Mineral and Petroleum Exploration, Australia

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Quarterly statistics on mineral and petroleum exploration expenditure by private organisations in Australia

Reference period
September 2021
Released
29/11/2021

Mineral exploration

Total expenditure, seasonally adjusted

  • Rise of 4.5% ($39.5m) to $925.9m

Mineral exploration, original series

 

  • Rise of 7.7% ($70.4m) to $982.4m 
  • Existing deposits rose 5.8% ($34.8m) to $636.3m
  • New deposits rose 11.5% ($35.6m) to $346.1m
  • Other Minerals recorded the largest rise (up 37.8%, $25m) to $91.1m
  • Iron Ore recorded the second largest rise (up 15.8%, $23.8m) to $174.6m

 

Metres drilled, seasonally adjusted

  • Fall of 1.9%

Metres drilled, original series

 

  • Small rise of 0.1%
  • New deposits rose 4.3%
  • Existing deposits fell 1.7%.

 

Petroleum exploration

Total expenditure, seasonally adjusted

  • Rise of 13% ($32.8m) to $284.8m
  • All other areas rose 36.5% ($47.0m) to $175.7m
  • Production lease areas fell 11.6% ($14.3m) to $109m.

 

Onshore, seasonally adjusted

  • Rose 12.5% ($21.0m) to $188.5m 

Offshore, seasonally adjusted

  • Rose 13.8% ($11.7m) to $96.2m

  

Release notes

Suspension of trend series

The trend series attempts to measure underlying behaviour in exploration expenditure and metres drilled. Due to Covid-19, in the short term this measurement will be significantly affected by changes to regular patterns. If the trend estimates in this publication were to be calculated without fully accounting for this irregular event, they would likely provide a misleading view of underlying exploration expenditure and metres drilled.

It may be some time before the underlying trend in exploration expenditure and metres drilled can be accurately estimated. The exploration expenditure and metres drilled trend series has therefore been suspended from March quarter 2020 onwards. The trend series will be reinstated when more certainty emerges in the underlying trend.

Data downloads

Time series spreadsheets

Data files

We will be progressively transitioning to releasing Excel files in .XLSX format from 3rd December 2021

ABS.Stat datasets

Caution: Data in ABS.Stat is currently released after the 11:30am release on the ABS website. Please check the reference period when using ABS.Stat.

Mineral Exploration - expenditure and metres drilled by type of deposit, September 2021

Mineral Exploration - expenditure by mineral sought, September 2021

Mineral Exploration - expenditure by state and territory, September 2021

Petroleum Exploration - expenditure by onshore and offshore September 2021

Petroleum Exploration - expenditure by lease type, September 2021

Petroleum Exploration - expenditure by state and territory, September 2021

ABS.Stat is updating and the above datasets are now available in 'Data Explorer'. 
The data available in Data Explorer is similar to ABS.Stat but with a new interface and added functionality.
For more information about Data Explorer and to see what's changed, see the Data Explorer user guide 


The current version of ABS.Stat will be removed at the end of 2021.
 

Data Explorer datasets

Caution: Data in Data Explorer is currently released after the 11:30am release on the ABS website. Please check the reference period when using Data Explorer.

Mineral Exploration - expenditure and metres drilled, September 2021

Petroleum Exploration - expenditure, September 2021

Previous catalogue number

This release previously used catalogue number 8412.0.

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