The resources industry is a key driver of Australia’s economic prosperity. The resources industry – which includes mining, oil and gas and exploration and mining services – accounted for 18 per cent of Australia’s gross domestic product (GDP) and employed 200,000 people in 2021–22 (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2023a). This success is driven by a significant resource endowment, a skilled labour force, substantial capital investment, and the availability of world class precompetitive geoscience data and analysis that supports the resources industry in discovering and extracting resources.
Precompetitive geoscience data and analysis refers to geological, geophysical, geochemical, and other types of data collected by government agencies. This data is made freely available to all as a public good and provides a foundational understanding of a region’s resource potential before exploration and extraction activities take place.
Precompetitive geoscience data and analysis plays an important role in supporting resource exploration. Industry surveys conducted by GA suggest that precompetitive geoscience data and analysis is used by over 80 per cent of companies operating in the non-ferrous metals extraction industry and oil and gas extraction industry. The data and analysis help companies to identify highly prospective areas, thereby reducing costs and risks to industry. This stimulates exploration tenement uptake and exploration activity in the most prospective regions, which is required for the discovery and extraction of resources from greenfield sites and expanded brownfield sites.
Mineral exploration would be significantly more expensive and carry a higher risk in the absence of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis. This would likely decrease the amount of exploration occurring in Australia, as the expected return on exploration would be lower than could be gained elsewhere. A decline in exploration would lead to a subsequent decline in the rate of resource discovery. Over the long-term, this would lead to a reduction in resource extraction at greenfield sites (and to a lesser extent, at brownfield sites) in Australia. Through this relationship, the initial provision of precompetitive data underpins a significant amount of value within the Australian economy, which is easily overlooked.
It is in this context that Deloitte Access Economics was engaged by GA to estimate the economic contribution of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis in 2021–22. GA is the national public sector geoscience organisation and is primarily responsible for generating and curating Australia’s precompetitive geoscience data and analysis, along with state and territory geological surveys and various research initiatives.
Precompetitive geoscience data and analysis production: The analysis reveals that Australia’s precompetitive geoscience data and analysis producers had a direct economic contribution of $71 million in value added and supported 432 FTE jobs in 2021–22.
This value added is derived from wages and salaries paid to employees in the data production process, representing close to half of the total expenditure on data production ($151 million). GA is the largest producer of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis in Australia and therefore had the highest value added among data producers. This is driven in large part through activities conducted as part of GA’s Exploring for the Future program.
Precompetitive geoscience data and analysis use: Survey data by GA indicates that precompetitive geoscience data and analysis is used widely for resource exploration and extraction, particularly for the discovery of nonferrous metal ores and oil and gas.
Precompetitive geoscience data and analysis allows resource companies to make more targeted investment decisions and deploy their labour more efficiently, resulting in cost savings.
The direct economic contribution of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis use in 2021–22 consists of:
• $5.5 billion direct value added and 24,361 FTE jobs supported by the use of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis in exploration and mining support services
• $24.0 billion direct value added and 34,244 FTE jobs supported by the use of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis for non-ferrous metal ore extraction
• $46.5 billion direct value added and 21,305 FTE jobs supported by the use of precompetitive geoscience data and analysis for oil and gas extraction
These estimates are considered conservative.
