EXPLORATION: 2014’s largest exploration budgets

SNL Metals and Mining, with offices in Calgary, has added up mineral exploration expenditures for 2014 and published a very interesting report on its findings.

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SNL Metals and Mining, with offices in Calgary, has added up mineral exploration expenditures for 2014 and published a very interesting report on its findings.

The 25th edition of the Corporate Exploration Strategies study examined the plans of 39 large mining companies with plans to spend at least US$50 million each for exploration this year. Together their budgets total US$4.33 billion or 40% of the US$10.74 billion worldwide exploration total, as estimated by SNL.

The top three spenders for the year are Chile's Antofagasta (a copper producer), Brazil's Vale SA (diversified) and Mexico's Fresnillo (precious metals). Russia's Alrosa and Britain's De Beers together account for 69% of worldwide diamond exploration. The 25 largest companies with gold exploration budgets spend 39% of the global total exploring for that metal. The budgets of the 39 largest spenders with copper projects account for just over half of the total budget for that metal.

Spenders large and small were closely aligned in the geographic choices of targets to explore. The exception being that Canada received only 10% of the larger players' budgets than the rest of the explorers who spent 14% of their budgets in this country. SNL postulates that junior and intermediate companies pick up the slack here. The large companies spend 12% of their budgets in Chile and 9% in Russia.

According to the report, gold projects (41%) and copper projects (32%) received the lion's share of budgets from large companies. Their allocations went to mine site (39%), late stage (31%) and grassroots (30%) programs.

Read more at SNL Corporate Exploration Strategies

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