Infographic: the mining and supply of gold
Visualcapitalist has put together an infographic on the mining processes of gold. Click below for a full-size image of part two of a four part series and click here for part I.
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3 Comments
calumcoburn
Love the graphical parts.
Pity about the authors being ignorant as to the real gold facts. This looks like a schoolboy litany of errors, vacuuming up all the ‘official’ propaganda figures he could find and treating them as truths. For starters, considering we have more sea than land, and the geological formations are similar on both for gold production in our earth’s crust, how on earth did they come with up such a paltry under sea figure? The world gold counsel banking family owned misinformers would have us believe that there’s only 171k tons of gold in existence. Do the simple math of all gold that’s ever been mined and you’ll arrive at a figure at least double this value.
Why use the ridiculous ‘official’ figures for China’s gold, when China firstly hasn’t updated their gold reserve holdings for some years, and a simple calculation reveals that even if you were foolish enough to take into account their ‘reported’ imports plus local production (which doesn’t leave their borders) their official holdings are a fraction of their real holdings. Reports from sources in the know reveal that China has imported THOUSANDS of tons of gold so far in 2012, very little of it has gone reported.
Also, since the US has not had its gold audited for DECADES, what makes you think that Fort Knox holds anything more than cyanide and the secret that the FED and the families that own the FED now own the US tax payers gold stash?
Where’s two of the biggest gold stashes: the Vatican and Russia’s? Both have a vast underground labyrinth with thousands of tons stashed away.
Golddigger
This is a bit silly. In one place they tell us that because the average grade of deposits is going down over time means that high-grade deposits are harder to find, yet elsewhere they tell us that the increase in gold price has lead to an increase in primary (mine) production.
Gee, I wonder if the latter has any influence on the grade that is mined? It is simply logical that when the price goes up, you put you shovel where the grade is lower, ’cause that rock now pays its way through the mill. Any conclusions about grade of deposits discovered is spurious from these data.
But nice cartoons.
Kenny223
You’re equating discovery with production in whatever argument you’re trying to make.. It IS true that higher grade deposits are not being FOUND as often nor are they as high of grade than those in the past. There is ZERO doubt about that. And it means that gold will have a supply ceiling.
Companies may decide to process the lower grade stuff from a deposit that has higher grade stuff because they know they’ll be able to get more $ for it in the future… but that’s an insignificant point compared to the total supply picture.