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S&P Global Market Intelligence predicts that exploration efforts will continue to expand over the course of this year
Global spending on the search for nonferrous metals rose to an estimated US$8.4 billion in 2017, compared with US$7.3 billion in 2016, representing the first annual increase in exploration spending after four consecutive years of declining investment in this area, according to the World Exploration Trends (WET) report from S&P Global Market Intelligence, released in conjunction with this year’s Prospectors & Developers Association of Canada (PDAC) International Convention.
Mark Ferguson, Associate Research Director at S&P Global Market Intelligence, says: “Improved equity market support for explorers allowed many companies to launch or resume drill programs on their most promising projects. Although the main focus was on gold, exploration targeting base metals assets also rebounded in the second half of the year, and the battery metals attracted particular attention. In the last quarter of 2017, there was a sharp increase in reported drill results, and financings closed the year on a high note. As a result, our year-end measure of exploration sector activity reached levels not seen since early 2013.”
“Despite significant market volatility, the generally positive trend in metals prices has continued in early 2018; we therefore expect the global exploration budget for 2018 to increase by a further 15% to 20% year-over-year.”
Key takeaways from the report:
Producers restrict exploration: major miners (revenues >US$1 billion) continue to allocate only a small proportion of their revenues to exploration efforts. Riskier exploration remains relatively unattractive.
