{"id":659775,"date":"2018-04-09T20:50:45","date_gmt":"2018-04-09T20:50:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/?p=659775"},"modified":"2018-04-09T20:50:45","modified_gmt":"2018-04-09T20:50:45","slug":"juniors-struggle-to-compete-with-majors-in-exploration-chiles-mining-society-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/?p=659775","title":{"rendered":"Juniors struggle to compete with majors in exploration \u2014 Chile\u2019s Mining Society"},"content":{"rendered":"

By analyst<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

\"Juniors<\/a><\/div>\n

By Cecilia Jamasmie<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

<\/div>\n

Despite an increased appetite in copper assets, the rate of new discoveries continues to be low, especially in top world’s producer Chile, where the bulk of exploration is in the hands of major miners, the head of the Chilean Mining Society (Sonami) said Monday.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the sidelines the 17th World’s Copper Conference being held this week in Santiago, Chile, Diego Hern\u00e1ndez, President of Sonami and a former Codelco CEO, said that one of the main problems is that big companies already hold most of the known assets available for exploration.<\/p>\n

Additionally, he said, there is the issue of how cheap is to hold a property in Chile \u2014 only $2 per hectare for exploration projects and $5 p\/h for those already in exploitation.<\/p>\n

Chile should make it gradually more expensive for companies to hold on to their assets if they are not actively working on them, says Diego Hern\u00e1ndez.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompanies have no incentives to do anything with those assets, most of them brownfield projects, and that needs to change to both, boost exploration in the country and let juniors in,\u201d he told MINING.com.<\/p>\n

Hernandez says one of the main modifications to current rules should be making it gradually more expensive for companies to hold on to their assets if they are not actively working on them.<\/p>\n

\u201cJuniors come to Chile and the big miners already own most of the available resources. They have to negotiate with them and also go through much red tape that they end up giving up and looking for other jurisdictions,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

In other places, such as in South Australia, companies have to demonstrate they are working on their properties or else risk losing them. Charles Moore, from the state’s government, warns that unfortunately there are always ways to trick the system. \u201cSome companies do the very minimum just to keep ownership of their assets,\u201d Moore, who is leading the development and implementation of South Australia’s copper strategy, told MINING.com.<\/p>\n

Still a top destination<\/p>\n

Despite the difficulties juniors face in Chile, the country managed to attract 7.6% of the $600 million companies spent on exploration in 2017.<\/p>\n

Most of that spending came from majors, including state-owned copper miner Codelco. Juniors, in turn, accounted for 8.8% of the total exploration carried out in the country last year.<\/p>\n

Not all discoveries are financially viable. Some have to wait years until it makes sense to start developing them, which seems to be feeding an imminent supply crunch, experts attending the World’s Copper Conference said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe current rate of copper discoveries is unlikely to satisfy expected long-term demand. It’s urgent to change the way we do exploration and where we do it, including looking at drilling the seafloor,\u201d Jos\u00e9 Pesce Rosenthal, VP Resource Development at Codelco, said.<\/p>\n

In terms of applying new technologies, Angelo Peri, exploration manager at Sumitomo Metal Mining, said that many companies are using technology more to control staff than to actually improve drilling results.<\/p>\n

\u201cSome geologists are force to report back three times a day. If they are up in the mountains, where there’s not cell signal or Internet, they \u2026read more<\/a> <\/p>\n

Source:: Infomine<\/a><\/p>\n

The post Juniors struggle to compete with majors in exploration \u2014 Chile’s Mining Society<\/a><\/a> appeared first on Junior Mining Analyst<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By analyst By Cecilia Jamasmie Despite an increased appetite in copper assets, the rate of new discoveries continues to be low, especially in top world’s producer Chile, where the bulk of exploration is in the hands of major miners, the head of the Chilean Mining Society (Sonami) said Monday. Speaking on the sidelines the 17th […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659775"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=659775"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659775\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=659775"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=659775"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/juniorminingnews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=659775"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}