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Geology News
Gold Current Events

It’s a Great Time to Be a Geologist! Starting salaries for geologists in the petroleum and mineral sectors are over $80,000 and there are far more positions than qualified people to fill them.

Twenty-seven people are under arrest in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia without bail. They are accused in a plot to swap fake gold bars worth $17 million for bars made of gold-plated steel.

Gold is at a record high of $1000 and a new “Gold Rush” is underway. The new rush is people who have unwanted jewelry and other gold articles taking them to the pawnshops to convert them into cash.

The-Vug.com has a few very nice photos of crystallized gold from this locality that were taken by Jeff Scovil.

Gold briefly exceeded $900 per ounce today. This price level was triggered slightly by demand for the metal but the most important factor was uncertainty about the United States economy. This is the first time the price of gold has ever been over $900.

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The value of placer gold production is up in the Yukon. Production efforts now, ahead of stiffer environmental regulations might account for some of the recent rise. Lots of the small mines are being purchased by larger operators.

A new gold deposit has been found in Colombia that some people think could double Colombian production by 2011 and be one of the ten largest deposits in the world.

Gold closed at $808.50 in New York on Friday after hitting an intraday high of $810.70. These are the highest price levels seen since 1980. Speculation of a weak dollar and uncertainties in the financial system are given for the recent surge in gold prices. The all time high for gold is $875 in 1980.

Related: The Many Uses of Gold.

Odyssey Marine International, the company who found and salvaged a shipwreck containing a half million silver and gold coins, is being closely watched by Spanish maritime police. The location of the sunken treasure has been kept secret and some speculate that Spain thinks that it might have been pulled from their waters.

GEOTIMES has a news note about the results of the Bre-X gold scam trial. This was a case about a geologist who was accused of salting core samples with gold to make them look higher in grade. The trial ended in an acquittal.

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Early miners often used mercury to recover gold from stream sediments. They would pour it into their sluice boxes and lots of that mercury was spill, leaked or discarded. Today a lot of that mercury is still in the streams. Read here how the Washington Department of Ecology and some of today’s miners are helping to clean it up. Their recent efforts recovered 127 pounds!

Barrick Gold needs a silver recovery plan for their Veladero gold mine in Argentina. They are offering a $10 million US prize to the best plan to recover silver from a silica-encapsulated ore. They will provide research funding, consulting fees and more.

Thousands of gold seekers are descending upon Brazil’s Amazon rainforest in what is one of South America’s greatest gold rushes. The word for this gold rush has spread via the internet after a miner posted his findings.

©iStockphoto.com Constantine Vishnevsky

The diverse and unique properties of gold make it suitable for an enormous number of uses in art, medicine, dentistry, construction, electronics, aerospace, glass making, coinage, adornment and a diversity of other areas. This article explores why gold is deliberately selected for a wide range of uses even though it is generally the highest cost metal that could be applied.

Russia is the world’s sixth largest gold producer. The Russian state-owned corporation, Alrosa, has reportedly offered $2.2-$2.5 billion for Mikhail Prokhorov’s stake in Polyus Gold, the country’s largest gold producer. This is 20%-30% above its current market value. Alrosa mines 97% of Russian diamonds and is second only to De Beers in world-wide diamond production. The state-controlled bank has approved a loan for the acquisition.

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Gold and copper prospecting companies are working in Haiti, some returning to prospects that they started a decade ago. Political violence and social problems still discourage exploration but reports of promising properties are rekindling interest.

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University of Chicago Archaeologists have discovered the site of a 4000-year-old gold processing center along the middle Nile in sub-Sahara Africa. They have found a large enough number of grinding stones and other ore processing tools that they can confidently say that an organized gold production facility was located there. Their studies provide some of the earliest evidence of economic organization in this part of Africa.

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A short article at AZ Central describes several historic Arizona Mining scams. Stories of salting real estate with gold, diamonds and other precious minerals to add value to otherwise worthless properties; deceptive stock sales; pump-and-dump stock sales and presenting false assay reports. These schemes have taken investors and others for millions of dollars.

China is now the world’s fourth largest gold producer. Beijing’s interest in foreign investment and two Australian mining companies (who were willing to develop difficult deposits) are fueling a new production increase. Sino Gold is opening the Jinfeng Mine in southwestern China’s Guizhou province. It is expected to be the second largest gold mine in China. The Australians are learning a lot more than geology.

Mozambique is a very poor country and an opportunity to earn a few dollars by panning or digging a shaft has a strong attraction on many people. Known as “garimpeiros”, these miners work in very dangerous conditions, risking their life for the opportunity of finding a nugget. Their activity is illegal but the government realizes that it supports them and often their famlies, so approaches other than arrest are being explored.