Investment in gold and coal exploration in Canada’s British Columbia continued to decrease in 2019, as investors are shifting their focus to base metals, particularly copper.
However, with C$127-million put towards gold exploration, the yellow precious metal continues to attract the largest exploration spending out of the province’s total exploration spend of C$329-million in 2019.
In its ‘British Columbia Mineral and Coal Exploration Survey’, published on Monday, advisory group EY reported that significantly more money went into base metals exploration in 2019 than in 2018.
Base metals exploration expenditure jumped by 38% last year, with $103-million put into copper exploration, C$25-million into nickel exploration and $15-million into lead and zinc.