ERTH 4303 Lecture 3: Mineral Exploration
5 Mar 2018
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Typically, first dibs on mineral exploration go to major mining companies > junior > independent. Independent prospectors: find showings, claim them, sell or option claims, net smelter return royalties, arrange to work on the claims. Juniors: venture capital funding; no cash flow, high risk but high payout, seldom have sufficient resources to bring deposits to production. Majors: funded through production revenues, corporate bonds and share offerings, always need new reserves to keep moving. Methods of exploration: prospecting, low budget; opportunistic, restricted to popular areas, major sources of new discoveries, mapping, outcrop is visited, measurements are taken and put in a gis for interpretation. The large horizontal orange coil is a transmitter that functions as an electromagnet. When the current is turned off, the current drops and the intensity of the primary magnetic field diminishes. The changing magnetic field causes eddy currents to flow in buried conductors.
