China believes it has found the world’s biggest gold deposit, with reserves estimated to be worth more than $80 billion.
Chinese state media said that a gold ore deposit site with supposed reserves of more than 1,000 tonnes at a depth of 2,000 meters had been located in the Wangu goldfield in Pingjiang County in central Hunan province. Newsweek was unable to independently verify the report.
The goldfield in Pingjiang County is said to be valued at 600 billion yuan ($83 billion), according to state outlet Xinhua news. The current largest gold reserve is found in the South Deep gold mine in Gauteng Province, South Africa, which holds around 930 metric tons of gold.
The Hunan Academy of Geology said workers found more than 40 gold ore veins at a depth of more than 2,000 meters at Wangu. More than 300 tons of gold reserve was found in the mine’s core area, and that metric ton of ore could yield as much as 138 grams of gold.
A gold vein refers to a geological formation where gold is concentrated within a crack in an underground rock. The veins are formed through hydrothermal processes, where hot, mineral-rich fluids move through cracks in the Earth’s crust.
“Many drilled rock cores showed visible gold,” said Chen Rulin, an ore-prospecting expert at the Geological Bureau of Hunan Province.
https://www.newsweek.com/world-largest-gold-deposit-worth-80billion-discovered-china-reports-1993489