An engineer at a gold mine near Fairbanks will serve as the next manager of the Palmer Project, the exploratory mixed-metals mining operation northwest of Haines.
Constantine Metal Resources on June 6 named Ernst “Ernie” Siemoneit as Palmer’s next project manager and senior engineer.
“Ernie will help refine and execute plans to support this summer’s testing and work activity while supporting planning for 2023 onwards,” said Constantine CEO and president Garfield MacVeigh in a written statement to the CVN.
Before joining Constantine, Siemoneit was chief engineer at the Pogo Gold Mine, an underground mine about 90 miles southeast of Fairbanks and one of six producing mines in Alaska.
Siemoneit is based in Fairbanks but is working at both Constantine’s Haines office and the Palmer site, which is in the Glacier Creek Valley, several miles up logging roads from the 26 Mile Haines Highway bridge.
“Ernie has very broad and diverse experience in community relations, permitting, mining, construction and compliance,” MacVeigh said. He has worked in the mining industry for 30 years.
Siemoneit could not be reached for comment. According to his LinkedIn profile, he worked at Pogo from 2005 to 2010 and again starting in 2016.
In the intervening years, he was an engineer for Arizona-based mining company Freeport McMoRan and mine manager at the Big Gossan Mine, an underground copper-gold-silver mine in Indonesia.
Constantine Vice President for Exploration Michael Vande Guchte had been filling the project manager position since Darwin Green, former company vice president and project manager, left in 2019 with HighGold Mining, an exploratory mining company that spun out of Constantine.
Earlier this spring, Constantine announced its biggest annual project budget to date for the Palmer prospect, including plans to build a camp for 50 to 60 workers this summer at the property.
The company intends to begin underground exploration next summer