Satellite Pictures Reveal One Million Tonne Gold Mine In Chile

Ananova ^ | 12-07-2002

[blam]

Satellite pictures reveal one million tonne gold mine in Chile

Pictures taken by a NASA satellite have revealed a one million tonne gold mine in Chile.

Called La copa de oro, the mine is on a mountain on a place called Maricunga.

Engineer Gabriel Perez told Las Ultimas Noticias online the mine, which has been found by the Landsat satellite, could be active for the next 400 years.

Mr Pere is to lead of a team of experts who will investigate the mine.

He said: "I am sure we have finally found the gold Spanish settlers were after when they dug the mountains in Chile."

Story filed: 15:02 Saturday 7th December 2002

[blam]

I don't expect that we'll get a good science report on this until at least monday.

Will someone put a dollar value on this find? Thanks.

[Fish out of Water]

bump

[dalereed]

There is no way that the ore mass and grade can be determined from a satalite foto, someone is dreaming.

[dennisw]

At today's prices my estimate is this mine would throw off a profit of 100 billion USD.

[muawiyah]

Those bad boys start working that mine and the price of gold will collapse - plenty big time!

[razorback-bert]

The Maricunga belt is a region containing abundant gold-silver prospects located in the Andean Cordillera of northern Chile between latitudes 26 30' and 28 00' S and longitudes 69 00' and 69 30' W. The Maricunga belt covers a north-northeast chain of andesitic to dacitic volcanoes that was part of a late Oligocene-Miocene continental margin plutonic-volcanic arc. Gold in the Maricunga belt occurs predominately in epithermal acid-sulfate gold-silver deposits and porphyry gold deposits. At Refugio, a geologic resource of approximately 250 million tonnes at an average grade of about 1 g/t gold occurs in the Verde and Pancho porphyry gold deposits. Gold is associated with quartz veinlets hosted by subvolcanic porphyry stocks of intermediate composition. The mineable oxide reserve at the Verde deposit contains 94.7 million tonnes at an average grade of 1.01 g/t for a total of 3.1 million ounces of gold.

see more at http://pangea.stanford.edu/ODEX/munt-gsn.html

[July 4th]

1,000,000 metric tons = 32,150,747,000 troy ounces

$328.00/troy ounce (x) 32,150,747,000 troy ounces = $10,545,445,016,000.

I think I might be a little off. I'm assuming metric tons, and $10.5 trillion seems a bit high.

[July 4th]

Note, of course, that 1 mil. tons of mine won't produce 1 mil. tons of gold...

[rface]

yea??? We'll see.

[null and void]

PING!

[Semper911]

Someone please tell me how a satellite pic can determine that there is "gold in them thare hills." I am not doubting the technology, I just want to know more.

[pabianice]

Already been done.

[Enterprise]

Assuming 300 dollars an ounce, multiplied by 2000 X 16 X 1,000,000 I get 9,600,000,000,000 dollars. That might dampen the enthusiams of the gold bugs.

[rohry]

"Those bad boys start working that mine and the price of gold will collapse - plenty big time!"

Gold mines take about 7 years to develop. Do you know how many years of gold production is held by shorts?

[MHGinTN]

A satellite measuring gravitational anomolies could do it, but this cites a photograph or photographic discovery. Hmmmm ... doesn't appear to ring true. someone trying to raise money for exploration scams?

[Semper911]

Nice work on the math, but we'd have to figure in the mining costs to see how much it is really "worth."

I have read that it costs circa $300 an ounce to mine gold. (Don't quote me on this -- I am far from an expert on this.)

[dinodino]

I don't know if you can find it in an optical photo, but I'm sure you could do it by mapping fluctuations in the gravitational field in the region. Gold is quite dense.

[Thinkin' Gal]

Called La copa de oro

Golden cup bump.

[bvw]

Sounds like some "developing the funding" big talk going on.

[July 4th]

I have read that it costs circa $300 an ounce to mine gold. (Don't quote me on this -- I am far from an expert on this.)

Sounds good to me...I know next to nothing on the subject. I just happened to have a conversion chart handy.

[Soren]

Hmmmm. I wonder why mining companies spend millions on exploration and surveys when you can just see gold from a satellite?

[Semper911]

I wonder why mining companies spend millions on exploration and surveys when you can just see gold from a satellite?

My thinking exactly. And by extension, if we could see gold from a bird, we could see everything else too. Like oil.

[Noslrac]

Yeah, but I think if you introduce that much gold to the market, the price will go way down because its not so "rare" anymore. Gold is only worth (except maybe in some industrial uses) because people think it is worth something. If there were only 25 other computers on the earth, I wouldn't have to pay someone to take my old piece of crap Packard Bell Computer.

