Petrophysics for Mineral Discovery during Drilling – Phase 2: MinEx CRC Project 4

The Challenge

Drilling can provide physical samples of rock hidden deep beneath the surface, allowing geologists to test potentially mineralised features, but it can take many holes for an explorer to develop enough understanding of the buried geology and structures to properly define and evaluate their targets.

Key Findings

This project has delivered three geophysical sensors for active drilling environments: (1) a total count gamma logging tool for distinguishing variations in radioactive element abundance correlated to changes in geological units; (2) A frequency domain electromagnetic (FDEM) tool which cycles through dozens of EM frequencies during each measurement, and; (3) A time domain electromagnetic (TDEM) tool.

These sensors will allow drillers to resolve key geological characteristics in near-real-time, supporting dynamic decision-making and adaptation of drilling in response to conditions encountered.

Benefits to WA

By improving the quality of information returned from individual drillholes, this technology could reduce the drilling required to identify mineralisation. In addition to making it cheaper and easier to explore across covered areas of WA, this improved efficiency would reduce the environmental impacts of exploration in remote and sometimes sensitive areas of the State.

Report DOI

DOI: 10.71342/862275055376