Companies provide funding for co-operative exploration effort

A group of 14 Canadian mining companies have contributed a total of $192,000 to start up an exploration division within the Mining Industry Technology of Canada (MITEC).

With research and development costs soaring and interest flagging, Canada’s renowned lead in geophysical exploration is in danger. While announcing the initiative at the recent annual convention of the Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada (PDAC), Teck (TSE) Chairman Norman Keevil said co-operative exploration research is one way to maintain that advantage. The co-operative venture will direct the funds to MITEC, which will then sub-contract projects to researchers in industry, universities or to an already identified project awaiting funds to develop.

“It will be industry-driven, which is important so that it is responsive to opportunities we think have a chance of improving the way we do things and fulfill our needs,” said Keevil.

The division is expected to be self-financing through administrative fees after the first year of operation.

“With the system established, our challenge as an industry is now to make use of it — to come up with sound programs for joint research which have a chance of helping us develop better tools with which to conduct our exploration.

“These may be in deeper-penetrating and new down-hole geophysical techniques, more sophisticated geochemical methods or on-site analytical tools, or new geological concepts.”

Keevil noted that the industry is currently producing from discoveries made decades earlier when new techniques were combined with new geological theories to lead explorationists to major discoveries such as Kidd Creek and Brunswick. “With the new theories on volcanogenic sulphides and developments in airborne geophysics, there was a profusion of discoveries in the 1960s and 1970s,” Keevil said. “With the exception of Louvicourt, there have been very few since.”

Keevil observed that exploration expenditures have been remarkably steady at about 4% of the value of production. So it is not shortage of effort that is responsible for the decline in discoveries, rather it is a deficiency in technology.

“Assuming the deposits are there to be discovered,” Keevil said, “the answer is new technology and systems, new remote sensing methods which can penetrate more effectively and new geological insights to guide this.”