Okuzeka
Oil, Gas & Mining vocabulary · Exploration & Geology

Grade

Meaning in oil, gas & mining, with examples

/ɡreɪd/nounCore term

In oil, gas & mining, grade means: The amount of valuable metal or mineral in a rock, usually given as a percentage (for copper) or in grams per tonne (for gold and silver).

In Turkish: tenör, cevher tenörü

How it is used

Probably the most important number in mining. People talk about high-grade and low-grade ore, average grade, head grade (ore entering the plant) and cut-off grade (the lowest grade that can be mined at a profit). Grades come from assays of drill samples.

Example sentences

  1. The best hole returned 25 metres at 4.2 grams per tonne gold, a much higher grade than expected.

  2. Falling grades mean we must process more ore to produce the same amount of copper.

Common collocations

  • high-grade ore
  • low-grade ore
  • cut-off grade
  • head grade
  • average grade
  • oreRock that contains enough of a valuable metal or mineral to be mined and processed at a profit, for example iron ore or copper ore.
  • assayA laboratory test that measures how much gold, copper or another metal a rock, soil or concentrate sample contains.
  • depositA natural concentration of a mineral, metal, coal, oil or gas in the earth that may be large and rich enough to be worth mining or producing.
  • concentrateThe main product of a processing plant: a powder in which the valuable mineral is much richer than in the original ore, ready to be sold or sent to a smelter.
  • recoveryThe percentage of the valuable metal in the ore that a processing plant actually manages to capture in its final product.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Exploration & Geology

Practise with graded reading

Reading at the right level is the fastest way to make new words stick. Pick free English books by level: