Legacy product - no abstract available

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Legacy product - no abstract available

A new project aimed at unravelling the geochemical composition of Australia's regolith has recently been approved under the Australian Government's new Onshore Energy Security Initiative (OESI). The primary aim of the National Geochemical Survey of Australia (NGSA) will be to provide actual concentrations and distributions of elements useful in targeting energy resources (uranium, thorium, other elements indicative of hot granites, etc.). The project will complement other OESI projects focussing on airborne radiometrics, airborne electro-magnetics and geothermal resources. The NGSA project will adopt a cost-effective, ultra-low density, landscape-based sampling approach to select sampling sites. Collection, preparation and analysis of surface and near-surface transported regolith samples will closely follow protocols established during pilot projects recently carried out by Geoscience Australia and the Cooperative Research Centre for Landscape Environments and Mineral Exploration, which revealed strong bedrock signatures in those materials.

Groundwater can interact with mineralisation at depth and, under appropriate circumstances, retain and transport a chemical signature in the form of major, trace element and isotopic fingerprints. These can be used to vector back to their source and hence help locate ore bodies under regolith or rock cover. As part of mineral exploration campaigns carried out by Anglo American in Chile and India, groundwater samples were collected from bores and wells to evaluate the usefulness of hydrogeochemistry in mineral exploration. Comprehensive and high quality chemical and isotopic analyses were carried out and thermodynamic and reaction path modelling was undertaken. Major element concentrations, ratios and isotopes reflect evaporation, water-regolith-rock interaction and mixing processes. Gradients in (1) concentration of ore and related elements, and (2) saturation index of ore and alteration minerals may reflect proximity to mineralisation and be useful to vector toward mineralisation.

I5 : Batten Trough Deep Seismic Reflection Traverses

Trace Energy Services was contracted by The Australian National Seismic Imaging Resource (ANSIR) to conduct the 2003 Gawler Seismic Survey. The survey was situated in the Roxby Downs area in South Australia. Two lines were recorded in this area over seventeen days with a total of 250.8 km recorded. The aim of the survey was to resolve the tectonic setting of Olympic Dam for defining the Iron oxide-copper-gold (IOCG) mineral deposit class for the economic reason. Raw data for this survey are available on request from clientservices@ga.gov.au

No abstract available

No abstract available

Australian mineral exploration spending in 2004-05 rose by 31% to $1028.3 million of which 39.3% was spent on the search for new deposits. Total global non-ferrous mineral exploration budgets rose 38% to an estimated US$5.1 billion in 2005. Western Australia received 59% of Australian mineral exploration spending in 2004-05 as spending rose in all States except Victoria. Gold remained the main target but its share of spending was eroded by increased spending on nickel, copper, iron ore, coal and uranium. Exploration resulted in significant increases in resources at known deposits and a substantial number of drill intersections of economic interest, the most notable being the discoveries of copper-gold mineralisation at Carrapateena (Gawler Craton), mineral sand in the Eucla Basin, and gold at the Trident deposit (Yilgarn Craton).