Welcome

The Centre for Exploration Targeting (CET) is an applied research enterprise that seeks to increase both the rate and quality of mineral discoveries without relying on substantial increases in exploration expenditure.

We recognise that recent profound changes in the mining industry have widened the gap between the outputs of current research and the technologies that industry needs to increase the discovery rate.

This gap provides a market opportunity for the Centre to produce applied research and innovation outcomes that deliver practical integrated targeting tools and techniques to improve the risk/reward ratio in exploration.

Companies that join us as corporate members receive a number of benefits, including becoming a preferred research partner and gaining pre-publication release of research outcomes as our staff develop new concepts and tools to apply to mineral exploration.

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Quick Articles

Resources Super Profit Tax - the case for a small gold mine in WA

Associate Professor Pietro Guj from the Centre for Exploration Targeting (a joint UWA/Curtin initiative) has interpreted the July 2 MRRT government press release, assessed its difference from the RSPT proposal, and analysed its impact on a small direct shipping ore (DSO) iron mine in Western Australia.

Associate Professor Pietro Guj from the Centre for Exploration Targeting (a joint UWA/Curtin initiative) has released a quantitative analysis outlining the impact of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's version of the Resources Super Profit Tax (RSPT) for a small gold mine in W.A.

Among the findings the analysis confirms the RSPT regime could create a financial buffer allowing loss-making mines to continue to operate a lot longer than they would have done under the existing royalty regime.

N.B. On July 2 2010 the Federal Government announced it had negotiated a tax arrangement with mining companies that is substantially different from the initial proposed RSPT.

The Exploration Search Space Concept: Key to a Successful Exploration Strategy

Several studies over the years have used industry-average base-rates of exploration success in an attempt to model the economics of the mineral exploration business. The results of these studies have typically led the authors to question the economic viability of mineral exploration, despite the fact that the value of the global mining industry in 2006 was of the order of $800 Billion US dollars (Goodyear, 2006) and all of these deposits were at one time discovered by mineral exploration.

One very important factor that is often overlooked in studies of mineral exploration is that it is a business where the inputs in terms of time, money and blood, sweat and tears do not correlate closely with the output of discovery success. In fact, industry base-rates are not a particularly relevant guide to designing exploration strategy at the scale of individual organizations.

4D Framework of Leonora gold camp - Mapping of the early architecture

The Leonora district is located 205 km north of Kalgoorlie in the Eastern Goldfield Super Terrane, the eastern division of the west Australian Archean Yilgarn Craton.  The Leonora district is approximately 100km long by 80 km wide and is well endowed with orogenic gold deposits (Figure 1). 
Despite multiple years of mining history, the geological and structural history documented in the area remains controversial due to poor outcrop exposure, and also because of the protracted structural history that has affected the terrain (Skwarnecki 1988, Williams et al., 1989, Passchier, 1990, Vearncombe 1992, Williams and Curie 1993, Passchier 1994, Witt 2001, Baggott 2006, Blewett and Czarnota 2007, Thébaud 2010). Furthermore, the timing of the mineralisation still remains a subject of controversy. Early models based on field observations and structural relationships, but with scarce geochronology, traditionally supported a model whereby at least part of the mineralisation developed at an early stage of the deformation history (i.e. Witt, 2001; Weinberg, 2008; Blewett et al., 2007). However this view has recently been challenged with U-Pb SHRIMP dating of accessory minerals associated with gold mineralisation (Baggot, 2006).  The most recent model for mineralisation in the Leonora district is similar to that postulated for deposits in the southern Yilgarn Craton, with mineralisation occurring very late in the structural history of the belt. The mineralisation is interpreted to be synchronous with dextral-reverse movement on NNE-SSW structures developed in response to a regional transpressive event (i.e. Baggot, 2006).