A method of extraction of amber in Belarus. Amber secrets of Belarus! The main world suppliers of gem
Border guards and customs officers continually detain drivers who are trying to illegally take amber out of Belarus. Only this year - three high-profile cases. In February, a resident of the Minsk region was carrying 12 kilograms of solar stone to Lithuania through the Kamenny Log border crossing. The cargo was in the spare tire of the Volkswagen. In April, customs officers found 18 unprocessed stones at the Varshavsky Most checkpoint. And in June, the State Border Committee already announced the detention of a Brest resident who tried to leave for Poland by hiding minerals in the seat of a car.
In the Pinsk region, "black prospectors" failed
If before the border guards detained only carriers, this summer they encountered "black diggers" who tried to wash jewelry right at the Belarusian-Ukrainian border. Illegals were spotted by a drone. Three miners, who deployed a motor pump to flush the soil, were tied up by an alarm group. Assistant to the head of the Pinsk border detachment, Mikhail But-Gusaim, says that they did not manage to get anything, but they had to pay a decent fine for damage to nature and violation of border legislation - more than 150 million non-denominated rubles.
Remarkably, the "diggers" worked according to the "Ukrainian" technology. As you know, our neighbors right at the Belarusian border were seized by amber fever. Local residents massively mine solar stones, throwing them later on the black market. This is where the logical question arises: do we have similar deposits in Polissya? Scientists answer: there are many. And not only on the border with Ukraine. Another thing is that at the state level no one undertakes large-scale mining of amber yet. So the "black miners" come there, creating a problem for the border guards, police and environmentalists. "Diggers" have been on their hook for a long time, which is periodically confirmed by criminal cases for illegal mining.
Amber deposits in our bowels are like a ghost. Many talk about them, but only a few manage to see them. Amber is on the maps of geologists, in the pictures posted in manuals and scientific collections, but you cannot touch it. Unprocessed pieces of stone are found by archaeologists at Paleolithic sites, whose age exceeds 13 thousand years. Products made of fossilized resin - for example, beads, earrings, animal figurines - scientists find in the burials of the Mesolithic era. Research student group, created at the State Pedagogical Institute. A.S. Pushkina in Brest, back in the 80s of the last century, discovered more than three dozen amber deposits.
Then a full-scale exploration began. Today, seven sites with deposits of amber are known for sure, which are also found in Polissya. In particular, in the Drogichinsky, Berezovsky, Pinsk, Stolin and Luninets regions. The most promising and explored in detail are deposits in the Gatcha swampy peat massif near Zhabinka. There, right under the peat bogs at a depth of two to five meters, more than 300 tons of amber are stored. By world standards, this is not much, given that, for example, in the deposits in the Kaliningrad region, so much and even more amber is mined during the year.
Samples of amber from the deposits of the Brest region are stored in the Brest Regional Museum of Local Lore
However, you should be happy about this. Moreover, our amber can be easily ground and polished, and small fragments can be easily pressed. That is why it is not inferior to its Baltic counterparts, and jewelry made from Belarusian minerals meets all international standards. Experimental samples of amber are in the funds of the Brest Regional Museum of Local Lore. And if we start working on the development of existing deposits, new ones may be found in the future. There are prerequisites for this. Question: where to start?
The fact is that no one touched the Belarusian amber in Soviet times. Then the Baltic mines were developed. The exception was the work of the all-Union trust "Westkvartssamotsvety". This enterprise supervised the bowels of Ukraine, Belarus and Moldova. Already in perestroika times, its specialists carried out geological exploration near the village of Leninsky in the Kobrinsky district, began to drill, after which they said that the field was unpromising. At the same time, the mined amber was never shown to anyone, although the workers - from the locals - saw large pieces of solar stone ...
Later, during the years of independence, the specialists of the research geological enterprise "BelGEO" conducted a second study there, which showed that there is still amber: 325 tons lie on an area of about 300 hectares. However, in the post-Soviet years, a new mining and processing industry would require investments, and it was problematic to draw up a business plan in which profits would significantly exceed costs. Therefore, no one took seriously the development.
Another difficulty is that part of the Belarusian amber was redeposited by the glacier and water-glacial flows, and therefore it is distributed very unevenly. It is difficult to extract it by traditional methods, by drilling. It is necessary to make a continuous excavation, which means that on 300 hectares near Zhabinka a large reservoir can be formed - like the Minsk Sea. However, there are pluses here too: sand that will go into construction, the creation of fish farms, a tourist recreation area, and, of course, amber itself is a fossil of considerable price. A regular fist-sized stone that will go into jewelry costs about $20-$25. And even a small mineral interspersed with the most ancient mosquito, midge or air of the era in which it was formed will already cost 150 - 200 and more dollars.
At the same time, some of the gems, for example, on the border with Ukraine, are not touched by the glacier at all, therefore they lie closer to the surface of the earth and it is much easier to extract them. Neighbors understood this - though not on a national scale. That is why amber mining has become a profitable business there, for which Ukrainians are ready to fight in the truest sense of the word. So, as it recently happened in the Volyn region on the border with the Drogichinsky district, where local miners prevented our border guards from demarcating. And the dispute was caused by the Zhirovsky Canal, from where, according to operational data, the prospectors took water to wash amber. According to an international treaty, it belongs to Belarus, and after demarcation, Ukrainians will be prohibited from entering here.
It remains to be hoped that in our country the plunderers of the bowels, bearing great harm to nature, will continue to come across in single copies. But it is obvious that the problem cannot be solved by force alone. It seems that sooner or later the state will have to take up the production itself or legally give this fishery into the hands of entrepreneurs.
LETTER OF THE LAW
For illegal mining of amber, the Code of Administrative Offenses of Belarus provides:
Article 15.14. Unauthorized production of survey works
Unauthorized exploration work entails a warning or a fine in the amount of up to twenty basic units, and for an individual entrepreneur - from ten to fifty basic units.
Article 10.1. Violation of the right of state ownership of subsoil
Unauthorized use of subsoil or transactions that violate the right of state ownership of subsoil entails the imposition of a fine in the amount of five to thirty basic units, for an individual entrepreneur - up to one hundred and fifty basic units, and for a legal entity - up to five hundred basic units.
Alexander Mityukov.
Albert BOGDASAROV,
Professor,
full member of the Belarusian Geographical Society.
Battle for the Amber Harvest
This summer, our neighbors in the Rivne region are undergoing a large-scale special operation to combat the amber mafia. Prosecutor General of Ukraine Yuriy Lutsenko has already stated that the annual profit from amber mining is equal to the army budget:
Ukrainian security forces recapture amber from illegal immigrants
- According to preliminary estimates, in a year amber dealers earn as much as the country's military budget requires. Amber deposits are located almost throughout the Ukrainian Polissya. This is a serious prospect for the state. It is necessary to legalize what the local population is doing, but send money not to the pockets of bandits and policemen who cooperate with them, but to the state treasury.
However, the "amber kings" are in no hurry to give up. With the start of the special operation, the “diggers” of amber shot down two drones of the National Guard, and they met the special forces with weapons and in an armored vehicle. The Minister of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Arsen Avakov said that aerial photography recorded many armed people, armored vehicles and a horrifying picture of the devastation of nature in the Rivne Reserve. According to various estimates, from 120 to 300 tons of amber per year are illegally mined in the north-west of Ukraine. The volume of the "shadow" market is 200 - 300 million dollars. In the case of the "amber mafia" of the Rivne region, employees of the prosecutor's office, the SBU and the Ministry of Internal Affairs appear.
Belarusian sun stone is taken from a swamp near the village of Barantsy, Zhabinka district, Brest region. One of the 22 deposits explored in recent years at the Gatcha-Osovsky amber occurrence is located here. According to geological exploration data, up to 2.5 tons of valuable fossilized resin rest at the pilot site, where trial operation is underway.
From Barantsy to deposit No. 2, about 10 minutes off-road. The most difficult section is the last 500 meters to the swamp. Here you have to either walk or drive a decommissioned fire truck Gaz-66. The workers say that the Niva can also pass - but this is not certain. Nearby is a narrow gauge railway that leads from nowhere to nowhere. She is here for the future: if "amber tramples."
