The Northern Territory Government has awarded a record $3.06 million in grants through the most recent round of its Geophysics and Drilling Collaborations program, with support for 29 projects from 23 companies.
The Geophysics and Drilling Collaborations program aims to support exploration programs that improve geological knowledge in underexplored areas of the Territory or target and expand areas of known resource endowment.
As part of the $9.5 million per annum Resourcing the Territory initiative, the Geophysics and Drilling Collaborations program has increased the total pool of funding per annum, increased the funding amounts available for individuals projects, and expanded eligible exploration activities.
The projects funded under the Geophysics and Drilling Collaboration program include:
- Six greenfields drilling programs
- Eight greenfields geophysics programs
- Seven brownfields drilling programs
- Eight brownfields targeting programs.
These projects span the Pine Creek region, Tennant Creek region, Barkly Tableland and central Australia. The projects target a wide range of commodities including gold, copper, lithium, vanadium, nickel, zinc and uranium.
In addition to 2021’s brownfields diamond drilling category to support drilling near or below identified resources, round 15 includes a brownfields targeting category to allow camp or prospect scale geophysical acquisition or geochemical sampling near known deposits to generate targets for drilling that may have the potential to increase geological understanding or add to known mineral resources.
Previous rounds 1 to 13 projects include:
- 149 diamond drill holes from 70 drilling programs totalling more than 52,000m
- Three reverse circulation drill holes for more than 400m
- 49 geophysics programs including:
- >26,000 gravity stations and > 4,000 line km of airborne gravity gradiometry
- >29,000 line km of AEM
- >176,000 line km of magnetics and radiometrics
- >20 km of 2D seismic
- smaller scale surveys using AMT, 3D IP, SAM and passive seismic.
Find out more about round 15 successful applicants and exploration grants.
