Introduction

Over the past fifteen years, prevailing perceptions of worldwide mineral supply in general and mineral exploration in particular have experienced a complete turnabout. During the 1970s, concerns about resource scarcity and the specter of "running out," in part the result of insufficient exploration, dominated the debate. The following quotation illustrates this view:

The geologic, economic and political conditions in the exploration and mining of minerals are sufficiently similar to the exploration for hydrocarbons as to indicate a potentially more serious problem of rapidly escalating finding costs than for oil and gas. Indeed . . . it would appear that the next crisis will be with respect to nonenergy deposits [Ramsey, 1981, p. 336).

As to the causes of the predicted shortages, it was widely believed that mining companies had virtually stopped exploring the mineral-rich developing countries because of political risk, and that in the industrialized nations exploration was being severely hampered by excessively onerous government policies in otherwise attractive areas such as Australia, Canada, and the United States.