Overview

Australia is a world leader in mining and produces 19 minerals in significant amounts from nearly 400 operating mines. Minerals are produced in all states, the Northern Territory and on Christmas Island. There is no mining in the Australian Capital Territory apart from quarries used to mine aggregate and other construction materials.

Minerals are an important part of the Australian economy, accounting for about 7% of gross domestic product. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports that the mining industry employs around 263 000 people directly.

Minerals are Australia's largest export. According to the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics, the industry's exports (excluding oil and gas) were worth approximately $165 billion in 2011-12, accounting for around 52% of total exports (goods and services) and 62% of merchandise exports. Australian mining companies trade freely in the global marketplace, exporting goods on a commercial basis around the world with the major markets for Australian mineral exports being China, Japan, South Korea and India.

Australia is one of the top mineral producers in the world and has a large resource inventory of most of the world's key minerals commodities. Australia is the world's leading producer of bauxite, ilmenite, rutile, iron ore and zircon, the second largest producer of alumina, gold, lead, lithium, manganese ore and zinc, the third largest producer of uranium, the fourth largest producer of black coal, nickel and silver, and the fifth largest producer of aluminium, cobalt and copper.

Australia also has the largest identified resources of gold, iron ore, lead, nickel, rutile, uranium, zinc and zircon, and the second largest resources of bauxite, cobalt, copper, ilmenite, niobium, silver, tantalum and thorium. Australia's lithium and rare earth resources are ranked third, manganese ore and vanadium are ranked fourth and black coal is ranked fifth in the world.

The subsections on the following pages provide an overview of Australia's resources of bauxite, coal, copper, gold, iron ore, nickel, rare earth elements and uranium; specifically their distribution, reserve and resource amounts, state/territory share, world ranking, resource trends and resource to production ratio. For industry developments and a more in-depth discussion of these commodities, and others, please refer to Geoscience Australia's annual publication of 'Australia's Identified Mineral Resources'¹.

Resources and Reserves

Geoscience Australia and its predecessors have prepared annual assessments of Australia's mineral resources since 1975. The latest data are summarised in Table 3.1.

The national minerals inventory is based on published company reports of Ore Reserves and Mineral Resources. The national resource estimates provide a long-term view of what is likely to be mined. An industry view of what is likely to be mined in the short to medium term is provided by the national total for Ore Reserves, which is based on the Australasian Code for Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Ore Reserves (referred to as the JORC Code). Mine production data are based on figures from the Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics.

National Resource Classification System

The mineral resource classification system used for Australia's national inventory is based on two general criteria:

• the geological certainty of the existence of the mineral resource
• the economic feasibility of its extraction over the long term.

For a full description of the system see Appendix 1 'National Classification System for Identified Mineral Resources'.

The description of the National Classification System shows how mineral resources reported by companies under the JORC Code are used when compiling total resources for the nation. The classification category Economic Demonstrated Resources (EDR) is used for national totals of economic resources and provides a basis for meaningful comparisons of Australia's economic resources with those of other nations.

Abbreviations

t = tonne; L = litre; kt = kilotonnes (1000 t); Mt = million tonnes (1000 000 t); Mc = million carats (1000 000 c); GL = gigalitre (1000 000 000 L); n.a. = not available.

