BRIDGING THE GAP
MINING IN SOUTH AUSTRALIA
MORE exploration is needed in South Australia: that is the message Association of Mining and Exploration Companies (AMEC) chief executive Warren Pearce had for delegates at the recent South Australia Resources and Energy Investment conference (SAREIC) in Adelaide.
“Greenfields mineral exploration, the heartbeat of mining, is flat lining in South Australia,” Mr Pearce said.
“Nationally mineral exploration has been rebounding since 2016, but the numbers out of the Australian Bureau of Statistics paint a concerning picture for the state of South Australian mineral exploration.
“The numbers have essentially been flat since March 2013.”
The copper-rich State, home to BHP’s mammoth Olympic Dam project and OZ Minerals’ Prominent Hill project, will next year welcome OZ’ Carapenteena mine to its ranks.
Carrapateena will add a potential 65,000t of copper per annum to State copper production, which totalled 261,684 tonnes in 2017.
But there was still a long way to go if South Australia was to reach the former State Government’s 2030 1mtpa copper target.
Newly appointed South Australian Mining minister Dan van Holst Pellekaan said the opportunities for developing copper projects in the State remained abundant.
“While exploration activity has declined in recent years, we are confident that exploration expenditure will recover in response to rising commodity prices and an expected pick up in copper demand in the next couple of years,” Mr van Holst Pellekaan told The Australian Mining Review.
“AMEC’s analysis partly reflects the wider downturn in the commodity prices that is now being reversed.
“South Australia is well positioned with a huge pipeline of precompetitive data and renewed interest across more than 400 mineral tenements to leverage the nascent recovery in commodity prices.
“Our expectation is that once this data being released by the Geological Survey of South Australia and CSIRO is carefully scrutinised for new targets, you will see an upsurge in exploration investment not just in existing prospects but in new greenfield targets.”
Currently, South Australia has a sizable gap between the largest (Olympic Dam) and second largest copper deposit (Carrapateena), and time will tell if another Olympic Dam-style deposit will be discovered.
Mr van Holst Pellekaan said it was “absolutely” possible the State could host another deposit of this size and grade.
“We have the right type and age of rocks to host large mineralisation, and while there is a large gap between Olympic Dam and our next biggest deposit, international experience suggests that these gaps in our copper inventory are waiting to be discovered,” he said.
“The early results of the Gawler Craton Airborne Survey and the Auslamp Magnetotelluric survey are showing some areas of potential for explorers to search for these world-class deposits.
“The Department for Energy and Mining is working with industry and researchers to develop some copper prospectivity models using the range of data collected in this highly prospective region.”
However, industry has urged Government to commit to increased funds under the Plan for Accelerating Exploration (PACE), which had been cut to about $1 million per annum from 2018 through to 2021.
Total mineral exploration expenditure in the State was now sitting at about $49 million, compared to a peak of $328 million in 2011-12.
“It is important that the State Government reinvest in the highly successful Plan for Accelerating Exploration (PACE) program to attract greater investment in greenfields mineral exploration,” AMEC’s Mr Pearce said.
“Each new drill hole could lead to a future mine; and each new mine brings more jobs, royalties and revenues for local communities in regional South Australia.”
OZ Minerals’ $916 million Carrapateena project was one example of the 182 successful projects discovered through PACE since 2004.
Minister van Holst Pellekaan said the State Government was steadily releasing data from the Gawler Craton Airborne Survey, which covered rich copper-bearing mineral systems including the IOCG deposits of Olympic Dam, Prominent Hill and Carrapateena.
At the recent SAREIC conference, Mr van Holst Pellekaan announced the first data release of rock depth from the survey, which will be one of 16 packages published in the next 12 months.
Mr van Holst Pellekaan said the Geological Survey of South Australia (GSSA) had worked closely with survey contractors during the process to ensure the highest possible levels of quality and integrity from the raw survey data.
“Our Energy Plan is one way we are working to help industry reduce its cost with electricity accounting for a major cost of mining operations, and the newly announced interconnector to NSW and the Virtual Power Plant will go a long way to putting downward pressure on power prices.”