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Gold mining is becoming relevant again due to rising prices. PHOTO: Reuters
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Due to the high price of the metal in the United States, Canada and Northern Ireland, abandoned mines are back in operation
Economic uncertainty and the COVID-19 pandemic are about to cause a new gold rush and take the world back 170 years.
The precious metal is becoming more expensive, and the decision of the US Federal Reserve not to raise the key interest rate, which reduced the yield on government bonds and deposit accounts, makes gold an increasingly attractive investment.
There are still 63,000 tons of gold deposits in America, which is one third of what has been extracted so far, experts estimate.
All this makes some companies buy old mines and try to reopen them. This is also happening in the state of California, where there are still many gold deposits. For example, one of the mines in Nevada County was closed in 1956, but not because the gold was depleted.
The reasons were political and economic – in 1944 the Bretton Woods agreement created a new international monetary system to stabilize exchange rates. Then the decision was made to fix the price of gold at $ 35 per ounce of 28 grams, which makes the extraction of the metal unprofitable. Now, however, the situation is different and its price is no longer fixed.
At the same time, gold mining technologies are improving and reviving the sector in places where it had died out – not only in the United States, but also in Canada and Northern Ireland, where mines are coming back into operation.
Despite the new technologies, however
it’s harder today to be extracted gold so being a lot deeply
This results in hundreds of tons of waste in the upper layers, which often contain heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury and lead.
Companies are trying to find a solution to this problem. For example, the mining company Rise Gold uses a technique called paste to fill mine shafts, which it tries to mitigate its impact on the environment. This paste includes water mixed with mining waste and cement, which is injected into the mining tunnels and helps reduce aboveground ore waste.
The company operates in Grasse Valley, Nevada, but there are still many skeptics who are still struggling with the damage caused by the previous gold rush.
And although investing in gold is considered a safe haven, a lot
economists are insecure in profitability
of renewed demand for gold. The reason is that the metal eventually ends up in bank vaults. To a large extent, the price of a mineral also depends on the cost of extracting it, so companies need to be well aware of their profits from starting a new gold rush.
This is also being ignited in the Australian state of Victoria. In the past year, companies have spent a record $ 149 million on rabies research, an increase of 83% over the previous year.
The Victoria Gold Rush occurred between the early 1950s and the late 1960s. During this time, Australia’s population has almost tripled, and Victoria dominates the world in gold mining and is rapidly developing its economy.
To date, the state government has issued about 300 mining licenses, most of them for gold, which cover much of Victoria. These licenses grant exclusive rights to search for minerals in a specific area.
However, once the gold is discovered, it will take about 10 more years to build a mine, and most of the research does not lead to mining.
Currawong Resources is one of many exploration companies exploring the same lands from which gold was mined more than a century ago, hoping to replicate Victoria’s glorious history. However, as in America, companies face the same environmental problems, although mining companies are now subject to strict environmental regulations and have to carry out extensive rehabilitation activities after completing extraction or exploration.
Studies today discover and other riches
– machines and even everyday objects in mining huts abandoned many years ago. This gives a new path to Victoria’s historical research, and archaeologists say it could help us learn much over the next few years about the lives and histories of the miners and communities that shaped the state’s gold rush.
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