New study shows a $1.1 billion drop in gold exploration budgets this year as juniors struggle to raise capital, but the precious metal still accounts for 46% of the total.
According to a new study by S&P Global Market Intelligence, overall mining exploration budgets fell this year for the first time since 2020, dropping 3% to $12.8 billion at the 2,235 companies that allocated funds to find or expand deposits.
Gold budgets, which historically have been driven more by the junior mining sector than any other metal or mineral, dropped by 16% or $1.1 billion year-on-year to just under $6 billion, representing 46% of the global total.
That’s down from 54% in 2022 amid higher spending on lithium, nickel and other battery metals, a surge in spending on uranium and rare earths and an uptick for copper. But the dominant role gold plays in exploration – and therefore the industry’s future remains clear from the fact that the combined money flowing into green energy transition metals (or future facing commodities as some majors like to label them) was not enough to offset the decline in gold.
For the rest of this article: https://www.mining.com/what-green-energy-transition-half-of-mining-still-exploring-for-gold/