Largest natural gold reserve
- Who
- Earth's oceans
- What
- 20,000,000 tonne(s)/metric ton(s)
- Where
- Not Applicable
- When
- 2016
The surprising fact about natural gold reserves on Earth is that the world's oceans contain approximately 20 million tonnes of this precious metal. This is equivalent in value to around 10 times the world's gross domestic product (GDP) as of 2017. However, the concentration of gold in seawater is typically such that one litre of water contains only around about 13 billionths of a gram of gold. This varies from ocean to ocean, and sea to sea, but this figure is an average across them all. At the present time, there are no available methods for economically extracting this gold from seawater, so it will have to remain in this huge natural gold reserve until such time that science offers a solution.