By Tatyana Shumsky

Falling gold prices are casting a shadow on the battered gold mining sector.

Gold’s 11-year bull run has sputtered in recent months. In a doomsday scenario, a drop to $1,000 a troy ounce could make half the gold industry worthless, Bank of America Merrill Lynch says.

Gold stocks have already done a poor job of riding gold’s coat tails, with share prices lagging gold’s record-breaking run up. Instead, rising mining costs, expensive acquisitions and paltry dividends spurned investors to seek out other ways to invest in the bullion market. The poor operational performance has seen many of the chief executives deposed over the past year, as shareholders rebelled against underperformance and billion-dollar write downs.