australia's identified mineral resources 2005 - Geoscience Australia

AUSTRALIA’S IDENTIFIED MINERAL RESOURCES 2005
Offshore Mineral Exploration
in Commonwealth Waters
The Commonwealth Offshore Minerals Act 1994 regulates exploration for and mining of minerals,
other than petroleum, over the continental shelf three nautical miles beyond the territorial baselines
(generally the low water mark) of the States and Territories. Applications for a mineral exploration
licence (MEL) are made to the Designated Authority, usually the relevant State or Territory Minister
responsible for mining. The initial term of a licence is four years and it may be renewed for three
two year periods subject to the satisfactory performance of licence conditions. There is a mandatory
reduction of 50% of the licence area on renewal of a MEL.
As at May 2005, a total of 70 offshore MEL applications had been received since February 1990.
Currently there is one active licence in Ringarooma Bay, Tasmania, where past exploration has
identified an inferred tin resource of some 200 million bank cubic metres. Van Dieman Australia
is currently investigating the viability of mining the onshore and offshore deposits. During 2004
interest returned to exploring for diamonds in the Joseph Bonaparte Gulf in the northwest of
Australia. There are now four exploration license applications submitted for approval in the Joseph
Bonaparte Gulf, including two from Bonaparte Diamond Mines. This exploration is directed at
discovering economic deposits of alluvial diamonds in offshore palaeochannels and tidal shoals. To
date no diamonds have been discovered in Commonwealth waters, however, gem quality diamonds
have been discovered adjacent to the Berkeley and Ord Rivers in State waters.
On 15 November 2004, Australia made a submission to the United Nations Commission of the Limits
of the Continental Shelf. The submission contains information on the proposed outer limits of the
continental shelf of Australia beyond 200 nautical miles from the baselines from which the breadth
of the territorial sea is measured. Consideration of the submission was included in the provisional
agenda of the 15th session of the Commission in April 2005.
Geoscience Australia completed a desktop review of Australia’s offshore minerals (McKay et al., 2005)
as input to a workshop convened by CSIRO’s Wealth from Oceans National Research Flagship and
Exploration and Mining Division (Yeats & McConachy, 2005). The review found that the discovery
and eventual economic extraction of offshore mineral deposits pose significant technical, political
and environmental challenges. Scientific as well as offshore exploration is needed to acquire data
and build up geoscientific knowledge on known and new types of offshore mineral deposits,
establish their distribution in Australia’s offshore regions and evaluate their possible wealth and
future use.
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