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Junior Exploration Sector

Mining juniors increase exploration spending – by Paul Garvey (The Australian – September 25, 2017)

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

Australia’s junior resources sector has started to crank up its spending as it continues to shake off the post-downturn funk and capitalise on the increased amounts of cash available to it.

The latest quarterly analysis of the financial health of the country’s listed exploration companies by accounting and advisory firm BDO, to be released today, shows a big increase in the amount spent by the nation’s small-caps on investing and exploration as well as doubling in the number of $10 million-plus capital raisings.

The amount spent by the nation’s juniors on investment during the quarter more than doubled from $133m in the March quarter to $269m in the June quarter, in another reflection of improved confidence and a brighter outlook for the junior exploration sector.

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Mining Capital Can’t Win as Canada Stocks Lag Metal Gains – by Kristine Owram (Bloomberg News – September 6, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Industrial metals have posted their longest run of weekly gains since 2006 and gold’s had its best month since January, but the commodity-heavy equity benchmark in the world’s mining capital just can’t seem to gain any traction.

It’s the latest frustration for Canada’s S&P/TSX Composite Index, which has lagged all but one of its developed-market peers this year even as base metals have rallied on stronger Chinese demand and gold has gained amid geopolitical uncertainties.

Chalk it up to the previous base-metal slump from 2011 to early 2016 which has shrunk the industry and scarred investors. The materials sector, dominated by miners such as Barrick Gold Corp. and Teck Resources Ltd., is about half as important as it was to Canada’s equity benchmark six years ago.

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In its third year, North American Nickel’s Maniitsoq drill campaign casts a wider net – by Henry Lazenby (MiningWeekly.com – August 30, 2017)

http://www.miningweekly.com/

VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Drilling productivity at base metals explorer North American Nickel’s (NAN’s) Maniitsoq project, in south-west Greenland, has been lower than expected, prompting the company to add another drill rig and extend the drilling programme by two weeks to late September, to achieve as many metres as possible.

The TSX-V-listed junior is entering its third year of a strategic drilling campaign at its flagship nickel/copper/cobalt/platinum group metals project, focusing on step-out drilling at the Imiak Hill Complex (IHC), Fossilik and P-013SE.

The programme makes use of borehole electromagnetic surveys, surface induced polarisation geophysical surveys, mapping, structural geological studies and three-dimensional modelling.

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The gilded South: OceanaGold writes the latest chapter in the long history of South Carolina’s Haile mine – by Ryan Bergen (CIM Magazine – August 25, 2017)

http://magazine.cim.org/en/

Located a few minutes from the small town of Kershaw, South Carolina, Haile has the distinction of being the only gold mine in the United States east of the Mississippi River. More to the point, unlike many new operations it is, if traffic cooperates, just an hour and a half from both an international airport and a domestic hub for air cargo.

It also has the advantage of a deep labour pool nearby and easy access to power and roads, which helped OceanaGold build the 6,300- tonnes-per-day operation for an estimated US$400 million.

Past to present

Gold was first discovered in the area in the 1820s by tenants clearing the land owned by Benjamin Haile. The first placer operations evolved to include a stamp mill, and the gold extracted helped fund the losing Confederate effort in the American Civil War. Legendary Union General William Sherman made a point of destroying Haile’s mine facilities as he and his troops returned north and operations only resumed in the 1880s when New York investors brought it back into production.

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Under Obama, a gold mining firm was fine with a Mojave Desert monument. Under Trump, an about-face – by Louis Sahagun (Los Angeles Times – August 28, 2017)

http://www.latimes.com/

Less than a year ago, President Obama’s designation of a new national monument in the eastern Mojave Desert — featuring a row of jagged peaks rising above native grasslands and Joshua trees — was hailed as a compromise that served the goals of conservationists and the mining industry.

The 20,920-acre monument surrounded, but did not include, an open-pit gold mining operation at the southern end of the Castle Mountains. That allowed Newcastle Gold Ltd. of Canada to proceed with plans to excavate 10 million tons of ore from its 8,300-acre parcel through 2025.

“The company appreciates that it has been consulted throughout this process,” Newcastle said at the time. “The new land designation reflects a compromise position that meets our needs as well as respecting the interests of other stakeholders in the area.”

