1384.6 - Statistics - Tasmania, 2005  
ARCHIVED ISSUE Released at 11:30 AM (CANBERRA TIME) 13/09/2002   
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Ongoing exploration is necessary to establish new mines, to maintain a skilled labour force and to extend the productive life of capital equipment.

Although the more mineralised regions of Tasmania (for example, the Queenstown-Zeehan-Rosebery area in western Tasmania) have been extensively explored on the surface, much of Tasmania remains relatively unexplored.

Exploration activity remains at a low level in 2000-01. Reasons for this included the world-wide downturn in exploration and the market's unwillingness to make available risk capital for mineral exploration.

Tasmanian mineral exploration expenditure in 2000-01 was $9.2m, some 4.5% higher than in 1999-2000, and 22.7% lower than in 1998-99.

PRIVATE MINERAL EXPLORATION EXPENDITURE(a)

Tasmanian
expenditure
Australian
expenditure
Tas. as proportion
of Aust. expenditure

Year
$m
$m
%

1996-97
26.0
1,148.6
2.26
1997-98
20.7
1,066.8
1.94
1998-99
11.9
837.8
1.42
1999-2000
8.8
676.3
1.30
2000-01
9.2
683.3
1.35

(a) Other than petroleum.

Source: Mineral and Petroleum Exploration, Australia (Cat. no. 8412.0).

Exploration activities in 2000-01 included those of:
  • Allegiance Mining NL, which released results of a resource estimation and scoping study into the potential economic worth of the Avebury nickel deposit, 7 km south west of Zeehan; and
  • Goldfields (Tasmania) Limited, which continued to obtain gold from drilling south of the Henty mine.



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