Geology. Козлова Е.П. - 37 стр.

new discoveries of placer deposits (similar to Kolyma or Yenisei). On the bright
side, the existing placer deposits have not been fully exhausted, according to
specialists Nicolai Shilo, Boris Benevolsky, and Natalia Patyk-Kara. Promising
sources of vein gold in the Urals and southern Siberia may be found in gold-bearing
weathering crusts, both young and buried ancient formations. Deposits of this kind
are expected to be discovered under the platform shield of the Voronezh land mass.
        A special role in the projections of new major gold concentrations in Russia is
assigned to epithermal deposits, frequently termed “volcanogenic”. Significant
discoveries associated with them were made in the 1970s and 1980s in the southern
part of the Pacific volcanic belt. A single major deposit, Kubaka (in the Magadan
region) has been discovered in the Russin part of the belt. The Amethyst deposit in
the northern Kamchatka Peninsula and the Mnogovershinnoye deposit in the southern
part of the Ohotsk-Chukot volcanogenic belt can be put in this class in terms of
reserve size. The remaining deposits in the area can, at best, be placed in the median
category (such as Aginskoye). The multiple development of highly productive ore
forming systems within these geological structures containing gold-silver and gold
bearing copper-porphyry deposits (f. ex, in the Carpathian Mountains and Chile)
gives us reasons to assume that a more detailed exploration of the Okhotsk-Chukot
volcanogenic belt and Kamchatka will produce new discoveries.
         As technological progress continues around the world, the depth of gold
mines is likely to grow in the next few decades. In this country, however, it will
hardly exceed one kilometer. Russian experts are, therefore, building their projections
on this depth of gold ore occurence in existing and new areas. Time is ripe to make
prospecting to depths of up to 1 km (instead of the maximum 300 – 500 m today) the
order of the day. In other words, it is a realistic objective to raise annual gold
production in Russia to 250 or even 300 tons in the 21 st century.




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