Khabarovsk May be on the Brink of a Massive Discovery: New Drilling Hints at Treasure Trove of Minerals
Gold and copper deposits may soon be developed in the Khabarovsk Krai. The geologists who work in the Komsomolsky region of the territory estimate that the reserves of the precious metals may reach thousands of tons.
Tatiana Basnina witnessed the geological exploration works.
The gold rush embraced not only the scientists but also the workers. The drillers are trying to get their job done properly: to drill a borehole 50 meters deep, in order to take a sample of the solid, which may contain precious metal.
Konstantin Chushkin, driller's assistant: "Pressure, loading, all this is checked by the driller. In other words, the machinery won't function automatically".
Every inch of the land on the potential deposit site is covered with bores. The core-samples are extracted from the boreholes and examined in the field: crushed with a hammer. The geologist Natalia can visually find an associated mineral of gold and copper, which is also being developed here.
Natalia Mochalova, geologist: "We look for crystalline silica. If there is none, then there is no gold. If there are such associated minerals as bornite, chalcopyrite, then there is copper".
Lab experts in Khabarovsk will tell if there is gold or copper in the samples. These are not golden nuggets, but golden dust on the picture, which was zoomed fifty times. If there is only half a gram of dust found in a ton of ore, that leads to an industrial scale production. And on this site ten grams have been found several times.
The Poniyskiy deposit is of potential interest so far, but according to the forecasts of geologists, underground, on the acreage of 30 square kilometers, there is over one million tons of copper and about 150 tons of gold. When all the geological work is done, one of the richest resource potentials in the Khabarovsk territory may be arranged here.
Senior geologist of the expedition wears a badge "Discoverer of the world-class deposit": the Malmyshskoe deposit. It is also situated in the Komsomolskiy region of the Khabarovsk territory There in the 80's, for the first time in the world, was found a unique porphyry gold-copper ore. According to the forecasts, the same one rests in the new Poniyskiy deposit.
Vladimir Chernyavskiy, senior geologist: "Such ore is unique due to its large-scale, almost hundreds of meters of depth. That's why everyone today tries to search for porphyry gold-copper ore, because it is more prospective".
The geological exploration works are to be finished by the end of the year. If all the forecasts prove true, the Poniyskiy deposit will be put out to tender. In addition to setting up an open-cut mining, building of an ore-processing plant is required here.
Tatiana Basnina, Boris Andrianov, Vesti, Khabarovsk.