"Shishiga" stops near the guard's booth. There is a motorboat at the makeshift pier. The ship delivers workers and geologists through the swamp to the platform, where the trial production of the Belarusian solar stone is underway. Previously, only black diggers operated here, now it is a contractor.
The area of the deposit on which trial operation is being carried out is 19,800 sq. m. In the pilot area of the Gatcha-Osovsky swamp massif, 22 deposits have been identified and explored. According to the project, they contain 2.5 tons of amber. In the developed deposit No. 2, the reserves are 345 kg.
The depth of occurrence of amber according to the project is up to four meters. According to the results of our exploration - up to six meters. The conditions are difficult - it's still a swamp. The deposit is uneven, extremely unstable along strike and depth. There are empty places, there are squares in which there is a high concentration. This indicates that these are Quaternary deposits - amber came here with glaciers and settled in swamps. This is an extremely difficult field. Amber concentrations per ton of host rock fluctuate: here, for example, 100 grams of amber per ton, and after five meters it can already be 0 grams per ton, - explains the director of Belgeopoisk LLC Oleg Pivovarchik.
The pump is Italian, the pontoons are military, the cabin is from a combine
With representatives of the contractor, we get into the boat and go to the platform. Outwardly, it resembles a huge amphibious harvester, which is bogged down in the cab in a swamp. In the front part there is a control panel for an Italian deep-well pump for 50,000 euros. Behind - a ladle for a loosening of peat.
The unit was created on the basis of the Dragflow submersible pump, Italy. Grids were bought to separate the sand from the coarse fraction and sort the amber. Power plant UES 2250 (harvester - TUT.BY) manufactured by Gomselmash. Pontoons are military. We had to assemble all this in a heap ourselves and set it up so that it worked, - recalls a representative of the contracting company Pavel Baltsevich.
The pump descends to a depth and sucks in the amber-bearing rock. Then the mass is fed through the slurry pipeline to a sieve with a four-millimeter gap.
Anything less than four millimeters: sand, water - goes away. The rest - gets on the conveyor belt, where there is a manual bulkhead. In this deposit, according to the design and estimate documentation, we must wash 56 thousand cubic meters of rock. The fraction of amber-bearing rock more than 4 mm is approximately 20%. Geologists sort out peat together with workers and select amber. We have tried many methods, but only this one allowed us to significantly increase productivity, - Oleg Anatolyevich explained.
Geologists at the deposit work on a rotational basis: two weeks after two. At the end of the working day, they take the mined stones from the platform, take them to a guard car, where they place them in a transparent bag and seal them. Then they will be sent to specialists in Minsk for examination and evaluation.
We take samples, fix the depth of occurrence, in what rocks. Our geological information is then logged, documented, and will be used in approving reserves. While we are carrying out trial operation of the deposit in order to assess the prospects for industrial production of amber, - said the senior geologist of Belgeopoisk LLC Alexey Anisko.
“Our stone is very dense. Kaliningrad - transparent"
Over the past eight days of work, 18 transparent bags with amber have been collected. The total weight of the mined is 13 kg. The largest fraction is 10 centimeters across and approximately 100 grams of weight. According to experts, on the market such a copy can cost more than $ 1,000.
We can say that we have entered history. The first amber was smaller, and then the larger fractions went, - said Alexey Anisko. - Our amber has a very diverse range of colors, unlike Kaliningrad. They are mostly honey in color, while ours range from honey to lemon, cherry, pomegranate. A variety of shades and colors are highly valued in the jewelry industry.
In confirmation of the words of the senior geologist, the representative of the investor Vladimir Mayuk took amber and shone it with a flashlight:
Our stone is very dense. Kaliningrad - transparent. We have no cracks, chips and completely translucent. Look what color. We have a dark color, garnet, there is even a white patch. The stone has its own characteristics. It is more colorful - more suitable for jewelry.
In Belarus, amber deposits are not primary, but Quaternary, emphasizes Aleksey Anisko. The sun stone was brought to us by glaciers.
Until now, scientists are arguing where they were brought from: from the territory of modern Ukraine or the Kaliningrad region.
