In total, there are now 350 gold discoveries catalogued by S&P between 1990-2023, containing nearly 2.9 billion ounces of gold. The discovery count represents a 3% rise on the previous analysis in 2023, which had 345 gold discoveries with 2.81 billion ounces.
However, S&P’s report noted that while the number of discoveries and amount of gold continue to grow each year, most of the assets were discovered decades ago and only recently met its criteria for a notable gold discovery.
Compared to its last year’s analysis, the five new discoveries contributed to just 22% of the 79 million ounces added in the 2024 update.
It also pointed out that the average size of the recent gold discoveries has shrank, at about 3.5 million ounces compared with 5.5 million ounces during 2010-2019. In fact, none of the discoveries made over the past 10 years entered the list of the 30 largest gold discoveries.
