Guiding deeper exploration
Although mining companies operating in Australia are sometimes accused of not pumping enough money into greenfields exploration, Mark Fraser finds they are not exactly sitting on their hands when it comes to promoting the search for new ore bodies in frontier terrains.
Through the Deep Exploration Technologies Co-operative Research Centre (DET CRC), a number of miners and government agencies are making sure that sufficient funds are being channeled into research and development so the next generation of deep Australian mineral deposits can be found.
A non-profit organisation, the DET CRC has embarked on a multi-million dollar eight year program to come up with more cost effective, safer and environmentally friendly ways to target, drill and analyse mineralisation at depth.
Furthermore, the South Australia-based Centre is looking to implement a successful commercialisation strategy that will provide substantial windfalls to those in the mineral exploration sector.
According to the DET CRC professor Richard Hillis, the Centre and its mining sponsors were not planning to hold on to or cash in on any intellectual property (IP) developed during the course of the program.
Rather, they were hoping to establish commercial agreements with service companies.
“Our sponsors include the mining companies, and what they have said to us is that they don’t particularly want to own the IP – even though they are sponsoring it – nor do they want the universities or the CSIROs of the world to hold on to it and develop spin off companies because they feel that sort of slows the whole thing down,” Prof Hillis told The Resources Roadhouse.
“So what they wanted to see was that the IP developed by the DET CRC’s projects was licenced to the existing service sector.
“And I think the philosophy there is while the service sector is used to making a living out of commercialising technology, it’s also used to providing services to the mining industry, and that’s the quickest, best and most efficient way of getting the improved technologies back and available to the mining companies.
“And really that’s all they want … they are willing to put some money in to be the catalyst to develop the new technology, but they want it out in the market place so they can access it as quickly as possible.”
Hillis said the potential prize for companies within the mineral exploration service sector was enormous – particularly when compared with their petroleum counterparts, which had been at the forefront of developing and commercialising new technologies that had been so successful in expanding the petroleum search space beneath “cover” (deep water and sub salt) and, ultimately, helped grow global giants like Halliburton, Baker Hughes and Schlumberger.
“Boart Longfield is probably one of the biggest mining services companies – it’s a $2 billion company – but it is a lot smaller those in the petroleum sector and it doesn’t offer integrated services,” he said.
“It offers drilling, but it doesn’t really offer remote sensing or the analysis of data, the software for the analysis of data from holes and all those other services that are much more integrated which the oil patch service companies offer.”
Fundamental technology innovation in mineral exploration, Hillis said, required new technologies in drilling.
However, developments in this field were dependent on parallel advances in drill hole analysis as well as in geophysical/geological modeling based on that analysis.
Ultimately, the technological barriers which must be overcome arose because deeply buried deposits could only be explored by drilling. In addition, the current technology for drilling in hard rock was expensive, it had significant environmental impacts and it involved considerable manual handling with consequent safety risks.
“This is probably more applicable when dealing with highly explored terrains, so really it is a classic case of exploration risk verses sovereign risk,” Hillis said.
“It applies to counties like Canada, South Africa and Australia where a lot of the surface outcropping deposits have been discovered – there’s probably one or two more major deposits to be found, but the vast majority of the next ore bodies will be under cover.
“We are not saying this is unique to Australia.
“We are interested in it world-wide, but we are an Australian organisation, so we are particularly interested in the Australian context, which I believe is relevant to most highly explored terrains.”
Some of the mining houses backing the DET CRC include the publicly listed BHP Billiton, the Australian-Pacific arm of Barrick Gold Corporation, Newcrest Mining, Gold Fields Australia and Vale Exploration.
Meanwhile Geoscience Australia, CSIRO, the University of Adelaide, the University of Western Australia and the South Australian Government have also thrown their weight behind the initiative.