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Eager for red-hot cobalt gains, investors think small – by Nicole Mordant (Reuters Canada – August 24, 2017)

https://ca.reuters.com/

VANCOUVER (Reuters) – Institutional investors hoping to profit from cobalt, this year’s high-flying metal, are buying into companies that are smaller than their usual fare to gain exposure to an industry supplying the burgeoning electric car market.

Prices for cobalt CBD0, a key ingredient in lithium-ion batteries for electric vehicles, have spiked 83 percent this year on forecasts that demand will double in the next decade as consumers switch to less-polluting cars. Nearly all cobalt, which prolongs battery life, is mined as a by-product of copper and nickel, making it difficult for investors to get direct exposure.

Much like the recent boom in lithium, another battery ingredient, cobalt’s surge has resulted from heady forecasts for ownership of electric vehicles. UBS in May said it expected them to account for 3.1 percent of global car sales in 2021 and 13.7 percent in 2025, up from 1 percent this year.

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A Cosmic Theory and 2-Inch Lump of Gold Spur 500% Novo Surge – by Natalie Obiko Pearson (Bloomberg News – August 21, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Quinton Todd Hennigh has spent 13 years scouring the Earth for clues to back a hunch: that the world’s biggest gold resource has lost siblings elsewhere on the planet.

Now the president of Novo Resources Corp. thinks he may have found a counterpart of South Africa’s Witwatersrand in the ancient red rocks near Australia’s northwest coast. In July, his company zeroed in on a gold find that’s confounded geologists and sparked a 500 percent surge in the explorer’s share price.

The first test on land south of the coastal town of Karratha looked good. Employing two men, a metal detector and a jack hammer, Vancouver-based Novo extracted gold nuggets as long as 4 centimeters (1.6 inches) from an exploration “trench” little more than a half-meter deep. That tiny sample hinted at ore grades that could be among the highest of any operating mine in the world.

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NORONT NEWS RELEASE: PROVINCE OF ONTARIO TO FUND RING OF FIRE ROAD PROPOSALS LED BY MARTEN FALLS, WEBEQUIE AND NIBIMINIK FIRST NATIONS

http://norontresources.com/

TORONTO, ONTARIO—August 21, 2017—Noront Resources Ltd. (“Noront”) (TSX Venture: NOT) participated in a joint announcement today by Premier Kathleen Wynne and the Chiefs of Marten Falls, Webequie and Nibiminik First Nations, which formally committed provincial funding to two First Nations road proposals that will provide community and industrial access to the Ring of Fire Mining District.

Road Proposals

The provincial government agreed to support and fund the following road proposals which will connect First Nation communities to the Ring of Fire:

•An east-west road connecting Webequie and Nibinamik First Nations to the provincial highway network north of Pickle Lake (the “East-West Road”). This road will continue from the Community of Webequie to the Ring of Fire.
•A north-south community access road is being planned for construction by the Marten Falls First Nation with an option to expand the road to the Ring of Fire to support the development of chromite mining (the “North – South Road”).

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11 Opportunities in Gold, Uranium and Diamonds (Streetwise Reports – August 14, 2017)

https://www.streetwisereports.com/

Former journalist James Kwantes, editor of Resource Opportunities, provides a tour of promising junior mining opportunities, from the extremes of northern Canada to the tropics of French Guiana.

The Gold Report: The U.S. stock market has been in a bull run for a number of years. What are your thoughts on the market and what it means for precious metals?

James Kwantes: Since Donald Trump was elected president, but also for years before that, large-cap U.S. stocks have been a “can’t miss” for investors, who have been rewarded for chasing returns. It seems very toppy to me, but that doesn’t mean it couldn’t go on for a while still. In 2000, in the big tech boom, the market caps of the two or three largest technology companies equaled the market cap of something like every mining company in the world.

We’re at that level again. We’re starting to see weakness in the U.S. dollar, and that’s positive for gold. These things are cyclical. Gold looks like it’s ready for the next longer-term breakout and we’re heading into a period of seasonal strength. We’re starting to see signs of strength in the junior market as well.

TGR: Would you talk about a couple of companies that you like in the precious metals area?

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[Northern Superior Resources] Sudbury junior miner breathes life into Far North, Quebec projects – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – August 15, 2017)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Measuring 20 kilometres by 30 kilometres, Morris believes TPK has district-scale
mining possibilities, comparable to the Hollinger Mine complex in Timmins or
the Red Lake district. “I’ve been in this business for 35 years. I’ve never
seen anything like this.”

