The mining industry is a big spender and serious income-earner in the Territories. In 1987, the total value of metallic mineral shipments from the Northwest Territories was estimated at $789 million. About $439.7 million worth of minerals was produced in the Yukon, mostly from the lead/zinc mine at Faro. (Total Canadian metal production in 1987 was valued at $11 billion.) That same year, mining and exploration companies spent about $168 million in goods and services in the Northwest Territories. But mine output is declining in N.W.T., largely because of the closure of Pine Point.
Still, the future looks promising. Exploration interest in gold, platinum, uranium and rare earths (not to mention base metals) translated into a doubling of expenditures in the Northwest Territories to $70 million in 1987. The hunt for gold attracted $61 million of the total 1987 outlay.
In 1989, the big projects to watch are Neptune Resources’ Colomac play (a potential 200,000-oz-per-year producer) and the Tundra deposit owned by Noranda Inc. and Getty Resources. People are fond of calling Tundra the country’s largest undeveloped gold deposit.
So in spite of its disadvantages, the north and the hardy folk that inhabit the land can expect miners and their advance scouts, the prospectors, to be drilling and poking about the tundra for years to come. Editor Cross-Cuts
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