An undersea goldmine was discovered for the first time in Shandong Province. (Photo : www.bullionstar.com)
A gold deposit weighing 328 tons was recently discovered in Laizhou in eastern China's Shandong Province, the 31st gold mine that was found this year in the area.
The discovery comes two weeks after the first undersea gold mine was found in the same province.
In total, the deposits found in the area has now reached 979 tons, according to local news site shm.com.cn. The gold deposits were mostly found across regions and districts including Mouping and Laizhou.
Currently, the price of gold with fitness of 9999 in Shanghai Gold Exchange is at 221.1 yuan per gram. This means that the new mine is valued at around 72 billion yuan.
A huge 80 percent of the newly discovered gold mines were found via deep ore prospecting. According to experts, such deep deposits are difficult to mine because of ground temperature and other technological limitations.
An anonymous official at the Yantai Bureau of Land and Resources told shm.com.cn: "The cost of shallow mining is lower; the deeper the mining, the higher the cost. The actual mining time is related to the international gold price, the amount of investment and the maturity of mining technology."
"The depth of gold mining in our country is no more than 1.5 kilometers, but some of the mines found in Yantai are more than 2 kilometers deep and cannot be excavated currently," the official added.
Zhang Junjin, the project manager of the team that discovered the undersea gold mine, shared that "drilling holes into underground rocks that are more than 1,000 meters deep is a big challenge."
"Normally in China, gold mine prospection is conducted within 800 meters underground. The discovery of a gold deposit lying 2,000 meters under the ocean floor provides incentive for new drilling technology for future gold mining," Zhang added.
The deposits of gold in the Chinese mainland have reached 8196.24 tons as of the end of 2012. Media reports state that most of the country's gold resources are concentrated in the eastern and central regions.
