Commodities
Ghana’s wildcat gold mining booms, poisoning people and nature
By Maxwell Akalaare Adombila
PRESTEA-HUNI VALLEY, Ghana (Reuters) – At an unlicensed gold mine in Ghana, men in t-shirts, shorts and rubber boots wade through pools of muddy water laced with mercury, pull out rocks with bare hands and operate a rickety sluice as they search for the precious ore.
The ramshackle mine is part of a booming business that is generating livelihoods and informal revenue streams for Ghana’s economy, even as it harms miners’ health, pollutes waterways, destroys forests and cocoa farms, and fuels crime.
“It’s risky but I just want to survive,” said one of the men at the wildcat site visited by Reuters in the Prestea-Huni Valley district in western Ghana.
The 24-year-old accounting student, who asked not to be named because he was involved in illegal activities, said he had been skipping classes to prospect for gold because he needed the money, having lost his father as a teenager.
There was no professional protective equipment at the mine. Men wore flimsy plastic shopping bags on their heads. One had swimming goggles and another a rice bag covering his torso.
The unlicensed gold mining industry, known in Ghana as “galamsey”, has grown at a breakneck pace this year as global gold prices have risen by almost 30%, enticing new entrants.
Small-scale mines produced 1.2 million ounces of gold in the first seven months of this year, more than in the whole of 2023, according to data from Ghana’s mining sector regulator.
About 40% of Ghana’s total gold output comes from small mines, as opposed to concessions operated by multi-national firms. Some 70-80% of the small mines are unlicensed.
POISONED PROFITS
Martin Ayisi, head of Ghana’s Minerals Commission, the mining industry regulator, said most galamsey gold was smuggled out of the country and was therefore not contributing to national gold export revenues.
For Ayisi, the rise in gold prices is good for Ghana, helping it recover from a severe economic crisis in 2022 that required a $3-billion IMF bailout.
“We should be able to get a lot of money and probably exit the IMF programme earlier,” he said, forecasting national gold export revenues would more than double to $10 billion this year.
But industry experts say the lines between legal mining and galamsey are blurred, and gold from informal mines represents a larger proportion of revenues than the authorities acknowledge.
The dangers of galamsey, however, are not in dispute.
Dozens of miners have been killed in collapsing pits in recent years, according to news reports and human rights groups, while hospitals and health centres report high numbers of early deaths from pulmonary diseases of miners and residents of towns and villages near mines.
These are caused by inhaling dust that contains heavy metals such as lead, as well as poisonous fumes from the mercury and nitric acid the miners use to leach gold out of sediment.
The chemicals are then dumped on the ground or in rivers. Ghana’s water authority says mercury and heavy metals from mining have contaminated about 65% of water sources.
Meanwhile, thousands of hectares (acres) of cocoa plantations and virgin forest have been destroyed by illegal miners, according to data from Global Forest Watch, an online monitoring platform.
Protesters have taken to the streets in Accra in recent weeks to criticise President Nana Akufo-Addo’s government over what they saw as its failure to tackle these problems. “Leaders, you’ve failed us!” read some of the placards.
“Galamsey has to stop. We want to live long. We don’t want to fall sick. We don’t want to go to the hospital,” said Aboubacar Sadekh, who was taking part in a march on Sept. 22, draped in a Ghanaian flag.
The government denies that it is failing to act on galamsey. When he came to power in 2017, Akufo-Addo pledged to take action on the issue, and during his time in office the government has launched crackdowns, deploying soldiers to arrest illegal miners. In some cases, mining equipment was seized and destroyed.
ORGANISED CRIME
Opinion polls suggest galamsey is one of the top five issues for voters ahead of a Dec. 7 general election.
The main candidates to replace outgoing Akufo-Addo as president, Vice President Mahamudu Bawumia and former President John Mahama, have pledged to formalise galamsey, for example by funding a state agency to explore for gold and map areas for locals to mine.
But successive governments have been promising for years to tackle the problem without making much headway, partly because powerful people are benefitting from the industry, experts say.
Chris Aston, head of a British-backed programme aimed at regulating small-scale gold mining in Ghana, said artisanal miners were vulnerable to organised crime gangs, who provide them with funding for equipment up-front, unlike other lenders.
“Miner pre-financing is one way that organised crime groups can penetrate the gold supply chain,” he said. Funders then “require miners to sell the gold they mine back to them at a subsidised rate”.
Emmanuel Kwesi Anning, a security consultant based in Accra, said galamsey was fuelling an increase in gun-trafficking because those overseeing illegal mines sought armed protection against rivals or thieves.
He also said politicians and traditional rulers in some areas were taking a cut of galamsey profits, further entrenching the problem.
“It has become an elite consensus that they’ll not touch this business.”
Ghana’s information minister did not respond to requests for comments on the allegations of organised crime involvement, gun running and corruption.
A top official in the National Security Ministry, who did not wish to be named because they were not authorised to speak about the issue in public, said authorities were working to address the links between illegal mining, money laundering and gun trafficking.
By Ron Bousso
LONDON (Reuters) -Oil prices rose to $75 a barrel on Tuesday, extending gains from the previous session as investors weighed the impact of China’s stimulus measures to boost its economy, and concerns over tension in the Middle East persisted.
futures for December delivery rose 68 cents, or 0.92%, to $74.97 at 1033 GMT. U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude futures for November delivery were up 66 cents at $71.22 a barrel on the contract’s last day as the front month.
