Message: World Gold Production to stabilize - for the short term only!
World gold production to stabilise
Brendan Ryan | Mon, 01 Feb 2010 19:55
[miningmx.com] -- THE jump in the gold price would result in a temporary halt to the current decline in gold production until about 2013/14. Addressing the Mining Indaba Conference being held in Cape Town on Monday, Credit Suisse Standard Securities analyst David Davis said this production would come from a number of large projects now being built by major gold producers. “These are new mines each of which will produce between 500,000oz and 1 million ounces (m oz) of gold annually and will, in total, contribute about 4.5m oz to 5m oz to total world annual production by 2015. “As a result we can expect the decline that has taken place in world production since 2001 to be halted and we could see a slight uptick in production. “However, after 2013/2014 I would expect to see gold production return to a declining trend dropping by about 2.5% annually,” Davis added. He said fewer, large new gold discoveries were being made by exploration geologists and those that were being located tended to be lower grade ore bodies situated in higher risk regions of the world. Davis commented, “new exploration discoveries have not fully replaced consumption of gold reserves through production from about 2000.” He also highlighted the soaring costs of gold exploration work pointing out that the cost of replacing gold resources/reserves had risen from around $10/oz in 1986 to $52/oz in 2008.
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