Achievements

2. New achievements have been made on mineral prospecting and evaluation

Updated :04,08,2014

 In 2013, the scale of 1:50,000 mineral survey covered an area of approx. 70 thousand sq. km, thus pushing the geologic work at the important metallogenic belts and 78 integrated exploration areas to be increased by 46% and 78% respectively. 6456 geophysical and geochemical anomalies, more than 1,000 mineralized spots and over 200 prospecting targets have been located.
 
        After the follow-up prospecting, some new breakthroughs have been made upon the previous discoveries, and dozens of large and medium-sized mines have been formed. Two large-scale and supersized copper-gold deposits were discovered at the Duolong area, Tibet, adding copper reserves for more than 4500 thousand tons. Upon the discovery in Tongren and Zunyi of Guizhou province, polianite resource reserves were added 200 million tons, which created the biggest breakthrough in ore prospecting since 40 years ago. By the accumulative prospecting in Xiarihamu, Qinghai Province, the nickel resource reserves were added by 1,070 thousand tons. A concealed chromite orebody was discovered in Luobusha, Tibet, the resource reserves are over 500 thousand tons. A large-size spodumene deposit was newly discovered at the periphery of Jiajika, Sichuan province. The resource reserves of liquid potassium chloride were added 122 million tons in Qaidam Basin. Ore prospecting in old mines has yielded new fruits: 231 tons of gold, 1,230 thousand tons of copper, 2,430 thousand tons of lead zinc as well as other resource reserves have been added. The detected new reserves in the Baiyun (Liaoning province), Zaozigou (Gansu province), Laowan (Henan province) and Jinya (Guanxi province) gold mines, and the Qixiashan lead & zinc mine (Jiangsu province) as well as the Lala copper mine (Sichuan province) have enabled such mines to be large-sized mines.


       More than 20 highly potential areas have been located through the oil and gas prospecting and assessment, including the shale gas sections discovered in the northern margin of Qaidam, the Yin'e Basin and the Ordos Basin, meanwhile, some oil shale with high oil content were discovered in the eastern Junggar and northern part of the Songliao Basin. High-purity gas hydrate was also detected in drilling for the first time in the Eastern China Seas near the Pearl River Estuary. The "HAI YANG LIU HAO " has accomplished the 29th science exploitation mission and proved there existed rare earth resources beneath the West Pacific seabed. The shallow geothermal energy potential of the 31 capital cities in China has been preliminarily investigated, and such investigation has been conducted in 86 large and medium-sized cities, meanwhile, the hi-temperature geothermal resource survey has been under way in Qinghai and Tibet.