Notes

1. Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) Proved and Probable Ore Reserves as stated in company annual reports and reports to Australian Securities Exchange.
2. Economic Demonstrated Resources (EDR) includes Joint Ore Reserves Committee (JORC) Reserves, Measured and Indicated Mineral Resources.
3. Total Inferred Resources in economic, sub-economic and undifferentiated categories.
4. Accessible Economic Demonstrated Resources (AEDR) is the portion of total EDR that is accessible for mining. AEDR does not include resources which are inaccessible for mining because of environmental restrictions, government policies or military lands.
5. Source: Bureau of Resources and Energy Economics (BREE).
6. Sources: Geoscience Australia for Australian figures, United States Geological Survey (USGS) Mineral Commodities Summaries for other countries.
7. World mine production for 2012, mostly United States Geological Survey (USGS) estimates.
8. Raw coal.
9. Source: World Energy Council (WEC). Survey of Energy Resources 2010.
10. Saleable coal.
11. Source: World Coal Association, 2012.
12. There are no JORC code ore reserve estimates available for brown coal.
13. Source: Victoria's Minerals, Petroleum & Extractive Industries 2010–11 Statistical Review. Victorian Department of Primary Industries.
14. Source: Western Australian Department of Mines and Petroleum.
15. 186 635 t of chromite expressed as Cr₂O₃ (Source: Western Australian Department of Mines and Petroleum).
16. World production of 24 Mt of 'marketable chromite ore' as reported by United States Geological Survey (USGS).
17. Source: USGS Commodity Summaries 2012. Note—world resource figures are for industrial diamonds only. No data provided for resources of gem diamonds.
18. Excludes USA.
19. Calculated assuming a grade of 6% Li2O in spodumere concentrates.
20. Production for 2012–13 (Source: Queensland Government. Department of Natural Resources and Mines).
21. Some molybdenum was produced as a by-product of tungsten at the Wolfram Camp mine. Amount produced is not known but is believed to be minor.
22. Not reported by mining companies.
23. Phosphate rock is reported as economic at grades ranging from 8.7% to 30.2% P₂O₅.
24. Total Inferred Resource excludes a 'total potential' shale oil resource of the Toolebuc Formation, Queensland of 245 000 GL that was estimated by Geoscience Australia's predecessor, the Bureau of Mineral Resources, and CSIRO in 1983.
25. Department of Mines and Petroleum, Government of Western Australia reported a combined production in dollar values of tin, tantalum and lithium of $200 844 824.
26. Thorium resources reduced by 10 per cent to account for mining and processing losses.
27. For all states except WA where actual figures not available.
28. Estimated from production figures for tungsten (WO3) concentrate.
29. Source: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency (OECD/NEA) and International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) (2011). Compiled from the most recent data for resources recoverable at costs of less than US$130/kg U.
30. Source: World Nuclear Association.
31. For 2012 the Windimurra Vanadium project has produced 87 t of FeV, containing 70 t of vanadium.

Accessible Resources

Some mineral deposits are not currently accessible for mining because of government policies or various environmental and land-access restrictions such as location within National and State parks and conservation zones, military training areas or environmental protection areas, as well as areas over which mining approval has not been granted by traditional owners. Accessible Economic Demonstrated Resources (AEDR), as shown in Table 3.1, represent the resources within the EDR category that are accessible for mining.

World Ranking

The world ranking for each commodity is presented in two tables, one for resources and one for production. The data is chiefly gathered from the annual compilations of the United States Geological Survey and supplemented with more accurate figures for Australia. International uranium figures are gathered from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development/Nuclear Energy Agency and International Atomic Energy Agency and the World Nuclear Association.

Trends

The EDR of Australia's major mineral commodities have undergone significant and sometimes dramatic changes over the period 1975 to 2012. These changes can be attributed to one, or a combination, of the following factors:

• Increases in resources resulting from discoveries of new deposits and delineation of extensions of known deposits.
• Depletion of resources as a result of mine production.
• Advances in mining and metallurgical technologies, e.g., carbon-based processing technologies for gold have enabled economic extraction from low-grade deposits that were previously were uneconomic.
• Adoption of the JORC Code for resource classification and reporting by the Australian minerals industry. Many companies re-estimated their mineral resources to comply with the requirements of the JORC Code with subsequent impacts on the amount of ore reserves and mineral resources. The impacts of the JORC Code on EDR occurred at differing times for each of the major commodities.
• Increases in prices of mineral commodities driven largely by the escalating demand from China over the past decade.

Resource to Production Ratio

The resource life for each commodity is calculated as a ratio of AEDR to current mine production, and then rounded to five years. This ratio provides an indicative estimate of the resource life. Resource life based on the ratio of reserves to production, rather than AEDR to production, is lower, reflecting a shorter term commercial outlook. The AEDR of most of Australia's major commodities show that current rates of mine production can be sustained for many decades. Excluding rare earth elements (for which an indicative resource life does not yet exist), of the commodities covered in this document, only gold has an indicative resource life of less than 50 years.

Notes

1. Australia's Identified Mineral Resources: http://www.ga.gov.au/metadata-gateway/metadata/record/gcat_78987/