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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold and Silver Mining Stocks -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: tyc:> who wrote (507)	1/4/2001 10:40:36 AM
From: russwinter	Respond to of 4051

Who woulda' thunk? Lots of "unnatural" Alice in Wonderland things going on in these markets. Tape painting? Plunge protection team antics? Who knows, but capital flows seem to love paper money of one kind or another? Probably buy Mexican and Argentine pesos (over gold) next I suppose.

To: tyc:> who wrote (507)	1/8/2001 10:28:40 AM
From: russwinter	Respond to of 4051

Looks similar to the natural gas exploration collapse of 97-00. Weak gold price is killing off prospecting By Gillian O'Connor, Mining Correspondent Published: January 7 2001 12:44GMT \| Last Updated: January 7 2001 13:11GMT The continued slump in the bullion price is killing off gold prospecting. Last year mining companies spent only $1.1bn exploring for gold, roughly a third as much as in 1997. And for the first time on record gold accounted for less than 50 per cent of their global exploration budgets. New figures from Canadian research firm Metals Economic Group (MEG) show that in 2000 expenditure on gold exploration was just 47 per cent of the total of $2.3bn, whereas in 1997 it was 65 per cent of the much larger total of $4.6bn.* The gold price, which touched $850 an ounce in January 1980, has deteriorated steadily since February 1996 - the last month in which it averaged over $400 an ounce - and it finished last week at $268. The soggy metal price, plus the Bre-X scandal that rocked the industry in 1997, has made it difficult for small exploration companies to raise money, and hammered share prices. The total market value of junior gold companies fell by 73 per cent to just below $10bn between December 1996 and June 2000. In the last few years many former gold exploration companies have changed their names and switched into businesses, such as dotcom-related activities, where raising money was easier. Larger gold mining companies were able to buy control of promising prospects found by junior companies relatively cheaply, and so cut their own exploration budgets. In 1999, for example, Barrick Gold, the largest North American gold miner, bought Sutton Resources to get hold of its Bulyanhulu prospect in Tanzania. The falling gold price both reduced the likelihood of finding new prospects which would be worth developing, and scotched some existing developments. Both Barrick and Placer Dome, the second largest North American gold miner, have put once promising and important projects on hold. In mid-1999 Placer mothballed its $575m Las Cristinas mine in Venezuela, and in early December 2000 Barrick decided to delay full-scale construction at the $950m Pascua Lama project on the Chile-Argentine border. Even some existing gold mines are now barely profitable. In Africa, AngloGold, the largest gold miner, recently sold two high cost mines, Elandsrand and Deelkraal, for $130m to smaller rival Harmony, which specialises in squeezing profits out of marginal mines. As gold's popularity has waned, platinum group metals have become a new magnet for exploration companies. Prices of both platinum and palladium have soared recently. At over $600 an ounce, platinum is now worth more than twice as much as gold, and sister metal palladium, selling for less than $200 until 1997, was last week flirting with $1,000. Gold Fields, South Africa's second largest gold miner, last year announced a platinum prospect in Finland. And MEG statistics show that the number of companies searching for platinum soared to 64 in 2000, compared with just 38 in 1999