Barrick’s Digital Reinvention Takes Shape in a Nevada Desert – by Danielle Bochove (Bloomberg News – October 30, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

Elko, Nevada is no Silicon Valley. A recent front-page story in the local paper hailed inductees to the Buckaroo Hall of Fame, a nod to the town’s cowboy past. Inside, a full-page spread detailed the aspirations of the kids vying for homecoming king and queen.

Yet it’s here, in an unremarkable warehouse in the foothills of the Ruby Mountains, that Barrick Gold Corp. has created an in-house coding hub to design software for its nearby Cortez operation — one step in its plan to use technology to revolutionize the business.

From underground WiFi to sensors that track the output of every miner, it’s all part of what Cisco Systems Inc. Executive Chairman John Chambers calls an “audacious goal” by his Barrick counterpart John Thornton to drag gold mining into the 21st century.

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State’s Abandoned Mine Lands program looks back on 30 years – by Adella Harding (Elko Daily Free Press – September 7, 2017)

http://elkodaily.com/

Thousands of potentially dangerous deserted mine workings from the past dot Nevada’s landscape, but the state’s Abandoned Mine Lands program has been securing these sites for 30 years, decreasing related accidents and fatalities.

Over the years, people have fallen into old mines or drowned in old pit lakes, but there have been no reported accidents at abandoned mines in more than three years, thanks in part to the program. “These aren’t playgrounds,” said Robert Ghiglieri, chief of the abandoned mines program for the Nevada Division of Minerals. “It’s not worth the risk to go into these.”

From 1961 to 2011, 20 people died in accidents at abandoned mine sites. The last fatality occurred March 2011, when a 28-year-old man fell 190 feet down a mine shaft in Pershing County. The last reported abandoned mine accident was in 2013, when a 17-year-old male incurred minor injuries in a fall down a 60-foot mine shaft in Lyon County.

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Agreement between Western Shoshone and Barrick mining benefits both – by Sally Roberts (Northern Nevada Business Weekly – July 10, 2017)

Hostilities have long persisted between Nevada’s mining companies and the state’s Native American population. That was particularly true in the Elko area in the early years of this century.

“There were many many years of bad, difficult communications with Placer Dome, which had a different way of approaching the concerns of the Western Shoshone,” remembers Brian Mason, a member of the Western Shoshone, and now program manager of Native American Affairs for Barrick Gold Corporation.

Mason began his work in mining with Placer Dome’s environmental restoration department. Whenever Placer Dome opened the permitting process for a project, which includes public comment, it faced 200 to 300 objections from tribal members, he said. That led to lawsuits and court delays.

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[Klondex Mines/Nevada] Reprieve for an Ancient Site: A Mining Company and a Tribe Find a Way to Work Together – by Stephanie Woodard (In These Times.com – July 3, 2017)

http://inthesetimes.com/

Preparations are underway to hand over to Western Shoshones 3,269 acres of Native sacred sites in Nevada. “We’ll have prayers, dancing, drumming and food,” says Joseph Holley, councilman and former chairman of the Battle Mountain Band of the Te-Moak Tribe of Western Shoshones, in Nevada. “There will be time for Paul to talk about what’s been happening over the past eight years and how he is helping us protect this place.”

Holley is referring to Paul Huet, the chief executive officer of Klondex Mines, a Canadian firm that in late 2016 purchased an existing gold-mining operation within a Western Shoshone cultural landscape called Tosawihi (pronounced DOS-a-wee). Purchased as part of the mining deal, the portion that Klondex will hand over to the Battle Mountain Band on August 18 is a spiritual hub.

Though 83 percent of Nevada is owned by the federal government, the Klondex purchase and handover of this unusual tract will allow it to remain privately owned by those who value it most. The Battle Mountain Band will hold and administer the lands on behalf of all Shoshones, according to Holley.

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Mining 101: A brief history of the industry in Nevada – by Staff (Las Vegas Sun – February 1, 2016)

https://lasvegassun.com/

Less than 1 percent of Nevada’s land houses mining operations.
But the 167,000 acres that are being mined are spread across
almost the entire state. Only Carson City and Douglas County
have no mines. There are 110 mines in the state, and 2,230
companies connected to their operations.

Modern-day mining in Nevada is a high-tech business, not a get-rich-quick dream. Operators use drones to survey, monstrous trucks to haul and T-Rex-sized power shovels to chomp into the ground. Permits and environmental applications take years to approve.

Technology has transformed the business. But the first step remains the same: Stake a claim.

