Alaska mining on the rise

Rising metal prices sparked the Alaska mining industry last year, according to the Geological Survey of Alaska.

The total value of mineral exploration, development, and production is expected to hit US$1.05 billion in 2003 after final figures are added up. That would be a 2% gain from the year before, the report says, and it would be the eighth straight year mineral production in Alaska has hit the US$1-billion dollar mark.

Payments to the state have not yet been calculated, but in 2002 the state netted US$5.5 million from fees, rent and royalties from the mining industry. The figure for 2001 was US$7 million.

Prices for gold, zinc, silver and lead all shot up in the fourth quarter of last year, pushing the mining industry’s production value up.

The Greens Creek silver mine near Juneau achieved record production for the second consecutive year, while tons milled at the Red Dog lead-zinc mine near Kotzebue and at Fort Knox gold mine in Fairbanks declined slightly.

Exploration took place across Alaska, with the most funds being spent in the southwest and southeast. Companies spent more than US$12 million on exploration projects for gold and other precious metals.

Most exploration money was targeted at Northern Dynasty’s Pebble copper-gold project in Southwest Alaska, Kinross Gold’s Fairbanks mining district gold projects in the Interior, and at Union Bay in the southeast, about 50 km north of Ketchikan, the report said. Union Bay is a platinum- copper-nickel project operated by Freegold Ventures and Lonmin.

Some 2,500 people were employed full-time in Alaska’s mining industry last year — about 325 fewer than in 2002.

— The preceding is from an information bulletin published by the Geological Survey of Alaska.