Mineral deposits, like football stars, are scouted today so they can be developed over a decade before reaching their peak productivity.
But shocks in the mining sector are arresting the process that turns today’s raw deposits into tomorrow’s star mines.
The fall in commodities prices and freeze in finance are forcing miners to drop exploration and development indefinitely. This creates a long-term threat: fewer new mines coming on stream means fewer minerals will reach the market – and the possibility for price spikes several years from now when growth picks up and supplies become depleted.
The scores of smaller mining companies focused on exploration – many of which populate London’s Aim board – will be hit hardest because financing has dried up for resources companies that do not yet produce anything that can be sold.
But these smaller companies have the most critical role in the development pipeline – they act as the on-the-ground discoverers and “eyes and ears” for big mining companies that buy them when a big discovery is made. Exploration companies undertook more than half of global exploration in recent years, according to Metals Economics Group.
Revisiting 1997
The current “bloodbath” in the exploration sector draws comparisons with the 1997 Bre-X fraud that scared investors off the mineral exploration sector, writes William MacNamara.In 1995 Bre-X, a Canadian exploration company, claimed it had discovered a large gold deposit in Indonesia. But there was no deposit, only sprinklings of gold dust.This was discovered after the company’s chief geologist was killed in mysterious circumstances, falling from a helicopter into the Indonesian jungle.Resources investors and financiers lost billions of dollars when the company’s inflated stock collapsed, and exploration companies became associated with bad speculative risk.The “exploration bear market” that followed lasted for five to six years, say executives, before recovering after 2003.
The previous kill-off of the sector – which followed the Bre-X fraud in 1997 – was fundamental to the creation of the recent commodities boom, several analysts and executives say. Then, a lack of new discoveries combined with China’s growing demand pushed metals prices toward the historic highs from which they crashed last year.
This boom and bust is all too repeatable, says Michael Carvill, managing director of Kenmare Resources, an Aim-listed explorer that brought its titanium mine in Mozambique into production last year after 20 years.
“When markets turn,” he says, “the ability of exploration companies to raise capital just disappears. Projects mid-way through development go bust. The only people who can keep on developing are the big companies.
“Then there is a return to growth,” he says, “and people see there is a shortage of minerals and the prices of metals rise, stoking inflation, and there becomes a ready market for any carpetbagger who ever saw a diamond at Tiffany’s to come along and say, ‘I’ve got a great project.’ And money is thrown at it.”
Des Kilalea, mining analyst at RBC Capital Markets, says the current bust will not kill off exploration entirely because big mining companies such as BHP Billiton will continue to explore in spite of “spending less and being more selective”.
But there is potential for cutbacks to overshoot the levels necessary to support a price recovery for metals.
“At some point the world is going to say, ‘No one has been building copper or uranium mines or the like,” says Mr Kilalea, “and prices could spike. But when demand comes back it will be more moderated than [in 2003], and the price rises will be less frenetic.”
More worrying than this year’s bust, say some, is that few big deposits have been discovered over the past decade in spite of large exploration budgets.
“But all that money has not yielded much,” says Jason Goulden, MEG’s director of corporate exploration strategy. “In this past cycle, the party was over before it even started.”
More money was spent on reviving old mines than on “grassroots” exploration, or hunting for new deposits, he says.
Big miners have long pointed out that the “easy” bonanzas have been found. Now grassroots exploration is more onerous. Environmental concerns can mire any discovery, and many of the best prospects are in countries with high political risk and poor infrastructure.
The mineral promise of countries such as Congo and Angola – new frontiers during the commodities boom – were always overshadowed by high risks and costs. Many of the Aim-listed explorers operated in these countries have stopped exploring to save cash.
Eric Finlayson, director of exploration at Rio Tinto, says Rio will continue to explore in Congo. He characterises the shutdown in the junior exploration sector as an inevitable part of a boom and bust industry. “The junior explorers wax and wane, but there will always be sophisticated money out there that will flow to the best projects.” He added periodic clearings were necessary to separate quality projects from frothy ones.
“We will sustain our exploration programme in good times and bad,” he says.
But Rio will scale back planned exploration expenditure as part of a reduction in 2009 capital expenditure from $9bn (£6.2bn) to $5bn.