Unlike the old days, mining companies no longer can simply slam a post in the ground and own what’s below the surface dirt. To make a claim, mining companies must inform federal and state agencies that minerals are believed to be underground, pay a slate of fees, then begin a government application process that can last 10 years before a shovel hits the ground. There are two types of mining claims:

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How four Irishmen found the largest pot of silver ever known in Nevada – by Peter Garland M. A. (IrishCentral.com – June 12, 2017)

https://www.irishcentral.com/

Perhaps it was those millennia of experience that, in 1873, led four Irishmen – Mackay, Fair, Flood and O’Brien – to the Comstock Lode, the greatest pot of gold and silver the world has ever known. They located an enormous silver heart within Mount Davidson in Nevada.

The first to putter around above the great trove were a couple of surface gold miners named Peter O’Riley and Patrick McLaughlin. These men did not know about nor have the resources to mine down thousands of feet to the silver; they panned for gold and moved on, not realizing that a blue sand that clogged their simple wooden machinery, was in fact silver mixed with gold. Assayed later in 1859 by other men, this sand proved to be “almost a solid mass of silver,” and the silver rush was on.

Eventually it took stockholders, powerful machinery, new mining techniques, and millions of dollars to penetrate the pile and extract billions in silver and gold. Chief among those who pioneered and benefited from the lode were the four Irishmen.

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History of the Carlin Trend (Elko Daily Free Press – May 2, 2015)

http://m.elkodaily.com/

CARLIN — On May 4, 1965, with little fanfare, Newmont poured its first bar of gold from the Carlin Mine. The pomp and circumstance of the official commissioning of the mine would have to wait a few more weeks. That first bar marked the start of one of the largest and longest-lived mining districts in the world.

In summer 1961, geologists John Livermore and Alan Coope arrived in Carlin to visit the Blue Star mine and the Gold Quarry prospect. Livermore had recently heard a talk by U.S. Geological Survey geologist Ralph Roberts about an area in northern Eureka County that had the potential for hosting gold deposits. The type of deposit they were searching for was similar to Getchell, Gold Acres and Bootstrap, deposits in which the gold was dispersed as microscopic particles that could not be found using a gold pan.

After visiting and examining the local deposits, Livermore and Coope began exploring an area approximately 2¾ miles south of Blue Star on Popovich Hill. They postulated that gold would be found in the limestone rocks below a regional fault known as the Roberts Mountains Thrust.

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Nevada gold production increases in 2016 – by Adella Harding (Elko Daily Free Press – May 18, 2017)

http://elkodaily.com/

Gold production in Nevada rose 2.4 percent in 2016 to nearly 5.47 million ounces, while silver production was down 6.4 percent to a nearly 8.89 million ounces, show new figures from the Nevada Division of Minerals. Total gold production in 2015 was nearly 5.34 million ounces, and 2015 silver production totaled a little less than 9.5 million ounces.

“The value of production won’t be available until the Department of Taxation releases their Net Proceeds of Minerals bulletin,” however, said Michael Visher, deputy administrator for the minerals division, in an email in May.

The two largest gold producers were Barrick Gold Corp. and Newmont Mining Corp. Barrick produced nearly 2.64 million ounces of the total gold production and 200,757 ounces of silver from operations on the Carlin Trend, the Cortez operations near Crescent Valley and Turquoise Ridge in Humboldt County.

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OLD WEST LEGENDS: George Hearst – Father of a Mining & Publishing Empire (Legends of America – March 2014)

http://www.legendsofamerica.com/

Born near Sullivan, Missouri on September 3, 1820, to William and Elizabeth Collins Hearst, George was the oldest of three children. Two years later, his sister Martha (nicknamed Patsy,) was born and later a younger brother Philip arrived, who was unfortunately crippled from birth. From a young age, George worked on the family farm and received very little formal schooling.

Though Hearst was said to have had a lifelong interest in books, he had only rudimentary reading abilities. However, even without a formal education, Hearst was no dummy, as the world would soon see. When George was 26, his father William Hearst died owing some $10,000 to his creditors. George immediately took on the responsibility for caring for his mother, younger sister, and crippled brother.

Before long, George had improved on the farm’s profitability, opened a small store and leased a couple of prospective lead mines. The oldest economic endeavor in Missouri, lead had been mined in the area since 1715. Hearst had been interested in the mines since he was a child and once he bought the lead mines, he began to studying the mining business in earnest. His mines prospered, producing both lead and copper and within two years he was able to pay off his father’s debt.

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The Great Nevada Lithium Rush to Fuel the New Economy – by Paul Tullis (Bloomberg News – March 29, 2017)

https://www.bloomberg.com/

The race is on to get the mineral out of Clayton Valley and into your iPhones, Bolts, and Powerwalls.

John Rud has been riding the peaks and valleys of the commodities markets around North America since he left the University of Oregon 55 years ago with a master’s degree in geology. “The valleys are real broad, and the peaks are real narrow,” he likes to say. Copper in Canada. Silver in Texas. Gold in Mexico.

