Alaska's Mining Industry: 'Resilient, innovative, and proud'.

• Author: Crockett, Deantha
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION Mining - Industry overview

I've been fortunate enough to live in Alaska my entire life. I'm proud to call this state home, and I'm equally proud to represent Alaska's mining industry. This year brought change to our industry on so many fronts, and among these changes a theme emerged: mining is an industry with the potential for significant growth, which would mean more good jobs, more revenue, and more diversity for the economy on a local, state, and national level.

Changes? I'm glad you asked. As this year's field season (from approximately May to October when Alaska's environment allows us to explore the land) drew to a close, it became apparent that 2017 brought a significant up-tick in interest in the state's mining industry. Increased activity at exploration copper, zinc, and precious metals projects from the Ambler Mining District above the Arctic Circle to the polymetallic Palmer Project near Haines in Southeast showed that companies are interested in furthering Alaska's promising mineral development projects toward operation. In Southwest Alaska, we saw an additional drilling program at the Donlin Gold Project to obtain more ore samples for geochemical analysis, and the Environmental Protection Agency's actions to withdraw prior preemptive veto actions at Pebble have given the copper, gold, and molybdenum project new life as additional drilling took place to update permit application data. North of Fairbanks, Livengood Gold continued project optimization and in early spring released a new prefeasibility study for its identified 20 million ounces of reserves. On Prince of Wales Island, the Dotson Ridge Rare Earths Project continued pursuit of its ore separating technology and the Niblack Project continued marketing its proven polymetallic reserves to investors.

Exploration activity is so welcome to Alaska not only for its potential to further new mines but also because the immediate economic benefits largely stay in Alaska. Exploration activity by nature includes the necessity of flight services, lodges and camps, and food services providers that are chiefly provided by Alaska businesses and individuals. This wasn't contained to just the development projects described above--exploration of new deposits and early-stage projects across Alaska ensued this field season, again signaling that the eyes of investors are on Alaska and what its geology has to offer.

I believe the reason behind the positive changes in mineral investment in Alaska has many facets, but two...