Andrea Markey
Northern News Services

Yellowknife (Nov 09/05) - The 33rd annual geoscience forum in Yellowknife next week will be the largest ever - by far.

More than 800 delegates and exhibitors are expected to be registered by this time next week, compared with approximately 700 last year, said Mike Vaydik, general manager of the NWT and Nunavut Chamber of Mines.

Exhibitors will include Northern aviation, expediting and supply companies hoping to tap into, or stay in, the exploration and mining market. National and international companies are also on the list of exhibitors.

"The metal markets are up, the demand is up, prices are up and the search for diamonds and gold goes on," Vaydik said, adding the forum has been growing each year over the last 10 years.

"What's new this year, particularly, is the resurgence of interest in uranium."

New interest in nickel, copper and silver are also drawing people to the NWT and Nunavut.

"The North still represents the last real frontier geology in Canada that's been really underexplored and undermapped," he said. "It has incredible potential and will probably continue having it for a long time."

A session on petroleum will focus on the geology and what people are finding, but the issue of the pipeline will be at the back of everyone's mind, he said.

"Imperial (Oil) is supposed to make a decision on Nov. 18, the day after the session ends," Vaydik said.

Hope Bay and Meadowbank gold properties in Nunavut are advancing, as is the Yellowknife Gold Project at the old Discovery site.

Regulatory agencies in the North will discuss streamlining guidelines and procedures to make it easier to work through the permitting process, he said.

Mine reclamation and closure procedures and research on caribou and other wildlife will also be discussed, one of the reasons so many people will be attending, he said.

The forum started out three decades ago as a meeting of geologists and prospectors that used to happen in the late fall after the season's work was done at freeze-up, he said.

"It is becoming increasingly difficult to try to shoehorn people into the Capitol Theatre and school gymnasiums," he said.

"It sure would be nice to have a convention centre. If the forum gets too much larger I don't know what we are going to do."

The public is invited to hear a non-technical talk on the nuclear fuel cycle on Nov. 15 at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre.