Chender pointed to current exploration trends as suggesting a significant squeeze on potential future gold supply. While there had already been a notable decline in the discovery of major new gold discoveries anyway over the past several years, one of the unintended consequences of the latest spate of cost cutting and reserve and resource re-evaluation by the gold mining companies has been a sharp decline in exploration expenditures. The extent to which industry has cut back will thus have a huge impact on resource and reserve replacement going forward.