Ship with 700 tons of gold ore disappears

Ship with 700 tons of gold ore disappears off Russia

MOSCOW – A vessel with a nine-person crew and 700 tons of gold ore onboard has disappeared in stormy seas off Russia's Pacific Coast.

The ship sent a distress call on Sunday as it was sailing from the coastal town of Neran to Feklistov Island in the Sea of Okhotsk.

The vessel, hired by mining company Polymetal, was carrying 700 tons of gold ore from one deposit to another where it was to be processed. Gold ore is the material from which gold is extracted and contains only a small percentage of the precious metal.

Polymetal's spokesman on Monday would not estimate the value of the cargo.

The company said it has shipped ore via that route before, and there was nothing unusual in shipping it by the sea.

Read more: http://www.myfoxorlando.com/story/19...#ixzz2AnUmgWGq

Ragnar Danneskjöld???

Gives some sea gold diver a lot of fun in the future.

Ore.

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Originally Posted by phill4paul

Ore.

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Yup. Probably never be worth recovering.

Nope , cost too much , that ore will yield 10 pounds of gold per ton, so , whole load , 7000 lbs of gold in 700 tons of ore.

Misleading title is misleading.

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Originally Posted by oyarde

Nope , cost too much , that ore will yield 10 pounds of gold per ton, so , whole load , 7000 lbs of gold in 700 tons of ore.

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Yes but at the current price per ounce that's over 191 million dollars. Could be worth renting a rather large ship with some salvage equipment.

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Originally Posted by oyarde

Nope , cost too much , that ore will yield 10 pounds of gold per ton, so , whole load , 7000 lbs of gold in 700 tons of ore.

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If you found ore with that high concentration of gold you'd be the luckiest man alive.

0.5 ounces per ton is already considered a good yield. Most mines operate at just a few grams of gold per ton of ore!

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Originally Posted by fisharmor

Misleading title is misleading.

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Fixed.

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Originally Posted by Confederate

If you found ore with that high concentration of gold you'd be the luckiest man alive.

0.5 ounces per ton is already considered a good yield. Most mines operate at just a few grams of gold per ton of ore!

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Only going on the rumor I heard.

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Originally Posted by Aeroneous

Yes but at the current price per ounce that's over 191 million dollars. Could be worth renting a rather large ship with some salvage equipment.

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That would be assuing it went down and you knew where.Only a crew of , 9 or less , easy buy off .

So we're looking at about $105k of gold, then subtract the cost of processing?

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Originally Posted by dannno

So we're looking at about $105k of gold, then subtract the cost of processing?

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That barely covers the cost of the ship's fuel.
There must have been other things in the ore too.

"St Petersburg-based Polymetal has not released an estimate for the cost of the loss, but Nikolay Sosnovskiy, an analyst at VTB Capital, told Bloomberg that the gold ore was worth about $800,000. " http://www.metalbulletin.com/Article...e-missing.html

Insurance scam is also possibility.... My brain gets to "evil case scenario" fast for some reason.

gold + ship=??? value

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Originally Posted by Barrex

Insurance scam is also possibility.... My brain gets to "evil case scenario" fast for some reason.

gold + ship=??? value

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Good point on the ship.

Reminds me of that old fable....

An old man kept being stopped at the border carrying bags of dirt on his horse. Everytime he crossed the Guard would take more time sifting through the dirt to try to find what was in it, but they became sure he was smuggling something.

Ultimately, he was given a pardon of all past crimes for some heroic act, and the King asked 'since you are now pardoned of all past acts, would you let me know what was in the dirt you were smuggling so many years?"

And the guy said, "I wasn't smuggling dirt.... I was smuggling horses......"

But in this case you do have gold ore of whatever purity....

sorry for the diversion!

http://i3.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/...29/9189283.jpg

The are types of clay, good white clay for example, that are worth more per tonne than gold ore.

Gold Ore is worth processing even in the parts per million range. Its not lumps of rock with nuggets sticking out.

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Originally Posted by idiom

The are types of clay, good white clay for example, that are worth more per tonne than gold ore.

Gold Ore is worth processing even in the parts per million range. Its not lumps of rock with nuggets sticking out.

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On a barge it is worth processing. Spread around the bottom of the ocean maybe not so much. It probably depends on how deep it is.

From this chart http://www.eoearth.org/article/Sea_o...sk?topic=49523 it is about 50 meters deep where the ship disappeared (in the far left side of this chart where it runs off the edge- Feklistov Island is the smaller one you see over there and the ship would have sailed from just off this chart- less than 100 miles) but still the question would need to be would the costs of any attempts to salvage be worth the gains from bringing the ore back up?
http://www.eoearth.org/images/189956...Okhotsksea.gif

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Originally Posted by Barrex

Insurance scam is also possibility.... My brain gets to "evil case scenario" fast for some reason.

gold + ship=??? value

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nah, its really not "evil case scenario".. its prob a "most likely scenario"... just like the wtc + asbestos removal/repair + insurance scam

Per Reuters article:

"At current gold prices, the 700 tonnes of gold ore may cost around $230,000, analyst Sergey Donskoy at Societe Generale said. Each tonne of ore out of the Avlayakan mine contains about 6 grammes of gold.

af.reuters.com/article/metalsNews/idAFL5E8LU43W20121030

Possibly over-loaded. ITAR-TASS reports the load capacity of the boat was 611 tons yet was reported to be carrying 700 tons.
Sounds like the seas were a bit rough as well. The last thing heard from the ship was their SOS message. http://www.itar-tass.com/en/c32/559205.html

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The gusts of wind reach 20 meters per second in the search area which is having sleet showers, and meteorologists said the wave height would increase to five meters.

The missing dry cargo ship was carrying 700 tons of gold-containing ore from the port township of Kiran in the Khabarovsk territory to the port of Okhotsk. It left the Kiran port, Tuguro-Chumikansky district on Sunday, October 28.

According to the technical specifications of the Amurskaya, it has the weight-carrying capacity of 611 tons, which means it might be carrying an extra 89 tons of ore. Its length is 55 meters. The vessel was built in 1973.

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http://www.seanews.com.tr/article/AC...-gold-carrier/

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Heavy snowfall and zero visibility have made it impossible to use aircraft in the search operation for the second day running.

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I call bullshit!

Barges? We don't need no stinking barges! Oh, wait . . . glub glub.

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The gusts of wind reach 20 meters per second in the search area which is having sleet showers, and meteorologists said the wave height would increase to five meters.

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That's only 45mph, it's not really a big storm.

Five meters would be fifteen foot waves on what sounds like it was an over-laden ship (80 tons above its listed capacity).

Sounds like a big storm to me .