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.