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 entire iron ore potential of the Kursk Magnetic Anomaly ended up on the territory of the newly formed region and became the basis for its economic development.
General characteristics of the region's resources
The area of the Belgorod region is quite small, a little over 27 thousand square kilometers. But this is enough to locate over two hundred types of minerals in this territory. And although less than half of them are being developed, the main focus is on the extraction and processing of iron ore. If you list what minerals exist in the Belgorod region, the list will be headed by this particular mineral. Forty percent of the 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 regionare represented by bauxites, apatites, mineral waters and numerous deposits of building materials. Sometimes gold, graphite and rare metals are found on the territory of the region. There is potential for platinum, hydrocarbons and other minerals.
Raw materials for metallurgy
When answering the question of what minerals are mined in the Belgorod region, any specialist will first of all note iron ore. Of the fourteen largest deposits, nine belong to the Oskolsky, and five - to the Belgorod iron ore region. Moreover, the basis of the Oskol deposits is ferruginous quartzites, and the Belgorod deposit is iron ores. The largest reserves were found in the Lebedinsky, Stoilensky and Korobkovsky fields. Bolshetroitskoye and Prioskolskoye deposits are considered promising. The Lebedinsky Mining and Processing Plant produces and enriches the largest amount of raw materials for the iron and steel industry in Russia.
This enterprise is one of the ten largest in the world in this industry and is the only one not only in Russia, but 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 identified as a bauxite-bearing province. The main deposits are located at a depth of more than four hundred meters. The reserves of five fields are currently not being exploited due to their deep occurrence.
Raw materialsfor 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 the components - chalk, clay and loam, weathered shales. Chalk reserves of almost twenty million tons have been discovered in the Logovskoe deposit.
These deposits are fully developed, and the extracted raw materials are also used for rubber, paint and polymer production. Shale extraction works are carried out in two fields - Belgorodskoye and Stoilenskoye. Another one - Prioskolskoe - is in reserve. Building stones are mined in three of the four known deposits - Lebedinsky, Stoilensky and Stoilo-Lebedinsky. Crystal schists, quartzite-sandstones, amphibolites, granite-gneisses are mined here. Stocks of building stone at the current level of production will last more than a century.
Sands and clays
If we consider the minerals of the Belgorod region, local sands should be singled out separately. Two deposits of sands, which are used as molding raw materials, are located on top of iron ore deposits. There is nothing surprising in the fact that these sands are being 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 deposits out of fifteen known. These include seven deposits of sand suitable for use in productionsilicates. Refractory and refractory clays are mined in the Krasnoyaruzhskoye deposit. But the Sergievskoye clay deposit for drilling fluids is not under development.
Two out of four deposits of clay raw materials 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 foundry sands, accompany iron ore deposits in the Lebedinsky and Stoilensky deposits.
Other stocks
In addition to all of the above, there are other minerals in the Belgorod region. First of all, these are deposits of fresh and mineral waters, of which there are 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 the significant reserves of various types of resources, if full-fledged or mini-research is carried out, the minerals of the Belgorod region for the majority of the population are iron ores. And then everything else.