“A variant of using Belarusian amber for the jewelry industry is being developed”
So far, the task of Belarusian specialists is to conduct trial production and determine. to what extent our local manifestations are suitable for such work.
In order to understand the expediency of extraction, it is necessary to carry out geological exploration in order to understand the extractability of amber from the rock and make an economic and geological assessment. Determine whether industrial production is needed or mining by an artel method - that is, mining deposits in small areas. In addition, you need to understand what kind of amber we have in Belarus - what size, grade, structure it has, - said Oleg Pivovarchik.
All collected material will be submitted to experts for evaluation.
The tasks of expanding such works can be carried out when the economic feasibility of mining is determined. But even these samples already show that Belarus has valuable raw materials. Now we need to solve the issues of its quality, cost and implementation. And also - the problem of creating a unified system in the country that would allow this raw material to be extracted and sold, - says the Deputy General Director of Belzarubezhtorg Andrey Kovkhuto.
Every week in the Gatcha swamp in the Brest region, miners receive up to 10 kilograms of precious stone. Scientists are not in a hurry to talk about the development prospects. It is necessary not only to assess the volume of reserves, but also to make sure of the high quality of amber. Calculate the costs, possible profits and estimate whether the game is worth the candle. The correspondent of "R" went to the Zhabinkovsky district to watch how a sun stone of extraordinary beauty is taken out of an ordinary swamp.
Amber from the glacier
Many people talk about deposits of amber in our depths, but only a few manage to see the precious stone. Amber is on the maps of geologists, in museum expositions, in photographs posted in scientific collections. Unprocessed pieces of stone are found by archaeologists at Paleolithic sites, whose age exceeds 13 thousand years. Products made of fossilized resin, such as beads, earrings, animal figurines, scientists find in the burials of the Mesolithic era. A research student group, created at the Pushkin State Pedagogical Institute in Brest, discovered more than three dozen amber deposits back in the 80s of the last century.
Then a full-scale exploration began. Today, several sites with amber deposits are known in the Drogichinsky, Berezovsky, Pinsk, Stolin and Luninets regions. The most promising and explored in detail are deposits in the Gatcha-Osovsky swamp peat massif between Zhabinka and Kobrin. Here, at a depth of two to five meters lies about 2.5 tons of amber. However, these data are very approximate. It is difficult to accurately estimate reserves. In any case, they are small. For comparison: about 300 tons of valuable stone are mined annually at the deposits in the Kaliningrad region.
Geologist Aleksey ANISKO said that large amber nuggets are rare. The average fraction of Belarusian amber is about three centimeters.
We have Quaternary deposits of amber, and in the Kaliningrad region, as in Ukraine, there are indigenous ones, which are more than 50 million years old. What does it mean? Amber appeared on our territory thanks to the arrival of a glacier. It melted, and the stones settled in low-lying places, which turned into swamps, - explains the director of Belgeopoisk LLC Oleg Pivovarchik.
Day to day does not fall
We met with Oleg Pivovarchik outside the village of Barantsy, Zhabinka district. On the "SUV" we overcome a couple of kilometers along a washed out road. There is no further way. I change my sneakers for rubber boots, I climb into the salon of the old man GAZ-66. The driver, clutching the steering wheel, is trying to overcome the rest of the route. This is done with difficulty. GAS sneaks through deep pits, “hangs out” on embankments, kneads mud in huge ruts, and gets over a narrow gauge railway. The driver takes a breath.
- "Shishiga" is power. Other equipment will not pass here. You can, of course, go on foot, but there is a risk of falling into one of the pits washed out by illegal amber miners. They have done a good job in these parts.
We stop at a small trailer. This is a security post. The decor is simple: a video surveillance system console, a small sofa and a safe in which a week's supply of amber is stored. Guards show sealed packages ready to be shipped. The director of Belgeopoisk comments:
At this amber manifestation, we make a trial extraction of a stone. In a week we get about 10 kilograms of amber. Sometimes a little more, sometimes less. We collect the stone, seal it and send it to Minsk for examination every seven days. But it is still too early to draw any preliminary conclusions. One thing can be said: we have amber.
