News Room

AGES 2009

[ 17/03/2009 ]

AGES 2009
Vast Land, New Opportunities

The Northern Territory’s vast mineral potential will be on show at the Annual Geoscience Exploration Seminar (AGES) conference in Alice Springs next week.

AGES is the premier technical conference on mineral exploration in the Territory, hosted by the Department of Regional Development, Primary Industry, Fisheries and Resources and includes presentations from the mineral industry on their exploration programs.

The conference will focus on the under-explored mineral potential of the Northern Territory and what is being done to stimulate exploration programs during the current global economic downturn.

“A conference highlight will be presentations on newly discovered nickel and copper mineralisation in the Harts Range area, east of Alice Springs,” Director of the Northern Territory Geological Survey, Dr Ian Scrimgeour said.

“The mineralisation was discovered last year by the NTGS during a regional geological mapping program.

“This new discovery is an exciting development and suggests that areas east of Alice Springs have the potential to be a major new nickel province,” Dr Scrimgeour said.

“The fact that this previously undiscovered mineralisation was sitting near the surface suggests that there is tremendous potential for further discoveries in the area.

“This is positive news for mineral exploration in the Northern Territory which has just broken exploration expenditure records for the December quarter reaching $45.5 million. Annual exploration expenditure for the 2008 calendar year also set a new record of $147.2 million, up 32% on 2007.

“Even more pleasing is that the expenditure in the Northern Territory has continued to grow while in most other states expenditure has begun to decline”, Dr Scrimgeour said.

AGES will be held at the Alice Springs Convention centre from March 24th and 25th.