When Yang Jing heard the number Guo Dabao said, he couldn't help but be stunned.
Although he felt that this ore body was not simple when he first used his Sky Eye skill to see it, he really did not expect that this gold mine named Algula would be so awesome.
After two years of sluggishness, copper prices have begun to strengthen in the past two years. Based on the current copper price of about US$6,200 per ton, 1.28 million tons of copper is worth about US$8 billion!
As for gold, if the current gold price is calculated at US$40 million per ton, 770 tons of gold will be worth US$30.8 billion, and the price of molybdenum is now approximately US$1.5 billion per ton, so 40,000 tons of molybdenum will be worth almost US$1.5 billion!
In other words, the total value of this mine exceeds 40 billion US dollars!
The cost of open-air mining is the lowest among all mining methods. All gold mines in the world with a mining cost of less than $600 per ounce are open-air mines. Although the Algula Mine is a copper-gold-molybdenum composite mine, except for the slightly lower average grade of copper ore, the average grade of both gold and molybdenum ore can be considered high, so the mining cost of this mine is definitely not that high. With the current copper and gold prices, even if the initial investment is included, the net profit of this mine can be at least 30%. Even if it reaches 40% or even more than half, Yang Jing would not find it surprising.
It is well known that the profit of open-air mining is much higher than that of cave mining.
So, when Guo Dabao says “I’ve made it”, he’s not just bragging.
Even if we calculate based on a 30% net profit, after deducting the 25% held by the Papua New Guinea "government", Rongbao Mining can still make nearly 10 billion US dollars in net profit from this mine!
Moreover, the mining time of this kind of metal mine is mostly more than fifteen years. Even if calculated based on the mining time of fifteen years, the Algula mine alone can bring Rongbao Mining a net profit of US$600 million every year.
That's almost as much profit as a major oil field with more than a billion barrels in reserves.
As for the ore body discovered in the strait near Rabaul, Yang Jing estimated that it was even more powerful than the Algula mine. However, what the seabed mine would look like would have to wait until the preliminary survey results came out.
However, it has been confirmed that the underwater mine is a silver, gold, and platinum precious metal mine, so its value must be greater than that of the Algula mine.
"Haha, Xiaojing, are you overjoyed to hear this news?" Guo Dabao's boastful voice was heard again on the phone.
"Yeah, Uncle Guo, you're so awesome!" Yang Jing also teased Guo Dabao, a rare occurrence.
"Haha, it's not Uncle Guo who's awesome, it's you, kid!" Guo Dabao was not at all offended by Yang Jing's teasing. Instead, he turned around and teased Yang Jing.
Yang Jing smiled bitterly and shook his head. Yang Jing could understand Guo Dabao's excitement. Guo Dabao hadn't been back for years and had been watching over there. Now that such a huge result had finally come out, how could he not be excited?
"Uncle Guo, is there any problem with the funds for the survey? If it's not enough, I have some here."
"Haha, how can it not be enough? With you here, we have saved more than 90% of the survey costs. Because of your precise positioning, we have saved at least 50 survey wells. Now we estimate that we can get a rough idea of the situation of these two mines by drilling a total of 20 survey wells. Just for this point, you have saved us at least hundreds of millions of dollars. Xiao Jing, you have made a great contribution this time!"
Guo Dabao's words were not "random". Everyone knows that mining makes money, especially energy and precious metal mines. As long as the mining phase begins, the mined mineral products will be sold on the market without any worries.
But mining cannot be started just like that. First of all, the surveying rights and mining rights are a threshold that prevents more than 99.99% of people from entering this industry. Even if you obtain the surveying rights and mining rights, finding the ore body is a major difficulty that traps more than 90% of people entering this industry.
Compared with obtaining surveying and mining rights, the most difficult thing is to actually find the ore body.
Just like Rongbao Mining, if it were not for Yang Jing, it would be absolutely impossible for them to find an ore body with an area of less than 0.3 square kilometers in a country like Papua New Guinea with complex terrain without spending hundreds of millions of dollars on surveying.
One exploration well costs about one million dollars, and it is almost impossible to accurately locate an ore body without drilling dozens or even hundreds of exploration wells, unless you are lucky enough to drill the exploration well to the ore body in one go.
In other words, the cost of drilling and logging alone would be tens of millions of dollars or even hundreds of millions!
But now, with Yang Jing, Rongbao Mining has almost figured out the situation of the entire ore body by just drilling six exploration wells. As for the seabed mine near Rabaul, because it occupies too large an area, it needs to drill twice as many exploration wells to roughly figure out the situation of the ore body.
The most important thing is that in many cases, you may not be able to find an ore body even after spending tens of millions of dollars drilling dozens of exploration wells! This situation often happens in mining exploration. The probability of spending money but not finding an ore body is much greater than the probability of finding an ore body.
This is why the survey costs of a mine often account for a large part of the total initial investment.
"Okay, Uncle Guo, we don't need to say anything polite. If you need any help from me, just let me know. After all, I am also a member of Rongbao Mining."
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