"We are at PEAK GOLD here" Ian Telfer

Ian Telfer, chairman of Goldcorp Inc., is the latest industry magnate to predict the world has reached “PEAK GOLD” saying that from here on out, mine production will continue to decline because all the major deposits have been discovered.

“If I could give one sentence about the gold mining business … it’s that in my life, gold produced from mines has gone up pretty steadily for 40 years,” said Telfer. “Well, either this year it starts to go down, or next year it starts to go down, or it’s already going down.”

“We’re right at peak gold here,” he added.

For over 130 years, massive gold deposits were discovered in a number of countries. Gold has been easy to access and produce. During the late 20th century, some mines were producing as much as 50 million ounces of year a year. In the 21st century, mines producing 50 million or even 30 million ounces of gold no longer exist. Gold exploration is down to a few discoveries producing 15 million ounces annually.

The price of gold has fallen steadily since 2012. Mining companies are unable to fund new explorations. The time between gold discovery and active mining spans an average of seven years. This is a considerable time span between the exhaustion of old mines and the mining of new ones. And mining companies will find it difficult to bear the expense.

Once productive and seemingly endless gold deposits are depleting quickly. Forty percent of all the gold mined throughout history has come from the Witwatersrand Basin in South Africa. During the 1970s, an excess of 1,000 metric ton of gold was mined each year. In 2017, Witwatersrand Basin’s gold production fell 83 percent compared to 1970, down to 167.1 tons. OUCH!