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I estimate the federal government owns more than 350 MILLION acres in top silver and gold mining states. Are there 'vast amounts' of gold and silver that are 'not discovered' or maybe even our government knows about extensive reserves of those pm's? Just curious what others thoughts are on 'undiscovered resources'.

They have sold or leased away 4500 tons according to Chris Martensen:

http://goldsilver.com/video/why-did-sil ... ch%20Video

They will need thousands of miners and boatloads of diesel to extract and refine the ore. The Petrodollar is evaporating. U.S. won't be able to buy oil with debt anymore very very soon. We're at peak cheap oil if not peak oil period.

And government is a horribly inefficient employer.

Undiscovered = nothing.

TwoPenniesEarned wrote: U.S. won't be able to buy oil with debt anymore very very soon. We're at peak cheap oil if not peak oil period.

We've got plenty of our own if we'd just develop it. Then again, there's something to be said for using up everyone else's first.

I actually think the jury is still out on abiotic oil, but we'll never know as long as Big Oil suppresses that information and research.

There might be some, but even if it were discovered yesterday, it would take years to set up the infrastructure to mine it. The Kennecot mine that collapsed last week produced almost 10 tons of gold last year. Now it's buried under ~250 million tons of dirt and may not be back in operation for a couple of years.

The mountains behind Juneau Alaska are low grade gold ore, with some jewelry veins. Cannot touch them because of the enviros and condo conservationists.

The ore runs from the Taku Inlet, east to the border, and north past Berners Bay. That's a lot of ore. Some still on Douglas Island, too.

Environmental protection is how the hawks use the greenies to protect our nation. "Save the spotted owl" or "protect the thin-lipped nematode" so lock up whatever wetland holds the required commodity.

Watch how fast those protections evaporate if we went to war (a real war, say against China or other major nation-state) and needed resources to supply our armies. With the stroke of a pen the president would lift restrictions and everything we need would be cut down, dug up and pumped out.

pmbug wrote:The Kennecot mine that collapsed last week produced almost 10 tons of gold last year. Now it's buried under ~250 million tons of dirt

I just plugged it into the calculator, and even using their huge (400 ton) dump trucks, it will take 625,000 loads to clear out the mine.

Assuming they could work around the clock for 2 years, that would be 35 loads per hour.

Engineer wrote:

pmbug wrote:The Kennecot mine that collapsed last week produced almost 10 tons of gold last year. Now it's buried under ~250 million tons of dirt

I just plugged it into the calculator, and even using their huge (400 ton) dump trucks, it will take 625,000 loads to clear out the mine.

Assuming they could work around the clock for 2 years, that would be 35 loads per hour.

I have to assume that going deeper was following the richest veins. Would it be more cost effective for them to leave that area buried and just work on expanding side veins?

beauanderos wrote:I have to assume that going deeper was following the richest veins. Would it be more cost effective for them to leave that area buried and just work on expanding side veins?

They were planning to expand the mine to the north, but I'm not sure where the slide occurred. If it was on the south side of the mine, they may be able to leave it in place.

TwoPenniesEarned wrote:They have sold or leased away 4500 tons according to Chris Martensen:

http://goldsilver.com/video/why-did-sil ... ch%20Video

They will need thousands of miners and boatloads of diesel to extract and refine the ore. The Petrodollar is evaporating. U.S. won't be able to buy oil with debt anymore very very soon. We're at peak cheap oil if not peak oil period.

And government is a horribly inefficient employer.

Undiscovered = nothing.

That was a good video!