资产缩水和储量下滑将困扰黄金开采商

The gold mining sector is braced for asset writedowns and a fall in the amount of reserves in the ground after the precipitous drop in the Price of the metal this year.

随着黄金价格在今年暴跌，金矿开采行业将迎来资产减记和储量下滑。

Some of the world’s largest gold miners face having to tell investors that their growth has gone into reverse because the price makes it uneconomic to mine some areas formerly classed as reserves.

全球最大的几家金矿开采商可能不得不告诉投资者，它们的增长已经步入下行区间，因为暴跌后的金价使得一些此前被归为储量的金矿不再具有开采价值。

Miners’ reserves are vital to prospects and valuations. Companies would quickly shrink if they did not replace what they dug from the ground each year.

储量对矿商的前景和估值至关重要。如果不能用新储量替代每年开采的量，公司将很快萎缩。

Price expectations have until now helped gold miners be more optimistic about reserves and to include ounces they would formerly not have been able to mine profitably.

之前，在价格预期的驱使下，金矿开采商对储量更为乐观，并且在储量报告中加入了先前无法盈利开采的储量。

“Gold has been going up for 12 of the last 13 years and reserves have gone up with the price. This [2014] is definitely the year we will see reserves falling [sectorwide],” said Jorge Beristain, an analyst with Deutsche Bank.

“在过去13年中，金价有12年都在上涨。但2014年将是全行业储量下降的一年，”德意志银行(Deutsche Bank)分析师豪尔赫•贝里斯塔因(Jorge Beristain)表示。

“Reserve calculations have been based on a series of suppositions that inthe present environment are no longer tenable.”

“储量的计算根据是一系列的假设，在目前环境下这些假设已经站不住脚。”

Gold miners including Barrick Gold and Newmont Mining, the world’s largest by ounces of annual production, have had a difficult year in 2013 because of the effect of the gold price on some of their most important projects. Miners usually update reserve statements early each year. Not all assume the same price. Barrick’s last reserve statement assumed a gold price of $1,500 per ounce for most of its 140m oz of reserves, while Newmont based its statements on a $1,400/oz price.

巴里克黄金公司(Barrick Gold)和纽蒙特矿业公司(Newmont Mining)是全球产量（以盎司计）最高的金矿开采商。包括它们在内的金矿开采商度过了艰难的2013年，原因是金价对它们一些最重要的项目造成了影响。

Gold began the year at about $1,600/oz but fell sharply in April. It has hovered about $1,200/oz in recent days.

矿商通常在每年年初发布最新的储量报告。并非所有公司都采用同一假定价格。巴里克的上一份储量报告假设其1.4亿盎司黄金储量大部分以每盎司1500美元计价，而纽蒙特的报告则以每盎司1400美元作为基准。黄金年初价格约为每盎司1600美元，但在4月份暴跌。近日金价在每盎司1200美元附近徘徊。