PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (Amec) has welcomed the launch of the UNCOVER Roadmap, saying it advocated the belief that greenfield exploration had to be prioritised to ensure the discovery of the mines of tomorrow.

Minister for Industry and Science Ian Macfarlane and Western Australian Minister for Mines and Petroleum Bill Marmion would this week launch the UNCOVER Roadmap in Perth, outlining the minerals industry’s long-term research and development and new pre-competitive geoscience data needed to help locate and recover new mineral deposits.

The industry-sponsored resources roadmap set out, for the first time, a unified set of priority activities to make a dramatic improvement in greenfield and undercover mineral exploration in Australia.

“Most major mineral deposits were discovered decades ago, largely from regions that outcropped. In mining these areas, Australia has developed a high-quality, efficient and world-renowned mining sector, but it means exploration success rates have declined over time,” Macfarlane said.

“Exploration has become more costly and technically difficult because new discoveries will inevitably be more deeply buried than the minerals that have already been found. We need to develop new technology and ways to enable us to search beneath the 80% of the continent that is covered by nonmineralised rocks and sediments.”

Macfarlane noted that it had been almost four decades since the A$1-trillion minerals deposit was discovered under 300 m of barren cover at the tier one Olympic Dam deposit.

“The Australian resources industry must now focus on the next generation of major, tier one discoveries that will add significantly to the economy.”

Marmion, meanwhile, said the UNCOVER Roadmap clearly identified 16 high-priority research and technology development activities out of 45 focus areas that would boost success for the exploration and geoscience community over the next decade or so.

He noted that the coordinators of the roadmap development project, AMIRA International, had a great record for facilitating collaborative mining industry projects, with work by the company for the drilling exploration sector in 2005 having laid out a multitude of opportunities for cheaper, safer and smarter ways of going about one of the core activities of minerals exploration.

This led to the Deep Exploration Technologies CRC, which had been creating commercialised solutions for the drilling industry ever since.

“The UNCOVER Roadmap is an outstanding example of the industry collaborating to define the priority research requirements for future minerals exploration for Australia.”

Amec CEO Simon Bennison said on Tuesday that mineral discoveries were becoming deeper and harder to find, with investment favouring brownfield exploration and more competitive jurisdictions overseas.

He noted that, over the past decade, Australia has slipped from having over 20% of worldwide exploration spend to around 11%.

“It is extremely concerning that greenfield mineral exploration metres drilled are at record lows. New major mineral discoveries are essential to secure the future of the industry in order to generate jobs and government revenue streams for the benefit of all Australians.

“As part of Amec’s national exploration strategy, it advocated for the Exploration Development Incentive to de-risk equity finance for greenfield exploration.”

Bennison said that de-risking equity finance for retail investors was extremely important as the majority of exploration was still undertaken by midtier miners and explorers, not the majors.

“The prohibitive cost structure is also deterring investment in the sector. This includes exorbitant ASX and Australian Securities and Investment Commission compliance costs, Native Title costs and delays, land access issues, cost recovery, duplications between government departments and exponentially increasing fees and charges.

“The total cost structure of the industry should be benchmarked against internationally competitive jurisdictions such as Canadian provincial government costs.”

Bennison said the UNCOVER Roadmap would highlight a number of focus areas that would boost exploration success.

“Collaboration between industry and government is extremely important as are competitive geoscience and co-funded drilling programmes.”