September Silver Eagle sales updated today at 1,961,000 oz. If we keep up with this pace, we may see the highest month of sales for they year (not including Jan).
For the OFFICIAL MOVEMENT of GOLD out of the United States, June was a record export month. Here is the data:
(based on ore & concentrates, dore’ & precipitates and refined bullion)
2011 TOTAL GOLD EXPORTS = 474 tonnes
2012 TOTAL JAN-JUN EXPORTS= 379 tonnes
JUN EXPORTS 2012 = 77.5 tonnes (a whopper of a month)
2011 TOTAL GOLD IMPORTS = 507 tonnes
2012 TOTAL JAN-JUN IMPORTS= 160 tonnes ( at this rate, its down 63% since last year)
more below
US GOLD PRODUCTION DOWN 3% FIRST 6 MONTHS 2012
However, Nevada’s gold production is actually up a few points.
A WORD ON PEAK GOLD PRODUCTION
Someone commented in my guest post that I only focused my report on the top 5 gold companies who have shown a 5% decline of production in the past 6 years. I would like to remind the person who commented as well as any other skeptics (yes, skeptics are welcome), that OVERALL… let me repeat that… OVERALL, ore grades are falling E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E.
The only reason why we had more total world production in 2011 is due to the huge amount of new mines that came online. Furthermore, if we do take a conservative 3% decline rate in ore grades for the world gold mines, that means at 88 million oz production (per 2011), the world has to add 2.6 million oz each year at that rate to keep production flat.
They can do this two ways:
1) add more mines
2) increase the amount of processed ore
either way, they need to consume more energy just to STAY FLAT..
I plan on writing an article on just this subject.
INCREASING WORLD GOLD PRODUCTION WILL BE A BEE-OTCH
Here’s something some may have not considered. As I stated in my previous post, as ore grades decline (actually the annual gold yield), the addition of more mines as wells as an increase in processed ore are necessary to keep production flat.
In 2011, the world produced 88 million oz of gold. The conservative annual decline in gold yield is about 3%…. thus, we need 2.6 million oz each year to keep production at 88 million. Now let’s say we get a whole bunch of new mines come in in 2012-2013. Thus, the world may hit production of 95 million oz of gold by 2012-2014. At this time, we can assume the annual gold yield will have fallen to 3.5% per annum.
So… for the world to keep production flat at 95 million oz a year with a decline of 3.5% annual gold yield, the world now has to produced 3.3 million oz more each year to keep production flat.
This is the INSIDIOUS aspect of growing production to such high levels. The higher world gold production goes, the faster the annual decline rate in gold yield and the more gold production is needed to keep it production flat.
This, I believe most people do not realize.
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“I would like to remind the person who commented as well as any other skeptics (yes, skeptics are welcome), that OVERALL… let me repeat that… OVERALL, ore grades are falling E-V-E-R-Y-W-H-E-R-E.”
Indeed so. The fact is, just about all of the richer ore fields have been tapped and what is being mined today is the periphery of those same areas plus old mines that were not rich enough to be commercially viable with the production technology and the much lower price of gold back then. Maintaining gold production will be very difficult going forward. At some point all of the mines that exist on land will be tapped and we will have to create new mines on the seafloor. That is 75% of the surface of the Earth, so, in theory, we could have triple all of the past gold and silver production waiting for us underwater. Because of the difficulties inherent in mining under water, the gold and silver found there WILL be a lot more expensive to produce and metals prices will have to be higher to compensate for that difficulty.
After that will come a metals recovery via pumping ocean water through select ion exchange resins to capture valuable metals from sea water. That could provide millions of tons of metals but it is a dilute source that will require some chemistry creativity as well as some alternative energy use (think electrical wave, solar, and wind generators to power these systems.
Once that source has been consumed, it is on to the moon as a source of metals. The moon probably has a geology that is similar to that of the Earth. If so, then all of the metals found here should be there as well. Although the moon is 1/6th the mass of the Earth, it is 100% dry land, so is much more able to support the development of heavy duty metals resource recovery. Solar electric power is available on the moon and in considerably higher energy density than is available on Earth. This would be invaluable for supporting the people there as well as their metals recovery and smelting operations. A rail gun system could be developed to fire purified metal into Earth orbit for collection and transport to Earth.
After that, on to the asteroid belt and other planets in this system.
There are LOTS of resources available to us. The only things that can reach “peak” production levels are our imagination and creativity. :-)
A single asteroid could crash the metals markets for generations. However, I don’t think we’ll be expanding into space anytime soon simply because self-sufficient colonies of rationalists far away from drones (including human drones) would be an existential threat to the puppetmasters here on Earth. Got to get rid of them first.
The moon has never had the hydrothermal activity which is associated with gold deposits on larger worlds. There may be silver near the south pole. Not sure what it is doing there- I suspect you will know to sell when silveronthemoon.com raises 20 million ounces in an IPO. As for solar- the lunar night is two weeks long. Thorium reactors are better. Just dump the waste in a crater and put a fence around the rim.
Mars probably has ore deposits, though fewer than Earth, because it was wet and geologically active for less than a billion years.
You would have to filter more than a cubic kilometer of seawater to get an ounce of gold, so that will never be feasible. Better to haul up “black smokers” from the seafloor. As you said, this will become more of an option as ore grades decline and fuel prices increase.
Just look at all the amounts of gold going away from the USA. 160 tonnes! It’s 160 tonnes that will get locked in Asian vaults and that will never return in the USA! All of these for pieces of paper made out of nothing! It could of been used as a form of reserve even if we left the gold standard. That amount of gold could of be kept so that in the future when the US dollar will collapse, the government will be able to pay its people with gold.
Maybe the US government is using that 160 tons as payoff for a falling dollar.
“Maybe the US government is using that 160 tons as payoff for a falling dollar.”
Maybe so, Mary. On the other hand, maybe its going to China to secure some of the debt we owe them?