Report: Turkey sits on 50 billion tons of valuable metals, minerals
Posted by meb at February 20th, 2008
A recent Mining Exploration Institute (MTA) report has revealed that there are 49 types of metals and minerals of commercial value, amounting to 50 billion tons, in underground reserves in Turkey.
Turkey stands 28th among 132 countries in mine production and 10th in terms of metal and mineral diversity. Turkey hosts 77 of 90 different types of commercial metals and minerals that currently exist in the world. The MTA report shows that dolomite (white marble) ranks first with 15.8 billion tons in reserves.
Dolomite, an indispensable element widely used in the glass and ceramics industries, is a rare and valuable limestone. Turkey also has a marble reserve of 13.9 tons, 8.3 tons of lignite coal, 5.7 billion of rock salt, 1.2 billion tons of hard coal, a blister copper reserve of 1.9 billion tons and 1.5 billion tons of pumice.
Sources note that the market value of Turkey’s non-extracted metal and mineral reserves exceeds $2.5 trillion.
The MTA study also indicates that other commercially valuable minerals and elements abundant in Turkey are asbestos, asphaltite, barite, bitumen, bauxite, mercury, thorium, uranium and strickle.
Gold and silver reserves
The study shows there are 600 tons of gold and 6,062 tons of silver reserves in Turkey. The list of large amounts of reserves also includes feldspar, phosphate rock, chrome, lead, quartz, sulfur, meerschaum and manganese.
source: Today’s Zaman
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