Major Miners’ Gold Reserves on the Decline

Mineweb’s Kip Keen published an article that looks at the reserves of major gold miners. All in all, he states, “[t]he trend is clear. Gold reserves are sliding for top miners.” Specifically, proven and probable gold reserves for the top five gold miners fell 14 percent from 2013 to 2014.

As quoted in the market news:

None registered reserve gains. The reserve declines ranged between 9% to 20% and absolutely speaking between 5 million and 11 million ounces gold. This year you couldn’t blame the price of gold. Within house, all the top five gold miners used the same price assumptions in 2014 as 2013 in calculating their own reserves. So changes to gold reserves reflected asset sales and depletion more than they have in recent years when the changing price of gold bloated or shrunk the amount of mineralised rock considered ore.

Absolutely, in terms of ounces gold, the worst among the top five major gold miners was Newmont, with a 17-million ounce decline in reserves. That was down 17% relative to the year previous. Thereafter came Barrick (down 11 million ounces), AngloGold (down 10 million ounces), Kinross (down 8 million ounces) and then Goldcorp (down 5 million ounces).

Percentage wise Kinross’ decline was the worst at 20%, followed by Newmont (down 17%), AngloGold (down 15%), Barrick (down 11%) and then Goldcorp (down 9%).

Click here to read the full Mineweb report.