouver-based exploration company agreed to buy explorer US Cobalt Inc., which has properties in Idaho, in an all-stock deal with an implied equity value of about C$149.9 million ($116 million). Trading in the two companies’ shares was suspended.

“We’re trying to fast-track our way into North American mining and refining,” First Cobalt Chief Executive Officer Trent Mell said in an interview.

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This Commodity Investor Is Hoarding the World’s Cobalt Supply – by Mark Burton (Bloomberg News – March 13, 2018)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Backed by a Russian billionaire, Anthony Milewski started stockpiling the metal in 2015.

Anthony Milewski was among the first investors to realize that if electric-vehicle sales take off the way automakers expect, the world is going to need a lot more cobalt—an essential ingredient in lithium-ion batteries.

But the market for cobalt isn’t very big, and there aren’t many easy ways for investors to bet on prices. The metal is a minor byproduct of copper and nickel mining, and only a few places produce meaningful quantities. More than half the world’s supply comes from the Democratic Republic of Congo, an impoverished country in central Africa mired in corruption scandals and political unrest.

So, in 2015, backed by a Russian billionaire, Milewski started buying metal from mining companies and putting it in warehouses. At the time, it was cheap because most industrial commodities were stuck in long slumps.

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‘Suds’ strategy pays through the drill bit as Osisko aims at replicating Canadian Malartic success – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – March 8, 2018

http://www.miningweekly.com/

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Celebrated Canadian precious metals firm Osisko Mining is aiming to replicate the success of its 9.4-million-ounce Canadian Malartic gold mine discovery – currently Canada’s largest producing gold mine – at its flagship Windfall Lake property, located in the Abitibi greenstone belt of Quebec.

The company relies on its somewhat quirky-yet-imminently-effective strategy called ‘Suds’, which is an acronym for “shut up and drill stupid”, chairperson Sean Roosen told a packed audience of miners and financiers during the recent Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada 2018 convention, in Toronto.

Osisko has had a colourful history, coming full circle from exploration and development, to royalties and financing, and back to exploration and likely development again.

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Global metals exploration likely to rise 20% in 2018 – S&P Global – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – March 5, 2018)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Global mining exploration budgets are expected to swell about 20% this year, bolstered by the generally positive trend in metals prices extending into early 2018, a new report by S&P’s Global Market Intelligence has found.

Global spending on the search for nonferrous metals rose 15% year-on-year in 2017 to an estimated $8.4-billion, compared with $7.3-billion in 2016, representing the first yearly increase in exploration spending after four consecutive years of declining investment in this area, according to the World Exploration Trends (WET) report, published in conjunction with the 2018 iteration of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) International Convention, held in Toronto.

“Improved equity market support for explorers allowed many companies to launch or resume drill programmes on their most promising projects.

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Rise of crypto and cannabis cutting into mining, Osisko CEO says – by Niall McGee (Globe and Mail – March 6, 2018)

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/

The Canadian mining industry is facing deep-rooted structural problems, with no easy solutions in sight. That’s according to a well-known Canadian mining executive, who spoke on the opening day of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) convention on Monday.

In an unscripted and candid keynote speech, Sean Roosen, chief executive of Osisko Gold Royalties Ltd., bemoaned the lack of investor interest in mining, the dearth of investment over the past few years in exploration projects, skyrocketing capital costs and, in particular, the rapid-fire rise of alternative sectors, such as bitcoin and marijuana, that has wooed investors away from the industry.

“People used to invest in prospectors and exploration because they wanted to take risks and they wanted to have fun,” Mr. Roosen said.

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[Northern Superior Resources] Junior miner ditches duty-to-consult lawsuit against Ontario – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – March 2, 2018)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Exploration president criticizes Queen’s Park on hands-off approach to Indigenous engagement

A Sudbury junior miner has dropped a $25-million duty-to-consult lawsuit against the Ontario government and has settled out of court.

With their case still on appeal, Northern Superior Resources president Tom Morris said with a favourable outcome far from certain, it just made financial sense for the small exploration firm to end its five-year legal battle with Queen’s Park.

He declined to comment on the terms of the agreement reached with the province. “There was no guarantee that we were going to win anything out of that. The reality was that with what was offered to us, it just made sense to bite the bullet and move on; and the same from the government’s standpoint.”

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What happens when ‘kingmaker’ Eric Sprott backs your penny mining stock – by Gabriel Friedman (Financial Post – March 1, 2018)

http://business.financialpost.com/

The billionaire investor has injected $10 million in a company exploring for nickel in B.C.’s Golden Triangle — an area that has been mined for a century without much nickel ever being found

One Friday afternoon not so many months ago, Canadian billionaire Eric Sprott was sitting in a leather wingback chair in a dimly lit room, talking about a junior mining company that he just can’t stop investing in.

The company, Garibaldi Resources Corp., is in the earliest stages of exploring for nickel in British Columbia’s Golden Triangle, an area that has been relentlessly explored and mined for a century without much nickel ever being found.

Nevertheless, Sprott was enamoured: He compared the area to Voisey’s Bay, also a nickel deposit, and likely the largest metal discovery in Canada in the past 40 years. That find has turned out to be worth billions of dollars.
“It just keeps coming together,” Sprott said about Garibaldi, turning to an interviewer on his left during a video that will be posted on YouTube. That Garibaldi has never had any revenue passes without comment.

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Looking for Hemlo II: Canadian Orebodies – by Jay Currie (MotherlodeTV.net – February 27, 2018)

http://motherlodetv.net/

A lot of exploration is about looking for pointers, for clues, as to where a deposit might be. For Canadian Orebodies, a train of boulders, a number of which had high-grade gold mineralization pointed in a particular direction. If you look at the map above you can spot the boulder train. Angular boulders which suggest that the source is not far away.

If you follow the boulder train “up ice” – because the boulders were almost certainly the result of glaciation – you will see what Gordon McKinnon and his team at Canadian Orebodies have been quietly working on for the past nine months. The acquisition of the “Century Mining Claims”. It was not straightforward.

“Century Mining was in bankruptcy,” said McKinnon. “And Teck Resources held a bunch of rights including the right of first refusal and a back-in right. There were also two prospectors who had a 3% Net Smelter Royalty, which made for a drawn out five-party negotiation. After nine months of discussions, we managed to get Teck to give up its rights in exchange for a 0.5% NSR, and we negotiated a royalty buy down with the prospectors. Eventually, we got what we wanted and we finalized the acquisition of the property.

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