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Only by consolidating the foundation and cultivating the talents can we achieve long-term stability. At the beginning of the Year of the Dragon, at a time when a new round of strategic actions for mineral prospecting breakthroughs is in full swing, a battle to find out the resources, promote the increase of reserves and production, improve the supply guarantee ability of mineral resources and the level of resource conservation, intensification and development and utilization has quietly begun. **

On December 5, 2023, the General Office of the Ministry of Natural Resources issued the "Work Plan for the Re-evaluation of Co-associated and Low-grade Resources of Some Strategic Minerals in the New Round of Strategic Actions for Mineral Exploration Breakthroughs", requiring one year to focus on "15 strategic minerals" to carry out re-evaluation of co-associated and low-grade resources.

On January 5, 2024, the General Office of the Ministry of Natural Resources issued the "Technical Requirements for Re-evaluation of Co-associated and Low-grade Resources of Some Strategic Minerals in the New Round of Strategic Actions for Mineral Exploration Breakthroughs", marking that this work is comprehensive across the country. Start up.

Have a direction and practice "the greatest person in the country"

Energy security and security are related to the national economy and people's livelihood, and they are the "biggest country" that cannot be ignored for a moment. ** Ensuring the supply of primary products such as energy resources is the cornerstone of supporting stable economic and social operations and a major strategic issue related to the comprehensive construction of a modern socialist country. ** As the world's largest consumer of mineral resources, China is also the world's largest producer and trading country of mineral resources. In the future, China's demand for mineral resources will continue to grow rigidly.

Since the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping has repeatedly made important expositions and instructions on improving energy resource security capabilities and strengthening mineral resource exploration and development, emphasizing that for a big country like ours, ensuring the supply of primary products is a major strategic issue. The issue requires increasing exploration and development efforts, consolidating the base of domestic production, and improving self-protection capabilities. Strengthening the re-evaluation of some strategic mineral co-associated and low-grade resources and continuing to promote the increase of reserves and production are undoubtedly a vivid manifestation and concrete practice of the natural resource system in mind the "greatest country".

As we all know,"open source" and "throttling" are complementary and indispensable unity. They are the "two wheels" of a new round of strategic actions for prospecting breakthroughs. ** The main focus of this round of mineral prospecting breakthrough strategic actions is to "increase reserves and expand production, and improve effective supply." To achieve this goal, we must not only "open sources", but also discover new large and good mines by strengthening geological prospecting. Mines, we must also "reduce expenditure". By strengthening comprehensive evaluation of mineral resources and technological progress, we must turn some resources that were not originally "mines" into "rich mines" and "large mines", so as to increase reserves and increase production.

Based on this, the Ministry of Natural Resources, while strengthening geological exploration and striving to expand "mineral sources", also promptly deployed and launched the re-evaluation of "15 strategic minerals", focusing on "reducing expenditure".

On March 14, the Ministry of Natural Resources held a promotion meeting on mineral resources management and a new round of mineral prospecting breakthrough strategic actions that emphasized the need to do a good job in re-evaluation of some strategic mineral co-associated and low-grade resources to promote the efficient development and utilization of mineral resources.

Follow the situation and consolidate the resources

In fact, mineral resource evaluation is an important part of geological prospecting, and the Ministry of Natural Resources has always attached great importance to it, and has repeatedly called for strengthening comprehensive exploration and strengthening comprehensive evaluation of mineral resources during the geological prospecting process.

However, due to various reasons, in reality, there are still situations such as "emphasizing exploration over evaluation, emphasizing ore prospecting over research". Some resources that could not be utilized due to technical reasons at that time are characterized as "dead ore", while some low-grade ores that can now be utilized are ignored and are not included on the reserve list. In addition, the evaluation standards and evaluation degrees are different, which ultimately results in unclear total mineral resources.

"Currently, China has problems such as incomplete data, inaccurate information, and inconsistent standards in its strategic mineral survey and evaluation, resulting in inaccurate resource potential estimates, irregular resource reserves verification, and unscientific resource value assessment. Some key exploration areas only conduct resource evaluations from the perspective of element chemical analysis, do not conduct mineral analysis and availability evaluation, and lack development and utilization plans, suggestions and plans. The existing evaluation standards do not consider the benefits of comprehensive utilization technological progress and promotion and application, and the total amount of available resources is insufficient." An expert in the field of comprehensive utilization of mineral resources in China suggested that in order to improve this situation, it is necessary to strengthen investigation and evaluation work, scientifically evaluate a number of valuable and potential mineral resources, and further improve the degree of resource security.

Especially in recent years, with the advancement of beneficiation and smelting technology and breakthroughs in key technologies, some low-grade and co-associated deposits that were originally difficult to utilize have become exploitable minerals, which has also "forced" the re-evaluation of mineral resources.

