Gold price brings prospectors to the Highlands
Thursday, November 12, 2009
Print
Email
Save this entry to my Favorites
The high price of gold, reported by Geoff yesterday, is giving a clear signal to a mining company in the Highlands of Scotland that it should start production from a gold mine that was first drilled 20 years ago, but has never been commercially worked because the price of gold did not provide enough incentive to the producers. However with the price of gold now at $1100 per ounce, mining operations could become profitable. Scotgold owns the Coronish mine near Tyndrum, a small village which is en route to Glen Coe, Fort William and Skye. Next month it will apply for planning permission begin mining operations in 2010 and this report from The Guardian says that Cononish is expected to start producing 200kg of gold a year at the mine site when full-scale mining begins in 2011 – enough to produce 30,000 wedding rings a year – and another 500kg each year by sending rocks for processing elsewhere.
Cononish will also produce roughly 17 tonnes of silver. It is holding discussions with the local community, which is already planning to open a gold mine visitors’ centre next May. John Riley (any relation??) is chairman of the local community council and the area’s community development trust and says “I don’t think there’s any locals who are opposed to it or worried about it. It will bring forth many benefits to a tiny community like this.” The local SNP councillor is also keen on the opportunity to create long term jobs in the area and relieve the village’s heavy dependence on tourism.
It will also bring some negative externalities: production will result in 500,000 tonnes of waste, or “tailings” – which will be stored in small lagoons at the mouth of the mine behind high-sided dykes – which hill-walkers on surrounding mountains, such as Ben Lui, one of the area’s most popular peaks, could resent, and Coronish have to satisfy environmental regulators that there is minimal risk of contaminating the river Tay. The story was discussed on Wake up to Money yesterday morning (12 November); you can download the programme from the BBC website here, or get a link to the podcast, for the next few days.
Rated: 
(5/5), based on 1 review
Print
Email
ECONOMICS TEACHER RESOURCE NEWSLETTER
Join over 6,000 other Economics Teachers in the UK and around the world who receive the tutor2u regular Economics Resource Email Newsletter. Get special offers, first news of latest resources, teaching ideas, conferences and workshops + loads of great ideas for teaching economics from our blog authors.
Comments
Very interesting story. The mine should bring much needed jobs to the area and bring people with skills such as engineering to the area rather than just the tourism industry. But the miners will have to ensure minimal damage to the environment, otherwise it will be the tourism industry that with be the victim of the miners success. If these negative externalities are costly then no real economic growth in the area will occur.
Posted by on 11/15 at 07:57 AM
Most Popular Topic Tags on the Economics Blog
recession,
demand,
economics,
unemployment,
prices,
inflation,
investment,
price,
trade,
employment,
costs,
profit,
debt,
supply,
euro,
gdp,
risk,
downturn,
confidence,
china,
competition,
capacity,
tutor2u,
production,
expectations,
exports,
incentives,
manufacturing,
oil,
pay,
housing,
sterling,
food,
banks,
revision,
profits,
mortgage,
globalisation,
property,
innovation,
usa,
retailers,
borrowing,
slowdown,
deflation,
productivity,
entrepreneur,
moodle,
emissions,
supermarkets,
dollar,
airlines,
aqa,
efficiency,
budget deficit,
infrastructure,
keynes,
monopsony,
externalities,
protectionism,
consumption,
inequality,
bank of england,
welfare,
competitiveness,
wealth,
google,
strategy,
elasticity,
depression,
economist,
behavioural economics,
output gap,
economic cycle,
government failure,
vle,
opec,
tim harford,
stocks,
depreciation,
credit crunch,
saving,
poverty,
jobs,
monopoly,
uk economy,
cars,
carbon,
spare capacity,
environment,
eu,
carbon trading,
management,
wages,
oligopoly,
evaluation,
subsidy,
environmental,
interest rates,
national debt,
india,
fiscal stimulus,
market failure,
multiplier effect,
climate change,
macroeconomics,
dan ariely,
cpi,
losses,
skills,
regulation,
rsa,
behavioural,
imports,
steel,
commodities,
lse,
construction,
japan,
minimum wage,
farming,
opportunity cost,
apple,
bbc,
paul mason,
brazil,
greece,
monetary policy,
itunes,
relative poverty,
quantitative easing,
agflation,
cartel,
sovereign debt,
newsnight,
aviation,
intervention,
single market,
population,
imf,
currencies,
rpi,
germany,
stagflation,
contestable,
aqa economics,
current account,
oecd,
ucas,
open source,
facebook,
amazon,
survey,
taxes,
balance of payments,
quiz,
price discrimination,
iphone,
savings,
ebea,
choices,
twitter,
nationalisation,
stephanie flanders,
royal economic society,
economics revision,
taxation,
keynes society,
pricing,
redundancies,
speculation,
ireland,
mpc,
information failure,
scarcity,
robert peston,
trade deficit,
currency,
pollution,
aggregate demand,
stakeholders,
eton college,
tariffs,
tragedy of the commons,
liquidity,
microsoft,
vat,
ocr economics,
immigration,
fiscal policy,
crowding out,
ecb,
fdi,
merger,
london,
capital,
yuan,
supply chain,
brics,
income elasticity,
federal reserve,
subsidies,
shipping,
barriers to entry,
economies of scale,
us economy,
human capital,
hamish mcrae,
russia,
shareholder,
coffee,
comparative advantage,
recovery,
development,
rationality,
allocative efficiency,
crude oil,
tesco,
robert frank,
animal spirits,
philip allan updates,
budget,
petrol,
edexcel economics,
reputation,
nhs,
obama,
advertising,
creative destruction,
suppliers,
poverty trap,
consumer surplus,
broadband,
price capping,
liquidity trap,
waste,
startups,
happiness,
collapse,
discrimination,
roger bootle,
standard of living,
oxbridge,
gini coefficient,
dynamic efficiency,
northern rock,
contestable market,
david smith,
All tags
