Good point bart. It's not just steel that needs oil to make gold. The paint that goes on the steel is made of oil too. The "rubber" soles on the boots of the bloke who drills a hole to put explosives in the rock are made of rubber. When the bloke who drills the holes goes home in his SUV made of oil and steel, with oil based paint, he buys a tank of gasoline from a service station which has steel storage tanks, reinforced concrete slabs via a metal pump, all made of oil. Those dirty great trucks and excavators, along with kilns and forklifts are at the cement works and quarry are made of oil too.
When the gold miner heats his house and cooks his dinner, that's oil. The food he eats is harvested by steel and oil combine harvesters.
You must be getting close to understanding now. Oil.
Of course gold isn't 100% oil. For example, somebody might be going for a nice walk along a river bank and find a nugget of gold sticking out, bend down and hey presto, a big lump of gold which was made via the fusion process rather than by the Newtonian process.
If you want to put some significant figures on the proportion of oil that goes into average gold production, you are welcome to do so. It will vary from place to place and time to time. With gold at high prices, people will be willing to increase the amount of oil they use to make more of the stuff.
Personally, I prefer the fusion process. Once I have my lead, mercury. tungsten and maybe iron conversion processes tuned up, I'll be pouring lead in one end and gold out the other, while generating heat and electricity for a nearby city. Then gold won't be made of oil.
Mqurice |
