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Rediscover Victoria
Drilling initiative | 3D geological modelling
The Rediscover Victoria initiative will invest $5 million over four years until 2012 in a new geoscience program to encourage minerals and petroleum exploration, especially in parts of the state where little exploration has occurred to date.
The initiative includes:
- Support for a strategic drilling program in conjunction with the private sector,
- Accelerating the development of a whole-of-state 3-D geological model.
Drilling initiative
The Rediscover Victoria Drilling (RVD) project is designed to attract greater exploration in areas with low current levels of exploration activity and stimulate drill testing of new geologic concepts and models. The benefits will be drilling programs being carried out in greenfields areas and areas previously seen as either higher risk or having limited prospectivity.
Through the targeted drilling program the State would reimburse exploration companies a capped amount of direct drilling costs incurred. This will only apply for drill holes that meet a strict set of criteria.
The project has produced immediate results under Round 1 with Beaconsfield Gold discovering high-grade copper intersections in a drilling campaign on its Stavely prospect south of the Grampians.
Round 2
Round 2 opened on 17 July 2008 and closed on 12 September 2008 with up to $700,000 worth of funding available. Grants may be up to $100,000 but not more than 50% of the actual direct drilling costs.
Following on from the strong response from industry in Round 1, for Round 2 DPI received 32 proposals from 25 companies for exploration drilling at sites across Victoria.
On Thursday 13 November 2008, the Minister for Energy and Resources Peter Batchelor announced the grant recipients for Round 2 funding.
Round 3 will commence mid 2009.
3D geological modelling
The Rediscover Victoria 3D Victoria project will accelerate development of a 3-D geological model for the whole state. With the development of technology, increasingly geologists are using 3-D models of the earth’s terrane rather than relying on traditional geological maps. At present there is no coordinated approach in place to develop a consistent and comprehensive 3-D geological model for Victoria. This initiative will bring together different threads from the petroleum exploration industry, the minerals exploration industry, the Cooperative Research Centre for Predictive Mineral Discovery (pmd*CRC), and DPI's Gold Undercover Initiative and integrate them to produce a 3-D geological model for the state that can be used by all explorers and geoscience researchers in Victoria. This will provide significant benefits to DPI's existing and potential clients and establish a powerful new geoscience tool to promote the state’s earth resources potential.
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