Store Nor­ske Gull (SNG), daugh­ter of the mining com­pa­ny Store Nor­ske Spits­ber­gen Kull­kom­pa­ni, has coll­ec­ted rock samples along the west coast of Spits­ber­gen, bet­ween Kongsfjord and St. Jons­fjord, hoping to find gold occur­ren­ces of eco­no­mic­al value for poten­ti­al future mining.

SNG had alre­a­dy inves­ti­ga­ted depo­sits north of Kongsfjord in 2003, but the explo­ra­ti­on was stop­ped in 2004 on a poli­ti­cal level: the vici­ni­ty to both the Nor­thwest Spits­ber­gen Natio­nal Park and the rese­arch faci­li­ties in Ny Åle­sund made com­mer­cial dril­ling and poten­ti­al acti­vi­ties on an indus­tri­al level unde­si­ra­ble. 

Source: Sval­bard­pos­ten