What COVID-19 May Mean for This Exploration Season
BY CURT FREEMAN EDITOR’S NOTE: Curt Freeman recently retired after many decades working in and writing about Alaska mining. He offered his insight into what the pandemic shutdown will mean for Alaska Miners. I write this from my home office here in Fairbanks, where I have worked for more than a month. I have a daughter who is a nurse who told me to take the COVID virus seriously, so I did. I am supposed to be retired but I have found plenty of colleagues and business associates that want to keep me busy, for which I am grateful. One surprise that has grown from the fact that many in our industry are working from home is the collective realization that “the office” is always accessible. Having started my consulting career working from home, I quickly realized this and moved into a standalone office at the earliest economic opportunity. Back then (sometime in the Jurassic), I had a land line phone. No computer, modem, wireless, cell phone, etc. Now, I have found myself spending long hours on video conferences, sometimes at 2 a.m., sometimes at 8 a.m. and sometimes at 9 p.m., depending on who is on the video link and who is being inconvenienced the least. While we can’t do boots on the outcrop that way, we can do almost everything else including 3-D virtual tours from drones, surface and underground mine tours with a Go-cam and similar applications. Life goes on and I suspect, when things return to “normal” (whatever that is), many of the practices we are utilizing and become comfortable with now will continue to be utilized because they are the new normal. One other observation I can offer. Being a nosy Parker by genetics, I speak often with colleagues and friends involved in the Alaskan mining industry. The question always comes up: “What do you think is going to happen this year to the exploration industry here in Alaska?” In early March, I would have said, get your boots on and grab your hammer, our exploration season will be little affected, if at all. Now, six weeks later, I realize that was whistling past the cemetery. I now use the analogy posited by DocRx, a regular contributor to the website Seeking Alpha, who felt a recovery of our general economy will be equivalent to an airplane that loses an engine and goes into a steep dive. While it is possible to recover from the lost engine,
the pullout and climb back to altitude will not be anywhere as steep and the dive down, it will be a long slow rise back to altitude. I think that is the recovery the Alaska mining industry is facing. Looking back through the five market crashes and resurrections my career has spanned, I can recognize that
steep, rapid downward plunge (the crash) and the shallow prolonged upward trajectory (the recovery), even though each crash was caused by something different and the recovery tools used to regain altitude were also different. So I do not expect a rapid recovery from the COVID crash, but I do expect a recovery, and being the naked capitalist that I am, I, like a few others I know, are looking to follow the advice “Buy your straw hats in the winter.” In other words, when the market turns down, think about the future, when (not if) the markets are back up and the insatiable demand for mined products resumes. Act accordingly. Enough from my vantage point overlooking the Tanana Valley; got a video conference shortly. Hope you and your family are well and safe and remain that way! Curt is a registered professional geologist who has lived and worked in Alaska and other parts of the world since 1980. From 1985 until his retirement in February of this year, he managed Avalon Development Corp., a Fairbanks-based mineral consulting company. Although officially retired from the consulting business, Curt remains active in the industry in Alaska and elsewhere.
For Sale: Turnkey Placer Mine
Located Near Ruby, Alaska
13 State of Alaska mining claims, comprising 760 acres, for sale with turnkey mining operation on Greenstone Creek, Ruby Mining District, Alaska. Road accessible ~35 miles from Ruby. Producing gold by current owners since 2016 from very shallow placer deposit. Complete equipment kit includes trommel, conveyors, dozers, excavators, loaders, pumps, gensets, 10 cy dump truck, 2.5 ton truck, and 7 person camp. Permitted through 2023. Sale price for all is USD$1,000,000. No JVs, partial payments, or promoters. Please contact: Ed Alfke at 1-(403) 831-3939 for more information.
www.alaskaminers.org I The Alaska Miner I May 2020
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