NovaGold Closes US$69 Million of US$75 Million Financing

VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA--(Marketwire - Jan. 22, 2009) - NovaGold Resources Inc. (the "Company" or "NovaGold") (TSX:NG)(NYSE Alternext US:NG) announced today that it has closed its US$60 million private placement with Electrum Strategic Resources LLC ("Electrum") as previously announced on January 2, 2009. A total of 46,153,847 Units were sold to Electrum at a price of US$1.30 per Unit for gross proceeds of US$60 million. Each Unit consists of one common share of NovaGold and one common share purchase warrant of NovaGold ("Warrant"). Each Warrant entitles the holder to acquire one common share of NovaGold for an exercise price of US$1.50 prior to 5:00 p.m. (EST) on January 21, 2013. The Company also announced today that it has closed a majority of the additional US$15 million private placement previously announced on January 6, 2009. A total of 6,980,769 Units were sold for gross proceeds of approximately US$9,075,000. The Company expects to close the balance of the US$15 million financing later today and will, upon receipt of funds, issue an additional 4,557,692 Units. On completion, the Company will have received aggregate gross proceeds of US$75 million from the financings.

The Company also announced that it has received a Notice of Conversion from Auramet Trading, LLC ("Auramet") to convert an additional approximately US$6.3 million principal amount outstanding under the bridge loan from Auramet to 5,000,000 common shares of NovaGold. Following this conversion the principal amount outstanding under the bridge loan will be approximately US$7.3 million. NovaGold has delivered to Auramet a prepayment notice which states that, unless Auramet exercises its right to convert within ten days, the remaining approximately US$7.3 million principal of the bridge loan will be repaid from the proceeds of the financing. Auramet has advised the Company that it intends to convert all of the remaining principal amount of the bridge loan into approximately 5.7 million additional common shares prior to repayment. To date, no binding Notice of Conversion has been received by the Company for this additional conversion.

The net proceeds of the financing will be used to repay any outstanding principal, not converted into common shares of NovaGold, and interest owing under the bridge loan from Auramet, to finance continuing exploration and development activities at NovaGold's Donlin Creek gold project in Alaska, and the Company's Galore Creek copper-gold project in British Columbia, and to further examine, develop and, if warranted, re-activate the Rock Creek Mine near Nome, Alaska and for general corporate purposes.

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