Petrophysics for Mineral Discovery during Drilling – Phase 3: MinEx CRC Project 4

The Challenge

Drilling is critical to provide physical samples from beneath the surface, allowing geologists to prove the location of 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 test their targets.

Proposed Solution

This project seeks to develop and improve electromagnetic sensing technologies for characterising sub-surface geology, and to incorporate these geophysical technologies within an integrated mineral and mining drilling system. This sensing package would deliver the capability for key characteristics of the geological environment to be resolved from small independent high resolution sensing systems during the drilling process. This presents the opportunity for near-real-time adaptation of drilling programs in response to the conditions encountered.

Proposed Benefits to WA

Small sensitive in-hole EM devices have potential to improve the accuracy of targeting and quality of information returned from the millions of kilometres of drilling completed each year in Western Australia, making it cheaper and easier to explore across the state. It is also hoped that these high-tech devices will be manufactured in Western Australia.