Base-metal discoveries needed now: ministry

The search for new mineral deposits in Canada in recent years has favored gold to the exclusion of base metals, say a couple of officials with Energy, Mines and Resources Canada who think the “period of grace has run out” for copper, zinc and lead.

“Reserves have declined to the point where new discoveries are now urgently needed,” Andre Lemieux of the ministry told delegates here to the annual convention of the Quebec Prospectors Association held here Sept 15-17. Lemieux co-authored the paper on base metal exploration with Donald Cranstone.

Proven reserves from “on-the- shelf” deposits have also declined, and any efforts to bring such deposits into production would depend on base metal prices rising beyond today’s levels and remaining there, which is not likely to happen, Lemieux said.

“For Canada to maintain its world market share of copper production in the 1990s, the discovery rate of copper in Canada would have to equal our best historical record, achieved in the 1956-75 period when numerous large porphyries were found,” he said. “For zinc and lead, the challenge is less formidable, but exploration results will have to improve markedly over the rather dismal record of the 1980s.”

Unless there are new discoveries of these three metals immediately, Canadian production of the metals will undergo a progressive decline starting by the mid-1990s, Lemieux said. Value of metals

According to ministry figures, total Canadian base metal production of copper, zinc, nickel and lead in 1987 was worth about 2.3 times the $2.2-billion value of gold produced that year.

Base metal reserves fell off drastically for various reasons between 1981 and 1988. “In spite of this, for zinc and lead, Canada’s 1987 production levels were the highest ever, copper output was the highest since 1974, and nickel output the highest since 1977, a remarkable achievement possible only through major improvements in domestic mining efficiency and productivity,” Lemieux said.

The opposite occurred for gold, with reserves of the precious metal quadrupling between 1979 and 1988. Canadian gold reserves were in decline during the 1950s and 1960s.

Lemieux said the case for nickel is less serious, with the current inventory of the base metal thought to be sufficient to support today’s production rate for years to come.

According to the ministry, $85 million was spent on base-metal exploration in Canada in 1986, equal to 14% of total mineral exploration expenses that year. “This amounts to a decline to half of the annual average in the 1975-81 period, which was some $170 million per year (1986 dollars), about 40% of total exploration expenditures at that time,” Lemieux said, adding that base metal discoveries this decade have been scant. Lemieux does not discount the possibility of new discoveries. “However, the recent large decline in base metal reserves allows less time to find the new reserves needed to maintain our national production levels and world market- shares,” he said. “Years of exploration are required to come up with good discoveries and it takes an average of six years to turn a discovery into a producing mine.”

Earlier this year, N. B. Keevil Jr., president of Teck Corp. (TSE), presented a similar picture about declining base metal reserves in Canada (N.M., June 13/88) in a speech to a mining outlook conference in Ottawa.