Gold exploration budgets 18% higher in 2018

By Christopher Galbraith | 27 November 2018

The following article is an abstract of the 2018 Corporate Exploration Strategies publication which reviews exploration budget trends of mining companies worldwide.

Gold remains the most popular commodity among actively exploring companies, and with a budget totaling US$4.85 billion, the precious metal accounts for 50% of the global nonferrous exploration budget total in 2018. The budget is up for the second consecutive year with an increase of 18%, or US$757 million, which is only slightly less than the US$777 million increase in 2017.

Recent pullback in the gold price has slowed gold's momentum in the exploration rebound. Gold prices climbed over US$1,300/oz in December 2017 and remained there until May 2018. Between mid-June and mid-August, gold shed another US$100/oz amidst dollar and equity market strength and only recovered convincingly above the US$1,200/oz level in October.

A five-year trend of fewer companies exploring for gold has been broken in 2018 — our data indicates that 57 more companies have budgeted for gold exploration this year. The average amount budgeted by each company has also grown, to US$5.1 million from US$4.5 million in 2017. This is the highest company average gold budget in six years.

Obtain essential insights as we reveal the gold exploration budget trends in 2018:

Identify the top 25 gold producers in 2018
Understand gold exploration budgets allocation by company types, regions and stages of development
Forecast on gold exploration budget trends in 2019

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Gold exploration budgets 18% higher in 2018

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