With All this Exploration Are we Likely to See any Mines?

Likely yes with sustained annual exploration expenditures in the $600 million range.

Here's what the Australian pointy heads say about what it costs to find a base metal mine.

Discovery costs
Mackenzie et al. (1997) reported that the average cost of finding and delineating an economic base metal deposit was about $120 million ($160 million in 2004–2005 dollars) and almost six times higher than for nickel but varied greatly between regions.

The decline in the rate of discovery of new base metals (excluding nickel) since the early 1990s suggests that the average cost of discovery of base metal deposits in Australia is likely to have increased since Mackenzie et al., (1998) study. Discovery costs have improved for nickel, however. Hronsky and Schodde (2005) estimated that, on average, each nickel sulphide deposit discovered in the Yilgarn Craton cost $17.7 million and nickel laterite deposits $6.5 million. This is substantially less than the $23 million ($31 million in 2004–2005 dollars) reported by Mackenzie et al., 1997 M Hronsky and Schodde (2005) noted that average discovery costs were ‘remarkably cheap’ at 5.2 c/lb ($115/tonne) for nickel sulphide and 0.6 c/lb for laterite nickel.

One fact to keep in mind.

• there is a broad correlation between intensity of exploration and rates of base metal discovery. However, the major peak in mineral exploration activity in the mid-1990s was not accompanied by significant discovery, as noted previously (e.g. Haynes, 2000; Parry and Parry, 2001

Resources Policy
Volume 30, Issue 3, September 2005, Pages 168-185
Exploration and discovery of Australia's copper, nickel, lead and zinc resources 1976–2005

A.L. Jaques M.B. Huleatt, M. Ratajkoski and R.R. Towner