Editorial

It is often said that the next big discovery has already been made – just that we have not realised or recognised it yet. The context here is a mineral exploration programme that might have sampled, intersected or identified the discovery but for some reason it has not been followed up. The chances are that details of this yet-to-be-made discovery are already in company files and even government records.

So why would an exploration team not recognise a discovery and follow it up when that is their whole raison d'etre? In fact, there are many reasons, and it is surprising how often these come into play. First, the company might be struggling financially and to follow up any exploration might be to risk trading while insolvent. Second, a major national or global downturn might have companies and individuals worrying about their jobs and personal financial security rather than exploration. Third, raising market capital for exploration depends upon much more than perceptions related to an individual prospect, so when capital raising is difficult even the best projects can go unfunded. Fourth, the exploration department might be closed this week as a company changes direction; the enthusiasm for a project might disappear with the departure of the staff. Other explanations might include fraud, accidents or disruptive events unrelated to exploration.

One specific example might be a major exploration programme for gold in a frontier region based upon a concept rarely tried before and certainly not in this area. Early soil geochemistry results come back, and the numbers are much lower than the company leaders have been used to seeing around their existing gold deposits that are a thousand kilometre away in a different terrain. The company is generally short of cash to fund any programmes, and for our example project, the gaining of land access and permissions to drill have proved costly in time and money. With corporate survival foremost, the leadership has little interest in the geologists’ enthusiasm for an area that might take years to fully test. Our example company is soon taken over, the conceptual programme is reviewed, and the conclusion is that the concept had been tested and was unsuccessful. The ground is then relinquished. The industry now assumes that the area was tested fully, and the conceptual idea did not work – an outcome they secretly believed from the start.

So, within some archives there may be stored the relevant records of this overlooked discovery. The details might even be known to individuals who are not in a financial or personal position to explore, it might just require asking.