[Straight Vermonter]

There was a mountain found like this in Irian Jaya. Just getting the infrastructure in place so that it could be mined was one of the great engineering feats of the 20th century.

[BuddhaBoy]

From satellites and even airplanes equipped with magnetic, radiometric and gravity sensors, they can take readings of the terrain below and from these assess the density, structure and magnetic value of sub-surface rock.

Every element has a magnetic and density value. It's actually very easy, and almost always successful in finding gold deposits.

[thinktwice]

you could do it by mapping fluctuations in the gravitational field in the region. Gold is quite dense.

Lead is dense, too; but -- more important, 10 to 50 ounces of gold per TON of ore is not going to be easily detected in gravitational measurements -- assuming satellites can do gravitational measurements.

[razorback-bert]

[biggerten]

Billions of tiny sparkles.

[arete]

someone trying to raise money for exploration scams?

OR -- NASA = the government -- and who wants to keep the POG depressed? This is a hoax!!

Richard W.

[arete]

Thanks for the photo bert. I thought I saw a 10oz nugget sitting right there in plain view.

Richard W.

[MHGinTN]

Side-scan radar can do a lot of things, but I don't think it prospects for buried gold ... and that's the only thing I can think of that would produce an 'image' density readout of buried somethingy.

[Amerigomag]

Someone please tell me how a satellite pic can determine that there is "gold in them thare hills

The story says the satellite found a "mine" not a "deposit". The two words in Spanish are quite different and this is not a translation error. Mines are easy to spot. Deposits less so.

[arete]

I think that we now have confirmation that the checkmate report is valid, if you get my drift.

Richard W.

[Semper911]

The story says the satellite found a "mine" not a "deposit"...

An excellent point. Now it makes more sense.

[JasonC]

The grade of the ore is the key variable. A post above mentions two geological sources of 345 million tons overall - but at a concentration of 1 gram per ton. Which means only about $3 billion worth of gold, and a heck of a lot of work to get it out (crushing and sifting through 345 million tons of rock).

The "one million ton mine" in the headline is ambiguous. It could refer to the amount of ore, or be meant to refer to the amount of gold. The latter is not credible - it comes to $10 trillion. A million tons of ore is, however, easy to believe. But would only contain some multiple of ~$8 million worth of gold (that, times the grams per ton grade of the ore).

Hype the find, attract funding. I sincerely doubt there are a million tons of actual gold - rather than ore - involved.

[blam]

"Hype the find, attract funding. I sincerely doubt there are a million tons of actual gold - rather than ore - involved."

If there wasn't a lot of gold there, this wouldn't be an international (front page) story.

[Phil V.]

At today's prices my estimate is this mine would throw off a profit of 100 billion USD.

I'd be interested in seeing the figures/numbers that yielded your estimate of $10¹¹.

[Phil V.]

Did you review dennisw's numbers for him?

. . . or did he do the math all by himself?

[JasonC]

Let's apply the ananova generality test, shall we? Take the maxim of your statement and generalize it, and see if it is true of other items on the same news website.

Saddam wouldn't apologize for invading Kuwait unless he was truly sorry.

The front page of the business section would not feature a photo of someone photocopying their ass unless it were a serious matter.

Gold wouldn't close up $1.50 in New York on reports that $10 trillion worth of it had just been located. No, wait, that is a different maxim...

[11th_VA]

[wcbtinman]

Wow! Those guys are gonna need a lot of cyanide.

[MHGinTN]

Now that's scary!

[eternity]

For the love of mike. How come they can find all this gold and not Bin what's his name?

[blam]

You may be correct. Either way, I don't care enough to argue about it.

[dinodino]

Satellite gravimetry has been around for some time.

[meyer]

Assuming 300 dollars an ounce, multiplied by 2000 X 16 X 1,000,000 I get 9,600,000,000,000 dollars. That might dampen the enthusiams of the gold bugs.

Perhaps that is the purpose of the article. Somebody big wants to buy!

[meyer]

Gold wouldn't close up $1.50 in New York on reports that $10 trillion worth of it had just been located. No, wait, that is a different maxim...

Well, assuming that this mine is a Gold mine, it would stand to reason that the gold has already been discovered. And, its entry to the market has already affected prices.

[KneelBeforeZod]

those must be metric tonnes and not decent law abiding AMERICAN tons. Dont forget to calculate for billion vs million million etc...

[Hillary's Lovely Legs]

I wonder if the satellite was owned by Bre-X.

[KneelBeforeZod]

No. gold CAN'T go down. Art Bell and Ken Hamblin insist it's recession proof.

besides, if there was that much gold in south america, i'm sure one of arts guests would have been told about it by the aliens.