Influencing exploration choices in copper at a strategic level (The Hollywood Edition)
- By: John P Sykes
Posted in: Blog, Commodities, Exploration, PhD, Recommended
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At the end of last year I did a special presentation on my PhD research for the Centre for Exploration Targeting (Curtin University & University of Western Australia) entitled “Influencing exploration choices in copper at a strategic level” and included below. The presentation takes a Hollywood theme using recent Hollywood dystopian films ‘The Hunger Games’, ‘WALL-E’, ‘Iron Man 2’, ‘Avatar’ and the ‘X Files Movie’ (okay less recent) to explain how different themes relating to resource depletion, economic externalities, technology and uncertainty shape our view of the future. The theme of the presentation is that exploration has a key role in the future of the copper industry, but not in finding ‘more’ resources, but in finding ‘better’ resources – projects that are better than the mines operating now. These are the copper mines of the future. Such mines however will not only have to be economically viable, but also environmentally and socio-politically acceptable. With big changes in technology and the world likely to come ahead, explorers need to keep an open mind about what the future may hold, and may benefit from thinking of several different types of ‘copper mines of the future’ that are worth exploring for.