ZIJIN Mining Group Co., China’s biggest gold miner by market value, is studying a move into shale gas and will target buying “super” mines after falling bullion prices and rising costs cut its earnings.

    The firm will explore entering the “renewable energy industry, including shale gas, while continuing to focus on gold and copper mining,” domestic media quoted Zijin Mining as saying yesterday.

    Net profit dropped 59 percent to 2.13 billion yuan (US$342 million) last year, Zijin Mining said in a statement Saturday.

    China, which holds the world’s biggest shale gas reserves, has drawn investment from the nation’s biggest oil companies including Sinopec and PetroChina Co.

    Zijin Mining also said it will spend about 8 billion yuan this year in equity and mining rights and actively seek to acquire several miners and projects, targeting “super large mines.”

    China holds 25.08 trillion cubic meters of exploitable onshore shale gas reserves, the Land and Resources Ministry said in March 2012. The United States has 13.65 trillion cubic meters of technically recoverable gas from shale formations, the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in January that year.

    China has set a national output target of 6.5 billion cubic meters by 2015 and as much as 100 billion cubic meters by 2020. The goals are meager compared with U.S. output of 266 billion cubic meters in 2012. (SD-Agencies)