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Here's How Many Tons Of Rock You Have To Mine Just For An Ounce Of Gold

Sam RoApr 24, 2013, 22:22 IST

It's incredible how much work goes into retrieving the tiniest amounts of gold.

In its earnings announcement this morning, Barrick Gold published some mining statistics for its first quarter.

As you can see from the numbers below, some sites are more rich with gold than others. But the bottom line is that it takes tremendous amount of rock to yield just specks of gold. In Q1, it took Barrick anywhere from 2 tons to 91 tons of rock to produce just 1 ounce of gold.

NOTE: We calculated tons mined per ounce of gold by taking the inverse of Barrick's measure of ounces per ton.