The report points out that over the past 24 years mining companies have discovered some 1.66 billion ounces of gold in 217 major discoveries, BUT – and it’s a big BUT – while this may sound a huge amount, over the same period the industry has actually produced 1.84 billion ounces of gold, so discoveries have not been keeping pace with production. But the report goes much further in showing that the number of significant discoveries (defined as deposits with a minimum of 2 million ounces of contained gold) is diminishing and this diminishing trend seems to be accelerating. In the 1990s some 124 deposits containing 1.1 billion ounces of gold were discovered while since the year 2000 this has fallen to only 605 million ounces in 93 such discovered deposits. And most recently significant new discoveries appear to have slowed to a trickle.