Iron in Arizona. Uranium in Utah. In one 18-year stretch, Rud and his wife moved 27 times. “I got to where I could load up a house in a U-Haul truck starting at 4 p.m., be done by midnight, and be on the next job by morning,” he says. “I considered that quite a talent.” (His wife was rather less impressed and eventually left him.)

Rud—pronounced like the adjective—typically shows up in an area with abundant stores of a natural element that looks set for a price spike, puts his geology skills to work finding a lode, files a claim under the General Mining Act of 1872, and waits for the phone to ring.

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World’s 10 Top Producing Gold Mines – by Paul Ausick (247 Wallst.com – January 22, 2017)

http://247wallst.com/

From a peak of more than $1,900 in mid-2011, gold prices dropped below $1,100 in 2015 before rising to around $1,400 last summer. On Friday, the February delivery price settled at $1,210.20, up about $100 since mid-December. The price of gold generally rises in periods of inflation and periods of economic uncertainty.

This is certainly one of the latter and may be the beginning of one of the former. The consumer price index topped 2% last week, and November’s election of Donald Trump as the 45th U.S.

President has presented investors with plenty of uncertainty. A strong dollar also tends to weigh on the price of gold, and Trump has made clear his belief that the dollar is overvalued compared with the Chinese yuan. If the dollar sinks, interest in gold rises.

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Nevada Day: 152 years of mining in Silver State – by Dana Bennett (Reno Gazette-Journal – October 28, 2016)

http://www.rgj.com/

Dana Bennett is President of the Nevada Mining Association.

Mining played a central role in the Silver State’s heritage. In the decades following statehood, mining boom and busts would affect the state’s population and economy. Mining districts like the Comstock, Rochester and Tonopah helped build the very foundations of Nevada history.

Nevada Day gives us an opportunity to celebrate Nevada’s rich heritage – mining and otherwise – but also provides for us a great opportunity to take a step back and realize how much Nevada has changed in the last 152 years.

It goes without saying since then the world has changed immeasurably, and today’s Nevada is barely recognizable. Nevada has become a home for high-tech manufacturing with companies like Tesla and Faraday moving in, and Nevada firms like Switch help connect people all over the world.

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Nevada mine opponents take water battle to appeals court – by Benjamin Spillman (Reno Gazette Journal – October 17, 2016)

http://www.rgj.com/

The battle to block development of a molybdenum mine in Nevada’s rural Diamond Valley is scheduled to resume Tuesday in San Francisco.

That’s where lawyers on both sides of the fight over the proposed Mt. Hope mine near Eureka will make arguments about the project opponents say will have a devastating effect on local water supplies.

“We are having some serious water issues in Diamond Valley right now so adding that mine would just be a huge mistake,” said Carolyn Bailey, whose family has been ranching and farming near the proposed mine site since 1863.

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[Barrick/Kinross] Mine makes way for wildlife – by Adella Harding (Elko Daily Free Press – August 26, 2016)

http://elkodaily.com/

Bald Mountain Mine south of the Ruby Mountains has started expansion work now that the U.S. Bureau of Land Management has approved an alternate plan that mitigates concerns about mule deer migration, including a major cut in the acreage that can be disturbed.

The plan also eases concerns about sage grouse habitat, wild horses and views from the Ruby Lake National Wildlife Refuge. “Water also was one of those considerations,” said Jill Moore, Bristlecone Field Office manager for the Ely BLM district.

The chosen alternative will disturb 3,097 acres, compared with the original proposal for an expansion that would disturb 7,097 acres. “That’s a 56 percent reduction in proposed disturbance,” said Stephanie Trujillo, assistant field manager for the Ely BLM District’s Bristlecone Field Office. “A lot of it is environmental impact reduction.”

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Commentary: Western officials fear new EPA rules could cripple mining operations – by Thomas Mitchell (Elko Daily Free Press – August 24, 2016)

http://elkodaily.com/

There is growing fear among officials across the West that in the waning days of the Obama administration his Environmental Protection Agency may enact regulations that could cost the hard rock mining industry billions of dollars, jeopardizing jobs and entire communities.

Earlier this year, the EPA, as is its wont, settled a lawsuit from a passel of self-styled environmental groups by agreeing to write further regulations requiring additional financial assurances — in the form of expensive surety bonds — that mining sites will be adequately cleaned up and reclaimed at the end of operations.

The court gave the EPA until Dec. 1 to write these new rules. Lest we forget, it was the geniuses at the EPA who bungled the reclamation of the Gold King mine near Silverton, Colo., a year ago, dumping millions of gallons of toxic-metal-laced pollutants into the Animas River, turning it a bright yellow.

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