Geoscience Australia has released the Australian Mineral Exploration Review 2011, highlighting exploration expenditure and results from selected drill intersections announced by individual exploration and mining companies during 2010/11.

 

The online publication also contains drill hole results for specific commodities, graphs of exploration expenditure trends for specific commodities and reference maps and exploration results for each deposit. It presents summaries of Federal, State and Northern Territory government initiatives which assist the mineral exploration sector.

 

The review shows that increased expenditure occurred in all jurisdictions except Victoria. Western Australia dominated spending with $1590 million, an increase of 28 per cent on the previous year, followed by Queensland with $664 million, up by 52 per cent, South Australia with $225 million also up by 52 per cent, the Northern Territory with $195 million, up by 31 per cent, New South Wales with $153 million, up by 17 per cent and Tasmania $37 million, an increase of 80 percent.

 

Western Australia also enjoyed the highest level of investment with 54 per cent of the total expenditure in Australia followed by Queensland with 22 per cent and South Australia with 9 per cent.

 

Expenditure was directed largely to areas around existing mines, which accounted for $1914 million, and to the search for undiscovered mineralisation in new, so called greenfields regions, where a total of $1037 million was invested.

 

Exploration expenditure increased for most commodities including coal (up 62 per cent to $520 million), copper (up 60 per cent to $323 million), lead, zinc and silver (up 46 per cent to $76 million), nickel and cobalt (up 33 per cent to $271 million), iron ore (up 27 per cent to $665 million, uranium (up 27 per cent to $214 million) and gold (up 13 per cent to $652 million).

 

Minor falls were observed in diamond exploration (down 14 per cent to $9 million) and mineral sands (down eight per cent to $26 million).

 

The review is available from the Geoscience Australia website http://www.ga.gov.au