Gold

The gold:silver ratio, which describes silver's buying power by dividing the per-ounce price of gold by that of silver, has averaged 60:1 over the past 35 years, meaning it's taken 60 ounces of silver to purchase one ounce of gold. Though with silver's most recent push to the $36/oz level, it now takes much less.

For the second time this year, police have been called to the scene of a mining-related death in Timmins, Ontario. According to a report in The Timmins Times, a 57-year-old man died Thursday morning in an accident at Goldcorp's Hoyle Pond gold mine in Timmins. Paramedics were dispatched to the Hoyle Pond Mine just before the noon hour today in response to a 9-1-1 call that a miner suffered a serious injury after being struck by a piece of heavy equipment underground near the 1400 level.

Minera Andes Inc. (TSX:MAI) unearthed 7.5 kilometres of new new high-grade silver/gold veins at its San Jose Mine, Argentina, during exploratory drilling in 2010, the company reported on Thursday. The new veins represent a 44% increase in the cumulative strike length of all veins known at the mine at the end of 2009.

Aurizon Minerals has reported a 44% increase in mineral reserves at its Casa Berardi mine in northwestern Quebec. That brings the gold reserves to 1.457 million ounces, with 370,000 ounces available for open pit mining in the principal zones, which are open laterally.

The spectacular Carapateena discovery that Canadian Teck Resources had seen as its big foreign play until the global financial crisis, is now passing into the hands of OZ Minerals Ltd (ASX: OZL). OZ Minerals said this week it had paid $US240 million for the project, making an immediate deposit of $US10 M.

Allied Gold Limited has gone into production with its Gold Ridge mine on Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands. The Australia-based company spent $150 million on the project after acquiring it through the takeover of TSX-listed Australian Salomons Gold in 2009. The mine is expected to produce 120,000 ounces of gold per year.

SEMAFO (TSX:SMF) today announced the discovery of the new Yaho gold zone, located 4.5 kilometers southwest of the Fofina zone and 20 kilometers southwest of the Mana Mill in Burkina Faso. Three Reverse Circulation ("RC") drilling sections were carried out to date across this wide alteration zone with each section returning wide, significant grade intervals such as 2.27 g/t Au across 54 meters (hole MRC10-540 - section 15450N), 2.00 g/t Au across 20 meters (hole MRC10-542 – section 15450N), 1.37 g/t Au across 16 meters (hole MRC10-514 – section 15650N), 4.59 g/t Au (10.73 g/t Au uncut) across 10 meters (hole MRC10-526 – section 15850N), and 1.88 g/t Au across 88 meters (hole MRC10-529 – section 15850N).

Minera Andes Inc. (the “Corporation” or “Minera Andes”) (TSX:MAI)(OTCBB:MNEAF) is pleased to provide a summary of the exploration results achieved during 2010 […]

South Africa's gold output rose 15.1 percent in volume terms in January while total mineral production rose 4.3 percent compared with the same month a year earlier, data showed on Thursday.