The View from England: Batteries are a welcome spark for the mining sector An electric vehicle charging station in an underground parking lot. Credit: Extreme Media/iStock. The international mining industry is in the early stages of the biggest collective boost it has received for almost 50 years. Arguably, the most recent equivalent was on August 15, 1971, when President Nixon declared that the price of gold would be allowed to float free. Although the U.S. Government did not finally remove the dollar’s statutory link to gold until October 1976, the international adherence to a ‘gold standard’ had been weakening since the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. Gold was revalued from US$20.67 per ounce to US$35 per ounce in 1934, and an alternative ‘gold-exchange standard’ was introduced after WWII (under the Bretton Woods agreement) whereby countries fixed their exchange rates relative to the U.S. dollar, and central banks (not individuals) could exchange dollar holdings into gold at the fixed official rate.