Belgorod region is one of the youngest in the Russian Federation. It was founded in 1954, and its main part used to be part of the Kursk region. Therefore, it is not surprising that eighty percent of the total iron ore potential of the Kursk magnetic anomaly appeared on the territory of the newly formed region and became the basis of its economic development.
General characteristics of the region’s resources
The area of the Belgorod region is quite small, a little more than 27 thousand square kilometers. But this is enough to locate over two hundred types of minerals in a given territory. And although less than half of them are being developed, the main emphasis is on the extraction and processing of iron ore. If you list what minerals exist in the Belgorod region, this particular mineral will head the list. Forty percent of all-Russian iron ore reserves are concentrated in the region . Metal mining is carried out in approximately the same proportion.
Other minerals of the Belgorod region are represented by bauxites, apatites, mineral waters and numerous deposits of building materials. Sometimes in the region there are gold, graphite and rare metals. There is potential for platinum, hydrocarbons and other minerals.
Raw materials for metallurgy
When answering the question, what minerals are mined in the Belgorod region, any specialist will primarily note iron ore. Of the fourteen largest deposits, nine are from Oskol, and five are from the Belgorod iron ore district. Moreover, the basis of the Oskol deposits is ferruginous quartzites, and Belgorod - iron ores. The largest reserves are identified in the Lebedinsky, Stoilensky and Korobkovsky deposits. Promising include the Bolsheroroitskoye and Prioskolskoye deposits. At the Lebedinsky mining and processing plant, the largest amount of raw materials for ferrous metallurgy is mined and enriched in Russia.
This enterprise is one of the ten largest in the world in this industry and is the only one in the territory of not only Russia but also throughout Europe for the production of metallized briquettes - raw materials for the latest technology of direct reduction of iron. In 1977, new, previously unknown bauxite deposits were found in the region, which were immediately allocated to the bauxite-bearing province. The main deposits are located at a depth of more than four hundred meters. The reserves of five deposits due to deep occurrence are not currently exploited.
Raw materials for construction
Building materials are the most numerous minerals of the Belgorod region after iron. For the production of cement in the region there are almost all components - chalk, clay and loam, weathered shale. Almost twenty million tons of chalk reserves have been identified in the Logovsky deposit.
These deposits are fully developed, and the extracted raw materials are also used for rubber, paint and varnish and polymer production. Shale mining is underway in two fields - Belgorod and Stoilensky. Another - Prioskolsky - is in reserve.
Building stones are developed in three of the four known deposits - Lebedinsky, Stoilensky and Stoilo-Lebedinsky. Here, crystalline schists, quartzite-sandstones, amphibolites, granite gneisses are mined. Building stone reserves at the current level of production will last more than a century.
Sands and Clays
If we consider the minerals of the Belgorod region, we should separately highlight the local sands. Two deposits of sand, which are used as molding raw materials, are located on top of iron ore deposits. It is not surprising that these sands are developed by mining and processing plants, the main task of which is the processing of iron ore - Lebedinsky and Stoilensky. And building sands are mined in thirteen of the fifteen known deposits. These include seven deposits of sand suitable for use in the production of silicates. Refractory and refractory clays are mined in the Krasnoyazhskoye field. But Sergievskoye clay deposit for drilling fluids is not under development.
Two of the four clay deposits are being developed, which are used in the production of expanded clay. Brick clays and loams are mined in thirty-six deposits. But the largest deposits, as in the case of molding sand, accompany iron ore deposits in the Lebedinsky and Stoilensky deposits.
Other stocks
In addition to all of the above, there are other minerals of the Belgorod region. First of all, these are deposits of fresh and mineral waters, of which more than seventy in total, but only half of them are being developed. There are deposits of peat, which is not at all involved in industrial production. Despite significant reserves of various types of resources, if we conduct full-fledged or mini-studies, the mineral resources of the Belgorod region for the majority of the population are iron ores. And then everything else.