Headed by Oleg Pivovarchik, Belgeopoisk LLC is a young organization established under the Administration of the President in the form of a public-private partnership. It was registered last year to regulate the amber market, where illegal miners have revived. It is Belgeopoisk that conducts trial mining of amber in the Gatcha-Osovsky swamp massif.
A submersible pump delivers the rock to the screening device. The sand leaves, and everything else is moved by hand.
Now we are working on deposit number two, - continues Oleg Pivovarchik. - Its area is about 20 thousand square meters. Trial mining began in July. However, before that, we collected all the data on previous geological explorations, studied the information, and prepared project documentation. In this array, 2,500 exploration wells were drilled, and in total in Polesie - about 5,500. 22 deposits have been delineated here, 15 of them are swampy. The depth of occurrence of amber is up to three meters. Up to six in places.
Oleg Pivovarchik draws attention: amber in the Gatcha bog massif lies unevenly. Shows a map showing the content of amber. For example, in one of the wells, a ton of rock contains one and a half kilograms of valuable stone, and in the next one - only nine grams. Huge difference.
In the footsteps of the miners
With entrepreneur Pavel Baltsevich we sit in a motor boat. Pavel is from the Lida region, he is engaged in sand mining. In the Polissya swamp, he works as a contractor, but instead of sand, he extracts amber.
A dredge rumbles a hundred meters from the shore. Let's get on board. Here, several workers are on a two-week watch together with the senior geologist of Belgeopoisk LLC Alexei Anisko.
This is an ordinary dredger, but it had to be seriously modified, - Pavel Baltsevich leads the tour. - Its basis is an Italian submersible pump, which from a depth of 6 meters lifts the rock along the slurry pipeline and feeds it to the screening device. The sand leaves, and everything else is moved by hand. We used a variety of components from different machines, which were literally “on the knee” combined into a single mechanism.
One of the components of the dredger is an excavator. You can't do without it. The swamp is overgrown with bushes and reeds - a powerful machine is clearing a place for the pump to be immersed. Workers and specialists complain that they have to follow in the footsteps of illegal miners:
Here they work in the winter when the swamp freezes. Motor pumps are used. A powerful jet of water knocks out huge holes, light amber floats to the surface. Due to their activities, the layers are mixed in many places, which makes the work very difficult. Our pump often brings to the surface traces of illegal immigrants in these places: empty beer and vodka bottles, packs of cigarettes. Do you see a bush on a hill straight ahead? Illegals also worked there ...
Geologist Aleksey Anisko works at amber mining for the first time. New experiences are always interesting. He takes out a plastic jar, shows today's "catch". Several dozen stones of different colors, shapes and sizes. The cherry on the cake is honey-colored amber, almost the size of a palm. The largest nugget mined at Gatcha is a 100-gram handsome man. In diameter, its length reaches ten centimeters, and the cost is one thousand dollars. But such finds are rare. The average fraction of Belarusian amber is about three centimeters. However, its main advantage is by no means the size, but the color scheme:
We came across stones of various colors: honey, pomegranate, lemon. Such diversity is highly valued in the jewelry industry. We document all information obtained during the test mining process. Then it will be used to assess the prospects for the extraction of amber on an industrial scale.
In 2016, the Belarusian authorities, out of economy, decided to experiment: to allow private structures to search for and develop amber deposits on the territory of the republic.
Legal grounds were introduced very quickly. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection has prepared proposals for the artisanal extraction of amber, legislators have amended the subsoil code.
So far, only one company legally deals with amber in Belarus - Belgeopoisk LLC. Registered in Minsk, geo-removal received within the Zhabinkovsky district. Brest region.
As pioneers of amber exploration, they were provided with the sweetest of the already explored - the Gatcha-Osovo deposit on the territory adjacent to the local peat plant. Under the swamp, presumably, there are at least 5-6 tons of solar stone.
The company has issued documents for the development of the site in the mode of pilot operation. It is too early to envy the pioneers. According to the statistics that they provided for the last year, they have no real results.
