It is the beginning of 2015 and now is the time when gold mining companies issue their year-end gold reserves, which give investors a glimpse into future production. This is very important because we believe that gold production will fall drastically over the next decade without significantly higher prices - without declining production the thesis doesn't hold.

So far we have not see significantly lower production from the majors, but we wanted to remind investors that mines don't close overnight; it takes some time as evidenced by an excellent chart by Goldcorp (NYSE:GG), which shows the drop clearly:

(click to enlarge)

Source: Goldcorp Corporate Presentation

As investors can see, companies that analyze the industry (CPM Group, GFMS, Metals Focus, etc) are predicting a huge drop-off starting in 2016. This drop almost exactly mirrors the fall in discoveries over a 20 year lag period (the time to develop and permit mining) - all very…

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