VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – Recent analysis by Standard & Poor’s Market Intelligence has revealed that the major gold producers have maintained their total gold reserves in 2015, adding more gold reserves than what they produced during the period.

At the end of 2015, the top 20 gold-producing companies held more than 760-million ounces of gold reserves — sufficient for 16 years of production at 2015 rates, after allowing 10% for recovery losses during production. They accomplished this while increasing their collective output by 7% over the previous ten years, from 39.7-million ounces in 2006 to 42.5-million ounces in 2015, and producing a total of 403-million ounces of gold, a research note authored by analysts Mark Ferguson, Nick Wright and Robert Andersto stated.

At the same time, S&P pointed out that the 20 major gold companies replaced an average of 151% of their production over the period through a combination of acquisitions and exploration. They added 670.9-million ounces of reserves at acquisition and exploration costs totalling $77.7-billion between 2006 and 2015, for an average cost of $115.81/oz of gold.

Among the 20 companies, 16 had positive reserves growth, net of production, and four had negative net growth, with Polyus Gold and Newcrest Mining leading with the highest growth. In terms of reserves-replacement rate, China National Gold topped the list, replacing 400% of its 9.4-million ounces of production, and Polyus Gold and Zijin Mining shared second place, each with a replacement rate of 370%, S&P said.

Nineteen of the 20 companies made acquisitions during the period, buying more than 253-million ounces of gold reserves for $61.02-billion, for an average cost of $241/oz. Barrick Gold topped the list, having acquired more than 60.4-million ounces of gold reserves between 2006 and 2015, at an average cost of $177.25/oz. Gold Fields took second place with the acquisition of 37.4-million ounces.

The group developed 417.7-million ounces of gold reserves by budgeting $16.68-billion, or $39.93/oz, for gold exploration. Polyus added 55.8-million ounces by budgeting $567-million, or $10.17/oz, followed by AngloGold Ashanti, which added 44.2-million ounces with exploration budgets totalling $2.53-billion, an average of $57.29/oz.

Only 11 of the 20 major gold producers reported shares in large discoveries, either alone or in joint ventures, with AngloGold being the most successful with 73.3-million ounces of gold in reserves and resources found in 7.1 attributable discoveries. Barrick was next with 31.6-million ounces in 3.3 attributable discoveries. Polyus had three attributable discoveries containing 22.7-million ounces, S&P said.