Tom Morris is excited to be finally returning to his roots. The president-CEO of Northern Superior Resources has two projects on the go this summer as his Sudbury exploration outfit advances a promising Quebec gold project while simultaneously blowing the dust off a mothballed gold and base metals property in Ontario’s Far North.

“When it comes to doing what we’re supposed to be doing, which is exploration, we’ve been pretty dormant,” Morris admits. During the downturn, it was all about survivability for many junior miners who tightened their belts as exploration dollars dried up.

After weathering that period in reasonably good shape, and with market interest in commodities looking favourable, it’s now time to get back to work with exploration dollars in hand and new company leadership in place. “Timing was everything,” said Morris. “I kept the company going for this opportunity that we knew was coming at some point.”

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Artists, hippies, miners — Patagonia divided over hamlet’s economic future – by Lucas Waldron (Arizona Daily Star – August 13, 2017)

http://tucson.com/

Patagonia has one bar, one coffee shop, one gas station. And customers at nearly all of them are divided between those in favor of a new mining project in this tiny southeastern-Arizona town and those against it.

Roughly half of Patagonia’s 900 residents support Arizona Mining Inc., a Canadian company that recently bought land near town for exploratory drilling. The rest oppose the mining company, seeking to preserve the region’s unique rare wildlife and steer the economy away from mineral extraction and toward environmental restoration.

Arizona Mining Inc. has vowed to create an estimated 500 jobs through a mine it plans to have up and running in 2020. In July, the company predicted the mine will extract 10,000 tons of minerals per day and could be viable for eight years.

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Arctic heating up for gold exploration – by Jeff Nielson (Stockhouse.com – August 2, 2107)

http://www.stockhouse.com/

This is not another story about global warming. The “heat” being generated in Canada’s far north by the gold mining industry is economic heat. As gold mining companies hunt for increasingly elusive projects which offer both robust grades and multi-million ounce potential, more and more of these companies are looking north – as in far north.

One of the companies cashing in on this new, northern gold-rush is Cache Exploration Inc. (TSX: V.CAY, OTCQB: CEXPF, Forum). CAY’s base of operations is Nunavut. The Company’s operational focus is the Kiyuk Lake Gold Project.

Kiyuk Lake is a huge land package, encompassing approximately 491 square kilometers. This is a true “district” play, as management was intent on locking up the majority of the entire Kiyuk Basin, a Proterozoic geological formation. Mineralization has already been identified along a 15 kilometer strike length.

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Cobalt explorer makes a move in historic camp: First Cobalt kicks off exploration program with promise of richer days ahead – by Ian Ross (Northern Ontario Business – July 28, 2017)

https://www.northernontariobusiness.com/

Walking into a mining ghost town like Silver Centre is almost akin to experiencing what the first miners of the Cobalt camp’s famed Silver Rush faced at the turn of the last century.

But the focus this time is not on finding high-grade silver veins but exploring for cobalt, previously discarded as a waste material. For exploration crews, it’s like starting from scratch. “I grew up in Northern Ontario and crawled around mine sites all the time,” said Frank Santaguida, vice-president of exploration for First Cobalt Corp. “It’s surprising how quickly the land reclaims itself.”

His Toronto-based company has an option agreement with Canadian Silver Hunter to acquire 100 per cent of the former Keeley-Frontier silver and cobalt mine, a sprawling 2,100-hectare property, 25 kilometres south of the town of Cobalt.

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Top 10 Canadian-based gold developers – by John Cumming (Northern Miner – July 20, 2017)

http://www.northernminer.com/

Gold exploration and development is enjoying a boom again, and Canadian juniors are leading project advancement at home and abroad.

The following are the top-10, Canadian-headquartered gold companies that are developing projects but not yet in commercial production, ranked according to market capitalization in mid-July. Gold royalty and streaming companies are not included in the list.

1. Novagold Resources – $1.9 billion market capitalization

Vancouver-based Novagold Resources (TSX: NG; NYSE-MKT: NG) is a familiar name in the gold sector, especially amongst retail investors. Novagold’s flagship project is its half interest in the large but remote Donlin Gold project in southwestern Alaska, which is a fifty-fifty joint venture with Barrick Gold (TSX: ABX; NYSE: ABX).

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