Nova Scotia’s mining and quarrying industry is seeking $19.5 million in government funding for an airborne geophysical survey program. The project, called Minerals Play Fairway, would improve our geological understanding of Nova Scotia, help find future mines and quarries, and be an essential tool for attracting investment and job creation to the province.

Minerals Play Fairway is modelled on the highly successful Nova Scotia oil and gas Play Fairway Analysis.  In 2008, the Department of Energy commissioned a $15 million Play Fairway Analysis and geoscience data package program with the goal of stimulating offshore petroleum exploration activity.  The resulting data was made available for free to the global oil and gas industry and attracted over $2 billion in investment in Nova Scotia’s offshore.

The Minerals Play Fairway report is the first step toward building a minerals version of Play Fairway – a free, best-in-class database of geophysical knowledge that will help attract investment and job creation to Nova Scotia. The oil and gas Play Fairway was a made-in -Nova-Scotia success story and copying it for the mining industry would help the industry grow and create jobs for Nova Scotians.

The Minerals Play Fairway report analyses the province’s publicly-held airborne geophysical data and recommends that government fund a series of geophysical surveys:

• A province-wide magnetic, radiometric and VLF survey;
• A regional gravity gradiometry and magnetic survey in the St. Mary’s Basin and Cobequid-Chedabucto Fault System; and
• A series of regional electromagnetic (ZTEM) surveys.

Nova Scotia’s mining and quarrying industry employs 5500 Nova Scotians, mainly in rural areas, and generates $420 million per year in economic activity. Fostering mineral exploration is essential to ensuring the industry’s ability to keep creating new jobs for Nova Scotians. If we do not do exploration today, there will not be new mines tomorrow.