australia's identified mineral resources 2005 - Geoscience Australia

AUSTRALIA’S IDENTIFIED MINERAL RESOURCES 2005
Foreword
Geoscience Australia provides information on the nation’s future capacity to produce mineral
resources. Australia’s Identified Mineral Resources is an annual nation-wide assessment of Australia’s
ore reserves and mineral resources, which takes a long term view of what is potentially economic.
Data on mining company estimates of ore reserves (JORC Code), which are generally based on
short- to medium-term commercial considerations, are included for comparison. The assessment also
includes evaluations of long-term trends in mineral resources, international rankings, summaries of
significant exploration results, brief reviews of mining industry developments, and an analysis of
mineral exploration expenditure across Australia. Comparable information on petroleum resources
is published in another Geoscience Australia publication: Oil and Gas Resources of Australia.
Australia’s Identified Mineral Resources provides technical information on mineral and energy
resources, which is used in formulating government policies and reproduced by the Australian
Bureau of Statistics. It also provides government, industry, the investment sector and general
community with an informed understanding of Australia’s known mineral endowment and levels
of exploration activity.
Australia’s resource stocks remain healthy overall, although there has been a levelling off of
resource trends for several major commodities. Expansions in mine production of coking coal,
iron ore, uranium and other commodities continued in 2004 and the resources sector overall
continued to contribute to Australia’s prosperity – economically, environmentally and socially.
In 2004–05, over 35% of the country’s total exports with an estimated worth of $65 billion,
came from the resources sector.
The sustainability of the minerals industry and its major contributions to the nation’s prosperity
is inexorably linked to effective exploration, leading to discovery and development of new ore
deposits. In turn, successful exploration outcomes rely heavily upon continuing updates of precompetitive
geoscience data by government agencies. In particular, there is a need for stateof-the-art
regional geoscience data to reduce risks in identifying exploration targets in prospective
frontier regions. It is in such regions, which are characterised by extensive barren cover, that the
best potential exists for the large deposits that are of interest to major mining companies. Australia’s
decline from first to fifth in global exploration expenditure over the past five years is largely a
reflection of the paucity of information for these regions, which has been influencing major
companies to explore in other parts of the world where they consider exploration risks are lower.
Resources data from Australia’s Identified Mineral Resources are available online in an atlas of
Australia’s Mineral Resources, Mines and Processing Centres, developed by Geoscience Australia with
support from the Minerals Council of Australia and Department of Industry, Tourism and Resources,
through the Government’s Regional Minerals Program. The atlas, at www.australianminesatlas.gov.au,
has a web-based GIS (geographic information system) format and shows the location of mineral and
energy resources, mines and production/processing centres.
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NEIL WILLIAMS
Chief Executive Officer
Geoscience Australia