Deep Exploration Technologies CRC

The DET CRC arose from AMIRA International’s Drilling Technology Roadmap. The DET CRC will deliver research programs in more successful, cheaper and safer ways to drill, analyse and target deep mineral deposits. With $AUS145M of cash and in-kind funding from the Commonwealth Government of Australia and its Participants, the DET CRC is the world’s best-supported independent research initiative in mineral exploration. The Deep Exploration Technologies CRC (DET CRC) has been established to address the most significant challenge to the future of the minerals industry, i.e. the reduction in the mineral resources inventory due to high production rates and low mineral exploration success. In the Australian context, mineral resources constitute approximately 50% of the nation’s exports. However, 80% of Australia’s mineral production is from mines discovered more than 30 years ago. The vast majority of Australia’s existing mines are located where basement is outcropping or shallow. In order to ensure the future of mining in Australia, and indeed in all the more heavily explored countries of the ‘western world’, new technologies must be developed to explore to greater depths, and under cover, in the vast, prospective areas of deep, covered basement. More successful, cheaper and safer methods of deep exploration require research and development in the drilling, in the logging and in the targeting of exploration holes. The DET CRC is concerned with the technologies of exploration and its results will directly impact on the hardware and workflows of the mineral exploration business.