Geologists have achieved a historic milestone in mine discovery by finding a ‘supergiant’ high-grade gold resource valued at an incredible 83 billion dollars. In economic geology, a 'supergiant' deposit represents a rare class of mineral systems that contain over 1,000 metric tons of gold. The Wangu gold field discovery is a global outlier, placing it among the top 1 per cent of the world's most significant terrestrial wealth finds. There are very few deposits in the world that meet this definition, and consequently, they create an entirely different ranking of global reserves.
The S&P Global Market Intelligence indicates that this deposit's concentration of gold per tonne of rock is much higher than industry standards, which is why it is referred to as a ‘high grade’. Using advanced techniques such as seismic imaging and mineral modelling to analyse the USGS, researchers have defined a major orogenic system that has the potential to produce for decades to come, representing one of the largest discoveries of terrestrial wealth during the 21st century.