According to relevant data, at present, the resource development and utilization efficiency and process technology of some mining companies in China have been greatly improved. For example, Pangang Group has overcome the global technical problem of smelting high-titanium vanadium-titanium magnetite in ordinary blast furnaces, realizing Large-scale utilization of iron, vanadium, titanium, cobalt, nickel and other elements in hard-to-utilize, low-grade, multi-metallic symbiotic vanadium-titanium magnetite resources; Zijin Mining's low-grade gold ore heap leaching and smelting technology has solved key technical and engineering problems of low-grade and difficult to smelt resources. The lowest grade of ore mining has been far lower than general industrial indicators, reaching the international advanced level.

In recent years, with the application of advanced technologies and processes, the actual production indicators of mineral resources have changed. In particular, some rare and scattered metal elements that exist in symbiotic and associated forms have changed greatly with the use and use value. The foundation of mineral resource reserves has also changed. Doing things according to the situation, making full use of the latest practical indicators, re-estimating mineral resource reserves, comprehensively grasping the true and objective current situation, objectively judging the resource situation, and promoting comprehensive utilization of resources will become an important way to improve domestic mineral resource security capabilities.

At the same time, due to various reasons, in some places, some minerals have also caused a mismatch between the resources held by the country and the consumption of mines. It is also urgent to find out through re-evaluation.

"For a long time, the country has attached great importance to the management of mineral resource reserves, and has successively adopted a series of strict mineral resource reserves review and filing systems, dynamic monitoring of mine reserves, annual report of mine reserves, statistical quality monitoring of mine reserves, and disclosure of exploration and mining information by mining rights holders." Combination boxing "is used to strengthen supervision, and systematic revisions and adjustments are also carried out through special work such as reserve verification and mineral resources national conditions survey. However, there are still a large number of mismatches between the reserves held by the country and mine output consumption, which affects the judgment of the resource situation." said the person in charge of the Mineral Resources Protection and Supervision Department of the Ministry of Natural Resources.

Good work and success help increase reserves and production

Only by setting your goals can you have a clear direction. As the work ideas are gradually clarified and the work foundation is gradually solid, the Ministry of Natural Resources has launched multiple arrows at the same time, and the re-evaluation of some strategic minerals associated with and low-grade resources is solidly advanced.

At the end of last year, the Ministry of Natural Resources held a mobilization and technical training meeting to re-evaluate some strategic mineral co-associated and low-grade resources in the new round of mineral exploration breakthrough strategic actions.

The "Technical Requirements for the Re-evaluation of Some Strategic Minerals Co-associated and Low-grade Resources in the New Round of Strategic Actions for Mineral Exploration and Breakthroughs" issued at the beginning of this year * puts forward clear requirements for the overall goal, scope, basic requirements, work flow, and survey objects. Determination of data collection, survey of indicators of production mines, determination of re-evaluation indicators, preparation of re-evaluation reports, review warehousing and data submission, comprehensive research, and quality assurance. **

On March 14, at the Mineral Resources Management and New Round of Exploration Breakthrough Strategic Action Promotion Meeting held by the Ministry of Natural Resources, the Ministry leaders once again emphasized the importance and necessity of this work and required high-quality completion of the re-evaluation work.

** It is understood that the time for this re-evaluation is limited to one year, during which it is necessary to complete the collection of actual production indicators of the mine, the preparation, review, warehousing and summary of re-evaluation reports for more than 800 producing mines and more than 1100 large and medium-sized Kuangqu mining areas. The technical requirements are high, the work tasks are heavy, and the time is very tight. **

"This re-evaluation work is a special task to find out the reserves of some strategic mineral resources. All provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) must strengthen overall planning, focus on key links, strengthen quality control, reverse working hours, and efficiently complete re-evaluation work." The person in charge of the Mineral Resources Protection and Supervision Department of the Ministry of Natural Resources particularly emphasized the need to establish a quality control system for re-evaluation throughout the process to ensure that detailed actual production data is collected, and through smelting data verification and verification to screen out true, objective and credible situations. It is necessary to adhere to the result-oriented approach, make full use of the result data, summarize it in a timely manner, grasp the overall situation, and do a solid job in special research work such as dynamic evaluation of national reserves, demonstration of the degree of mineral resource security, and suggestions for the adjustment of industrial indicators to provide reference for major national mineral resources decisions.

据了解，为了保证此项工作不打折扣如期完成，The Ministry of Natural Resources has also proposed safeguard measures from three aspects: organization, quality and funding. 要求各省（区、市）落实责任，加强组织领导，强化组织落实，完善工作机制，层层压实责任，做到“组织落实、人员落实、任务落实、进度落实”。严格质量控制，确保生产矿山提供的有关使用指标与生产台账及生产实际一致，与相关选冶企业提供的情况基本一致。对工作项目涉及的资源储量再评价，建立统一编码制度，实时跟踪管理，及时评审入库。所有调查结果均要有资料支撑，核实报告要经调查队伍与调研对象共同确认；所有调查记录存档备查，调查评价过程可溯源检查。

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