The Upper Kobuk Mineral Project seeks to develop a large and remote copper/zinc/gold/silver deposits in the northwestern Arctic. The project is focused on two areas, the Bornite deposit and the Arctic deposit. The Arctic metal sulfide deposit includes an estimated 17 million tons of ore, composed of 4% copper, 6% zinc, 0.8 g/t gold and 60 g/t silver. NovaGold Resources Inc purchased the rights to the project in January 2010 and in October 2011 reached an agreement with NANA Regional Corporation for access to more deposits nearby. This agreement resulted in changing the name from the Ambler Prospect to the Upper Kobuk Mineral Project. This was followed by a split in NovaGold with this project now being managed by NovaCopper.
The project property now covers around 445,000 acres and is located 180 miles southeast of Red Dog Mine and about 140 miles east of Kotzebue. Exploration on this property was intermittent from 1965 to 1998 and then began in earnest in 2003. While no specific mining plans have been produced, the technical report prepared by NovaGold only considered an underground mine, partly as a way to mitigate the expected acid mine drainage at the site.
Development of this deposit could be facilitated by an access road (the Ambler Mining District Access project 5 MB) currently being considered under the state's "Roads to Resources" plan. Power would likely come from diesel generation or wind, although some hydro projects have been discussed (e.g. Kogoluktuk).
NovaGold has begun preliminary environmental studies and resources assessments in the area. In Feburary 2011, NovaGold announced that they were in preparations "for a significantly expanded field season in 2011" and moving towards a pre-feasability study. A preliminary economic assessment released in April, 2011 estimated total "payable metal production" over the life of the mine at 1.7 billion pounds of copper, 2.0 billion pounds of zinc, 291 million pounds of lead, 266,000 ounces of gold and 22 million ounces of silver.
| Exploration: | |
|---|---|
| 2010 | Environmental studies (wetlands mapping, water quality, fisheries, geohazard). |
| 2011 | Significant drilling program consisting of around 13 holes at the Bornite deposit. |
By David Coil, Elizabeth Lester, Bretwood Higman, Ground Truth Trekking
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Date Created: Sat, 31 Jul 2010 14:51:41 -0800
Last Modified: Sun, 13 May 2012 21:06:10 -0800
NANA and Novagold have signed an agreement which would allow joint exploration of two deposits in the Ambler mining district.
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