Meanwhile, the head of the department for geology of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of Belarus, Sergei Mamchik, told Ezhednevnik that the work of Belgeopoisk will have a significant impact on the future of diligent business in Belarus.
The authorities themselves do not yet know how to develop it in practice. The technical procedure, the recommendations of the Ministry of Natural Resources, the attitude of local authorities - all this will be formed under the influence of the first experience. He will show the economy. If there is a profit, without causing damage to the environment, it is possible that amber mining will continue to develop.
Sergey Mamchik believes that if the local executive committees see a conscientious attitude to the fulfillment of obligations on the part of the miners, the possibility of obtaining additional funds for the local treasury, it will become easier to obtain permission to develop.
The next stage of the amber business will be its industrial production. It is assumed that after the completion of successful exploration work, the company will be able to apply for a mining permit. In a number of countries there are end-to-end licenses - whoever finds it develops it. In Belarus, everything is decided by local authorities.
True, the question of whether it is worth mining is also still open. There is no amber processing and processing industry in Belarus, and the low demand that exists today is fully provided by the Kaliningrad Amber Plant.
According to the representative of the Ministry of Natural Resources, the sale of amber may be promising outside of Belarus. This is not gold, not diamonds, there are no strict requirements for the export of legal amber. But one should not expect much profit from export. Sergei Mamchik believes that Belarusian amber is only in the Zhabinka region in terms of quantity and color with a large margin enough for their own amber room. On the demonstration of such a curiosity to tourists, you can earn much more than on the export of amber. In addition, amber opens up new interesting areas of application. It is used in Chinese medicine, added to fertilizers for accelerated plant growth.
An experiment launched by the authorities in 2016 to involve private companies in the search and development of Belarusian amber has not yet yielded results.
In 2016, the Belarusian authorities, out of economy, decided to experiment: to allow private structures to search for and develop amber deposits on the territory of the republic.
Legal grounds were introduced very quickly. The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection has prepared proposals for the artisanal extraction of amber, legislators have amended the subsoil code.
So far, only one company legally deals with amber in Belarus - Belgeopoisk LLC. Registered in Minsk, received geo-removal within the Zhabinkovsky district. Brest region.
As pioneers of amber exploration, they were provided with the sweetest of the already explored - the Gatcha-Osovo deposit on the territory adjacent to the local peat plant. Under the swamp, presumably, there are at least 5-6 tons of solar stone.
The company has issued documents for the development of the site in the mode of pilot operation. It is too early to envy the pioneers. According to the statistics that they provided for the last year, they have no real results.
Meanwhile, the head of the department for geology of the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Protection of Belarus, Sergei Mamchik, told Ezhednevnik that the work of Belgeopoisk will have a significant impact on the future of diligent business in Belarus.
The authorities themselves do not yet know how to develop it in practice. The technical procedure, the recommendations of the Ministry of Natural Resources, the attitude of local authorities - all this will be formed under the influence of the first experience. He will show the economy. If there is a profit, without causing damage to the environment, it is possible that amber mining will continue to develop.
Sergey Mamchik believes that if the local executive committees see a conscientious attitude to the fulfillment of obligations on the part of the miners, the possibility of obtaining additional funds for the local treasury, it will become easier to obtain permission to develop.
The next stage of the amber business will be its industrial production. It is assumed that after the completion of successful exploration work, the company will be able to apply for a mining permit. In a number of countries there are end-to-end licenses - whoever finds it develops it. In Belarus, everything is decided by local authorities.
True, the question of whether it is worth mining is also still open. There is no amber processing and processing industry in Belarus, and the low demand that exists today is fully provided by the Kaliningrad Amber Plant.
According to the representative of the Ministry of Natural Resources, the sale of amber may be promising outside of Belarus. This is not gold, not diamonds, there are no strict requirements for the export of legal amber. But one should not expect much profit from export. Sergei Mamchik believes that Belarusian amber is only in the Zhabinka region in terms of quantity and color with a large margin enough for their own amber room. On the demonstration of such a curiosity to tourists, you can earn much more than on the export of amber. In addition, amber opens up new interesting areas of application. It is used in Chinese medicine, added to fertilizers for accelerated plant growth.
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