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MINERAL EXPLORATION

• Expenditure on mineral exploration (trend) in Western Australia has experienced three successive quarterly declines. After smaller decreases in the September (1.2%) and December (7%) quarters 2008, it fell almost 11% in the March quarter 2009.
• The mineral exploration expenditure of $293 million for the March quarter fell below $300 million for the first time since September 2007 ($269 million).

Mineral Exploration Expenditure, Total minerals

• Original data shows no growth overall in mineral exploration in the March quarter 2009. Exploration expenditure on most minerals fell by more than 40%. Expenditure on gold exploration fell by a smaller amount (around 16%).
• Expenditure on petroleum exploration decreased slightly (-1.2%) to $789 million in the three months to March 2009. However, this was almost 60% higher than the figure for the corresponding quarter of the previous year.

1 Mineral and Petroleum Exploration Expenditure(a), by selected mineral: Original
		Copper	Silver, lead, zinc	Nickel, cobalt	Gold	Iron ore	Total minerals(b)	Total petroleum
		$m	$m	$m	$m	$m	$m	$m
2006-2007		22.8	41.8	158.2	276.5	272.1	839.1	1 481.0
2007-2008		39.0	56.2	280.0	347.9	420.7	1 259.8	2 174.9
2007
	December	9.0	19.7	79.5	85.8	94.0	313.8	512.7
2008
	March	9.0	9.7	58.2	85.2	82.9	271.4	498.7
	June	10.3	10.5	81.0	100.3	139.3	381.2	616.9
	September	11.0	13.1	90.3	75.9	153.2	383.8	539.5
	December	9.4	6.5	73.7	67.7	170.6	364.0	798.9
2009
	March	4.4	3.0	39.4	56.6	100.1	224.2	789.4
(a) Includes expenditure on Western Australia leases in the Zone of Cooperation Area B.
(b) Includes minerals not listed in the table.
Source: Mineral and Petroleum Exploration, Australia, cat. no. 8412.0.
Note: From July 2000 value data no longer contains Wholesale Sales Tax.