Gilmore Expansion at Fort Knox: 'We're not standing still'.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: MINING SPECIAL SECTION / FORT KNOX

One of the highlights of a visit to the Fort Knox gold mine is posing at the end of the tour with a gold bar produced at the mine. The value of the bar, which weighs 257.1 troy ounces, has fluctuated over the years with the price of gold: $98,000 in September 2003; $484,170 in September 2011; $307,372 in September 2018.

Holding an object in your hand that's worth more than your house leaves an indelible impression. But a couple of years ago it was looking like the gold bar, the mine, and the millions of dollars it brings to the Fairbanks economy were coming to an end. Fort Knox was running out of gold.

But even while the mine's operators were publicly planning to shut down mill operations in 2017 and ready the heap-leach facility to accept its final loads of ore in 2020, they continued to look at additional prospects in the area, including drilling 205 holes at Gilmore, adjacent to the western edge of the existing pit. Those efforts, which started in 2014, paid off.

In June, Kinross President and CEO J. Paul Rollinson announced plans for a $100 million Gilmore expansion that would keep the mine open until 2030.

"We are pleased to proceed with the initial Fort Knox Gilmore project, a low-risk, low-cost brownfield expansion that is expected to extend mine life to 2030 at one of our top performing operations and contribute 1.5 million gold equivalent ounces to strengthen our long-term US production profile," Rollinson states.

The mine, located twenty-five miles northeast of Fairbanks, began commercial operations in 1996 amid reports the site held 4 million ounces of proven and probable reserves over an expected mine life of eight to ten years. A combination of high-efficiency mining methods, new technology, and new ore discoveries added years and millions of ounces of gold to the original estimates. By the time Fort Knox (owned by Toronto-based Kinross Gold Corporation) celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 2016, it had more than doubled its original estimated lifespan and produced more than 6 million ounces of gold.

The Gilmore expansion comprises 709 acres on the existing mine's western border. But while Kinross had the mineral rights to the land, it couldn't act on them until the land was transferred from federal to state ownership. That process, which required cooperation between Kinross, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources, the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the US Department of Interior, the Bureau of Land Management, and Alaska's congressional delegation, was...