Gold deposits beg for capital
Mineweb
Author: Barry Sergeant
Posted:Thursday,22 Oct 2009
JOHANNESBURG -
It sometimes seems that the higher the gold bullion price rises(certainly in dollar terms), the stranger the stories that come outabout gold bullion (of course), but also about gold miners, explorersand developers. Just this week, Marc Davis, wrotethat: "Only a tiny handful of huge gold discoveries have been madeworldwide in the last decade, which experts say is because virtuallyall the juiciest low-hanging fruit has been picked some time ago".
No doubt that is true, but there are other things that could also betrue. Leaving aside recent discoveries for a moment, a good number ofthe world's biggest gold deposits are not being mined to the full, ornot being mined at all. The top runners include the WitwatersrandBasin, still the world's biggest gold province, but with the metalfound increasingly at depth, where it may be uneconomic from a costviewpoint, and simply too dangerous to extract.
**
The challenge is not so much finding new gold deposits, but findingones that can produce serious free cash flow. Despite record highdollar gold bullion prices, few gold miners anywhere in the world areproducing genuine free cash flows.
**
As for the apparent dearth of fresh discoveries, there are hundreds ofmillions of established gold ounces waiting for project funding formine building. A selection of 43 gold stocks listed around the worldrenders up a total of 427m ounces of gold resources, valued byinvestors at an average of US$57.88/oz, a fraction, to push thedefinition a little, of the prevailing gold price.
full article
https://www.mineweb.co.za/mineweb/view/mineweb/en/page33?oid=91112&sn=Detail#
Any news about the finalizing the MOU, the mining license, or production soon Chuck?