Exploration companies very much need multi-talented people as the challenge of making mineral discoveries, let alone raising equity capital to continue drilling, is not getting any easier.
To pass away the hours waiting for the next round of funding to come through, explorers must keep on their minds honed towards meeting the many commercial and scientific challenges that accompany the business of mineral exploration.
Trivial Pursuit – mineral explorer’s edition, if commissioned, could be just the thing to keep everyone on top form.
The object of the game is to move around the boardroom table while correctly answering the many and varied challenges of the mineral exploration business across a number of key categories.
Companies each move their playing pieces along a series of exploration tracks (assuming track clearance permits are in place) towards the ultimate goal, a new discovery.
Each company’s progress along the exploration tracks is clearly demarcated using brightly coloured flagging tape – with the aim to find that rare exploration track that leads the explorer to a new mine.
When a player's counter passes a piece of coloured flagging tape, the company must correctly answer technical and commercial questions according to the respective colour of the tape.
Each coloured flagging tape corresponds to one of six exploration-slanted categories being geography, entertainment, history, literature, science and leisure.
If the company correctly overcomes the challenge, the exploration program continues.
The categories in the Trivial Pursuit special mineral explorers’ edition are:
Geography (blue flagging tape) – explorers’ knowledge on the metals and mineral endowment and mineral policy in different states and countries of the world are tested here. A special prospector-level edition also includes questions down to the detail of individual prospects.
Entertainment (pink flagging tape) – company annual reports, stock exchange announcements and investor slide-packs and briefings are the principal source of the questions in this category. Explorers must avoid releasing any technical information that is not JORC-compliant, must identify technical errors and omissions in company slide-packs prior to their release – and demonstrate a clear ability to construct stock exchange releases where the key corporate and technical messages are sufficiently clear and simple.
History (yellow flagging tape) – explorers’ knowledge of the discovery case histories of key mines and projects in and around the exploration district is under scrutiny here. Historical data sets are also the subject of careful analysis – are there mineral discoveries hiding in plain sight among historical data?
Literature (brown flagging tape) – previously reported technical literature on an area is a key input to the exploration process too. Academic literature also comes into play. Good explorers are expected to be fully cognisant of all the reported literature for a prospective area.
Science (green flagging tape) – good science is a given in exploration but will you be able to answer all the questions that exploration poses? Is 2000 parts per million of nickel significant in fresh rock within reconnaissance exploration drilling for the devil’s metal, for example? Some explorers would say yes and others no: it depends. Good explorers need to know why.
Leisure (orange flagging tape) – questions here relate to the likes of work-life balance and other choices as they impact on exploration activity. What is a good roster for explorers in the field for example? Six-on, one-off perhaps: but is that measured in days or in weeks?
The new edition of the game includes a boardroom table, playing pieces, question cards, a box, small plastic chip trays (for playing pieces) and of course many rolls of the dice.
Of course the only real way to roll the exploration dice in practice is to keep on drilling!
Good hunting.
Allan Trench is a professor at Curtin Graduate School of Business and Research, professor (value and risk) at the Centre for Exploration Targeting, University of Western Australia, a non-executive director of several resource sector companies – and the Perth representative for CRU Consulting, a division of independent metals and mining advisory CRU Group (allan.trench@crugroup.com).
