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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