Don’t take it as an exaggeration, but a deposit of gold ore that has been recently discovered in China isn’t just giant but a supergiant. So much so that Chinese experts like to claim that it could be the largest deposit of any precious metal – not just gold that’s in existence today making it the largest gold mine in the world.
So how big is this supergiant deposit that happens to be located under the Wangu gold field in the Hunan province? Experts happen to estimate it to be at 1,100 tons.
As per the Chinese state media, a team of geologists went on to detect more than 40 gold veins of almost 330 tons of gold ore that dipped 6,600 feet deep under the Wangu gold field located in the Pingjiang County. However, 3D modeling happens to blow that number out of the water, showing that there could be almost 1,100 tons as deep as 9,800 feet. If the models are correct, the deposit could be worth almost $83 billion.
Adding some more weight to the already heavy find was a report that the new discovery goes on to feature 138 grams of gold per metric ton of ore, which is a valuable rate not often found in gold mining. There are many drilled rock cores that showed visible gold, confirmed an ore-prospecting expert with Hunan Province’s Geological Bureau, Chen Rulin, as per the Chinese state media.
If the 1,100-ton figure is true, that makes this new find the largest gold mine in the world, even outpacing the South Deep gold mine of South Africa, with its 1,025 tons of gold, as per Mining Technology. Mines across Indonesia, New Guinea, and Russia, as well as Chile, round out the top five gold mines throughout the world. The Carlin Trend and Cortez gold mines, which are both located in Nevada in the U.S., happen to be ranked sixth and tenth across the world.
Historically, it is worth noting that the world has mined almost 233,000 tons of gold, all of it still around in some form or other, and two-thirds of that mining has already taken place since 1950.
Apparently, already the top gold producer of the world with approximately 10% of global production, China happens to be quite heavily dependent on the metal, by way of using almost three times more gold as compared to what it mines per year. A rate that high needs the country to buy so much gold from other countries that it is also the top importer of the valuable metal in the world. This new discovery has already gone on to put the gold markets across the world on notice, which is indeed enough so that the price of gold increased to $2,700 per ounce, as per the CCN portal.
And the fact is that the gold news may not stop there. As per the vice head of the bureau, Liu Yongjun, additional gold ore was discovered when drilling around the peripheral areas of the site.