The more actively traded WTI futures for December delivery, which will soon become the front month, rose 70 cents, or 1%, to $70.74 per barrel.
Both Brent and WTI rose nearly 2% on Monday, recouping some of last week’s more than 7% decline, with no letup of fighting in the Middle East and the market nervous that Israel’s expected retaliation against Iran could disrupt oil supply.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken arrived in Israel on Tuesday, the first stop on a Middle East tour in which he will seek to revive talks to end the Gaza war and contain the spillover conflict in Lebanon.
“Crude oil prices have been fluctuating in response to mixed news from the Middle East, as the situation alternates between escalation and de-escalation,” said Satoru Yoshida, a commodity analyst at Rakuten Securities.
The market continued to weigh the implications for fuel demand of China’s stimulus measures and increased U.S. economic activity, he added
Beijing on Monday cut benchmark lending rates as part of stimulus measures to revive the economy as data last week showed it had grown at the slowest pace since early 2023 in the third quarter.
China’s oil demand growth is expected to remain weak in 2025 as the world’s No. 2 economy electrifies its car fleet and grows at a slower pace, the head of the International Energy Agency said on Monday.
Still, Saudi Aramco (TADAWUL:) is “fairly bullish” on China’s oil demand especially in light of the government’s stimulus package which aims to boost growth, the head of the state-owned Saudi oil giant said on Monday.
oil stockpiles likely rose last week, while distillate and gasoline inventories were seen down, a preliminary Reuters poll showed.
Investing.com– Oil prices rose Tuesday, rebounding after earlier losses, as traders digested ongoing tensions in the Middle East as well as slowing demand in major oil consumer China.
At 08:20 ET (12:20 GMT), rose 0.7% to $74.77 a barrel, while gained 0.8% to $70.58 a barrel.
China rate cut, Middle East tensions provide support
The oil markets have taken positive cues from Monday’s interest rate cut by the Chinese central bank.
However, gains have been limited as this move comes as part of a swathe of recent stimulus efforts from the country which have been greeted with limited optimism, as Beijing failed to provide details on the timing and scale of the planned measures.
Concerns over a bigger Middle East conflict have also provided support, with the explosion of a drone near Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s house raising the prospect of an escalation in the conflict.
The focus is largely on Israel’s potential retaliation against Iran over an early-October attack, although reports last week said Israel will not target the country’s oil and nuclear infrastructure.
“Tensions in the Middle East continue to be reflected in the options market,” said analysts at ING, in a note. “The volatility skew shows that calls are becoming increasingly more expensive than puts as participants buy protection in the event of a price spike, given the uncertain geopolitical environment. This also ties in with the larger traded volumes we have seen in call options recently.”
IEA warns China will continue to weigh on oil demand
That said, the crude market still dropped around 7% last week after Chinese growth data disappointed.
International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol warned on Monday that weakness in top importer China will continue to weigh on global oil demand in the coming years.
Birol’s comments, made in an interview with Bloomberg, came after both the International Energy Agency and the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries recently cut its demand growth forecast on concerns over China.
China is the world’s biggest oil importer, and has been grappling with a prolonged downturn in economic growth, which is expected to quash the country’s appetite for crude.
Increased electric vehicle adoption in the country is also expected to dampen fuel demand.
(Ambar Warrick contributed to this artcile.)
By Anushree Mukherjee
(Reuters) – Gold climbed on Tuesday, trading not too far away from the record peak it hit in the last session, as concerns over rising geopolitical tensions, U.S. election uncertainties and prospects of central banks lowering interest rates boosted demand.
Spot gold rose 0.5% to $2,732.06 per ounce by 1143 GMT and U.S. gained 0.3% to $2,746.50.
Bullion, considered a hedge against geopolitical and economic uncertainties, hit an all-time high of $2,740.37 on Monday. The non-yielding asset has gained 32% so far this year.
“Uncertainty is the key word at the moment and safe-haven like gold is actually the most important refuge asset possibly in traders’ portfolios at the moment,” said Ricardo Evangelista, senior analyst at ActivTrades.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see the $2,800 being touched at some point,” Evangelista said, adding that rate cuts, purchases from some central banks, geopolitical instability and uncertainty over the outcome of the U.S. presidential election are boosting demand for the metal.
Gold’s rally comes despite a firmer U.S. dollar and Treasury yields, and the strength of gold’s momentum has outweighed weaker physical demand and higher supply, analysts said. [USD/] [US/]
“The precious metal could keep printing never-before-seen prices as long as markets can keep shrugging off the ongoing rebound in U.S. Treasury yields and the dollar,” said Han Tan, chief market analyst at Exinity Group. [USD/]
“Sustained net inflows into bullion-backed ETFs should also preserve the upside momentum in .” [GOL/ETF]
Global physically-backed gold ETFs saw their fifth consecutive monthly inflow in September, attracting $1.4 billion, according to the World Gold Council (WGC).
From the technical point of view, the Relative Strength Index (RSI), currently at 74, suggests that gold prices moved into “overbought” territory. An RSI above 70 indicates a commodity is overbought. [TECH/]
Spot silver rose 1.9% to $34.39 per ounce after hitting its highest since late-2012 in the last session.
“We should see silver cross above $35 before the November 5th polling day, provided the tailwinds for precious metals remain intact,” Tan added.
Platinum rose about 1.2% to $1,015.33 per ounce. Palladium added 2% to $1,072.35.
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