Many reserves still unexploited due to extreme depth, tech limitations
Another enormous gold deposit was discovered in East China's Shandong Province, about two weeks after the discovery of China's first undersea gold mine in the same province.
The newly discovered deposit contains 328 tons of gold and is located in Laizhou, Shandong. It is the 31st gold mine discovered this year in the city of Yantai, which administers Laizhou. The total of deposits in the area has now reached 979 tons, spread across regions and districts including Laizhou and Mouping, local news portal shm.com.cn reported.
The current price of gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange is 221.1 yuan ($34.6) per gram for gold with fitness of 9999, which means the newest mine is worth about 72 billion yuan.
Approximately two weeks ago, the Shandong Provincial No.3 Institute of Geographical and Mineral Surveying said it found a gold mine with about 470 tons of reserves 2 kilometers under the north coastal waters near Sanshan Island in the Bohai Sea, the People's Daily reported.
However, about 80 percent of the newly found gold mines have been discovered through deep ore prospecting. Due to ground temperature limitations and other technological limitations, such deep deposits are difficult to mine, according to experts.
"The cost of shallow mining is lower; the deeper the mining, the higher the cost. The actual mining time is related to the international gold price, the amount of investment and the maturity of mining technology," an anonymous official with the Yantai Bureau of Land and Resources told shm.com.cn.
"The depth of gold mining in our country is no more than 1.5 kilometers, but some of the mines found in Yantai are more than 2 kilometers deep and cannot be excavated currently," said the official.
"Drilling holes into underground rocks that are more than 1000 meters deep is a big challenge," project manager Zhang Junjin, who led the team that discovered the undersea gold mine, told the People's Daily.
"Normally in China, gold mine prospection is conducted within 800 meters underground. The discovery of a gold deposit lying 2,000 meters under the ocean floor provides incentive for new drilling technology for future gold mining."
As of the end of 2012, deposits of gold in the Chinese mainland had reached about 8196.24 tons. China's gold resources are concentrated in the east and central regions of the country, media reported.
Because of the decline in the price of gold since 2013, many Chinese gold mining corporations are facing difficulties. Some media reports claimed that some gold mines have been closed as a result.
Zhu Zhigang, a gold expert, told news site cb.com.cn that when the gold market was booming, many mine owners did not care about cost and adopted expansive management systems, so when the market took a downturn, their original way of operating created problems.
"China's discovered gold reserves rank third in the world, but the country's production of gold has ranked first for the past seven consecutive years. One of the most important reasons for this is predatory exploitation," Zhu said.
