Alaska Native Corporation sponsor minerals: grassroots efforts uncover new prospects.

• Author: Bradner, Mike
• Position: ALASKA NATIVE BUSINESS

Although Alaska's producing mines are doing fine, the states mining exploration industry is still in the doldrums, a problem created by current gold prices, weakness in the industry worldwide, and the difficulty of raising money on stock exchanges like Vancouver's, which specialize in mining shares.

Exploration spending in Alaska is expected to be sharply down this year, according to the Alaska Miners Association.

Into this vacuum, however, have stepped Alaska Native corporations that have large landholdings with mineral potential. Several corporations are now stepping forward and initiating exploration programs on their own lands and with their own funds.

The goal for most is to do "grassroots" work to uncover new prospects and reduce risks for potential industry partners, which the corporations still want to attract.

Doyon, Limited

Doyon, Limited, one of the nation's largest private landowners with 12 million acres, is sponsoring limited exploration in several areas, according to Jim Mery, Doyon's lands vice president. The targets include the traditional precious metals like gold but also platinum group metals and rare earths, Mery says.

One area of interest is in the eastern Interior. Doyon is focusing in areas relatively near the existing road system, within a seventy-mile corridor--thirty-five miles each direction--from the road system, so as to reduce costs and risks for potential partners.

Another area is more remote, east of the Dalton on the south flanks of the Brooks Range. Yet another area Doyon will explore is north of Rampart west of the Dalton Highway.

Doyon is also interested in oil and gas exploration and has led efforts to explore the Nenana Basin, which is west of Fairbanks, and in the Yukon Flats north of the Interior city. As with its current mineral exploration, Doyon has put substantial amounts of its own financial resources toward its exploration.

In the Nenana Basin Doyon has drilled two exploration wells, one in a consortium with partners and a second on its own. The results have been encouraging although a commercial oil or gas deposit has not yet been found. Doyon is now planning a third well that the company will fund as a result of very encouraging results from a 3D seismic program completed late in 2014.

Significantly, the Nenana Basin project is on lands on which Doyon has conventional oil and gas leases and is also near existing infrastructure such as a road built near the site as well as the Parks Highway...