In Part II of Mineweb’s series on exploration trends, Kip Keen turns to the Deep Exploration Technologies Cooperative Research Centre in Australia and talks paradigm shifts.
HALIFAX, NS (MINEWEB) – So the success rate falls. Now exploration money buys fewer discoveries. This was one of the key insights Richard Schodde, of Minex Consulting, discussed in Part I of this interview series on exploration trends. The rate of discovery used to correlate well with increases in spending, in part because the deposits were easier to find. More boots on the ground. More rocks chipped. More ore deposits discovered.
But now the boots are more expensive to pay for and many of the surface rocks, especially in developed countries, have already been kicked forcing exploration to go deeper and become more extensive. Meantime, labour costs, until recently that is, were sky-rocketing amid intense competition to secure services.
To some degree, as the market cools, a process unfolding for a couple years now, the cost of exploration gets cheaper as, for example, geologists lower their rate of pay and drilling contractors cut down margins to get contracts. But it can only go so far. That much is clear now as discoveries, especially in developed countries, come at depth and require increasing geological expertise to find and more drilling.