EXPLORATION growth will receive the support resource employers have been calling for when the Queensland Government injects $7.5 million into key geoscience projects over the next three years.
Funded through the state government’s $30 million Future Resources Program, the Industry Priorities Initiative projects will subsidise seven key initiatives supporting exploration growth in Queensland.
Consultations were held with the Queensland Exploration Council, the Association of Mining and Exploration Companies and the Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association to identify projects likely to maximise exploration success.
“Project proposals from these associations were technically evaluated by a panel of GSQ experts,” natural resources and mines minister Andrew Cripps said.
“The four projects selected for first round funding involve the acquisition and analysis of pre-competitive geoscientific and geophysical data in geological basins right across Queensland.
“These projects will significantly raise Queensland’s resource exploration investment profile as well as boost the effectiveness and success rate of resource exploration in this state.”
The projects include:
- A $2.5 million three-year scientific study of the copper and gold mineral prospectivity of North Queensland magmatic systems, stretching from the northern Bowen Basin to west of Cairns;
- A $1.2 million electrical conductivity survey of the prospective “greenfields” region south of Dajarra in north-west Queensland to identify base metal-rich black shale basins and other conductive ore bodies;
- A $400,000 geochemical survey in the Boulia-Birdsville region looking for chemical traces of mineralisation in the spinifex grass cover in the northwest; and
- A $100,000 program studying drill core samples from existing drill holes from the Maryborough and Galilee Basins to determine the likelihood of petroleum and shale gas discoveries.
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