HENRY LAZENBY on MINING WEEKLY | 5 March 2018
Global mining exploration budgets are expected to swell about 20% this year, bolstered by the generally positive trend in metals prices extending into early 2018, a new report by S&P’s Global Market Intelligence has found.
Global spending on the search for nonferrous metals rose 15% year-on-year in 2017 to an estimated $8.4-billion, compared with $7.3-billion in 2016, representing the first yearly increase in exploration spending after four consecutive years of declining investment in this area, according to the World Exploration Trends (WET) report, published in conjunction with the 2018 iteration of the Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) International Convention, held in Toronto.
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He added that battery metals exploration surged, with lithium exploration allocations in 2017 more than doubling year-on-year, while cobalt-focused exploration also increased strongly.
