Australia's Identified Mineral Resources 2009

Brief description

Australia's Economic Demonstrated Resources (EDR) for the following 18 mineral commodities increased during 2008 - black coal, copper, gold, iron ore, lead, lithium, manganese ore, molybdenum, nickel, niobium, rare earth oxides, silver, tantalum, tungsten, uranium, vanadium, zinc and zircon. In the same period, EDR of nine commodities decreased - brown coal, cobalt, diamonds (gem and industrial), mineral sands (ilmenite and rutile), platinum group elements, shale oil and tin. EDR for antimony, bauxite, cadmium, magnesite, and phosphate rock remained at levels similar to those reported in 2007.

World ranking: Australia's EDR of brown coal, mineral sands (rutile and zircon), nickel, silver, uranium, zinc and lead remain the world's largest, while antimony, bauxite, black coal, copper, gold, industrial diamond, iron ore, ilmenite, lithium, manganese ore, niobium, tantalum and vanadium all rank in the top six worldwide.

Resource life: Ratios of accessible Economic Demonstrated Resources (AEDR) to current mine production provide indicative estimates of the resource life. AEDR of most of Australia's major commodities can sustain current rates of mine production for many decades. Resource life based on ore reserves is lower, reflecting a shorter term commercial outlook.

Over the decade 1997 to 2008 there has been a significant trend towards lower AEDR/production ratio for coal and iron ore, which was the nett result of major increases in production and reassessment of resources.

Commodities with resource life of less than 50 years are diamonds (about 10 years at current rates of production), manganese ore (20 years), gold (30 years), zinc (35 years) and lead (40 years).

The severe world financial crisis in late 2008 highlighted the fact that a long resource life for a particular commodity is not a guarantee that such resources will continue to be exploited in Australia. In an increasingly globalised and competitive commodity market, multinational mining companies are continually in search of mineral deposits that will offer attractive returns on their investment. Such returns are influenced by the quality of the resources (grade and tonnage) as well as environmental, social and political factors, land access and even the location and scale of the competitor projects - individual mine projects in Australia will be ranked by multinational corporations against the investment returns from other deposits worldwide.

Australia's continuing position as a premier mineral producer is dependent on continuing investment in exploration to locate high quality resources and/or to upgrade known deposits in order to make them competitive on the world market, and investment in beneficiation processes to improve metallurgical recoveries.

Australia's Identified Mineral Resources 2009 provides information on and analysis of mineral exploration expenditures in Australia for the calendar year 2008. Trends in expenditure are presented and discussed.

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