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China’s Major Minerals in 2016 Are Identified, With Overall Resource Reserves Continuing to Grow

On August 22, the reporter learned from MLR’s Press Conference for Identified Reserves of Mineral Resources of China in 2016 that, China’s investment in mining fixed assets and geological exploration had declined for four consecutive years by 2016, and resource reserves growth rate had slowed down due to other reasons such as downturn of domestic mining rights market and substantial decline in social investment; however, through strengthening basic geological work and optimizing geological survey investment structure, the identified reserves of mineral resources of China still increased slightly, with exploration of coal, oil, natural gas, tungsten, gold, phosphate, crystalline graphite and other major minerals still making important progress. Newly-increased reserves of oil and gas resources were mainly distributed in Ordos Basin, Bohai Sea, Sichuan Basin and Tarim Basin, while those of non-oil and gas resources were mainly distributed in Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Shandong, Hubei, Jiangxi, Hunan, Yunnan, Anhui and other regions.

By the end of 2016, the identified reserves of major mineral resources of China had continued overall growth, but the growth rate had slowed down. Except cobalt, molybdenum and mercury, the identified reserves of all other non-ferrous metal minerals had risen, including zinc (up 18.8%), lead (up 10.0%), magnesite (up 24.5%) and tungsten (up 6.0%); as for precious metals, the growth rate of identified reserves of gold and silver was 5.2% and 8.4% respectively; the identified reserves of rare metals, rare-earth metals and scattered-element metals basically remained unchanged.

Since 2001, the identified reserves of copper of China have grown slowly, and exceeded 100 million tons for the first time in 2016, with the accurate figure of 101 million tons, an increase of 200.3 million tons (2.0%) over the previous year. In the same year, there were two newly-increased mining areas with identified reserves of mineral resources exceeding 500,000 tons, which were located in Jiangxi Province and Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region respectively.

The identified reserves of tungsten of China were always 6 million tons before 2011, and have grown rapidly ever since and made significant progress especially in the past two years. In 2016, the identified reserves of tungsten of China were 10.16 million tons, an increase of 571,600 tons (6.0%) over the previous year, and there were two newly-increased mining areas with identified reserves of mineral resources exceeding 100,000 tons, which were located in Hunan Province and Jiangxi Province respectively.

Since 2001, the identified reserves of gold of China have grown rapidly. In 2016, the identified reserves of gold of China were 12,200 tons, an increase of 603.52 tons (5.2%) over the previous year, and there were four newly-increased mining areas with identified reserves of mineral resources exceeding 50 tons, which were located in Guizhou Province (1), Shandong Province (2) and Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region (1) respectively.