10 mines still making good money if the gold price falls 50%

After coming unnervingly close to triple digits at the end of 2015, the price of gold ended a three-year losing streak last year. So far in 2017, gold has gained 9.5% in value, trading at more than $1,250 an ounce on Friday.

MINING.com's sister company IntelligenceMine looked at costs at 140 primary gold mines and found 10 operations that would still make money even if gold halves in value from today's levels.

IntelligenceMine ranked the mines on an all-in sustaining costs or AISC per ounce basis rather than cash costs, a measure that excludes many overhead outlays and sustaining capital for mine development and ongoing exploration.

The ranking also excludes mine complexes and gold operations where the precious metal is produced as a byproduct (where through some clever accounting gold can be mined at negative costs) or companies that report gold-equivalent output.

The ranking is based on annual costs for 2015 since 2016 mine-level cost breakdowns are not yet available from most of the miners in the top rankings. Quarterly reported costs at the same mine can also vary widely so in order to find the consistent winners annual data was used.

These are the 10 mines – and there are only 10 in the world – that mine gold for less than $600 an ounce:

1. Novoshirokinskoye

2. Voro

3. Blagodatnoye

4. Lagunas Norte

5. Verninskoye

6. Belaya Gora

7. Otjikoto

8. Gwalia

9. Akyem

10. Agbaou