Natural Resources Committee on Oct. 26th, 2011

[Keith Morrison]

It's a great question. In areas where you have other geoscience information, where there's some historical drilling, say, or GSC mapping, you can calibrate your data versus known hard points of information and extrapolate it. In areas where you know absolutely nothing, certain types of interpretation will be extremely accurate. Certain details in the data won't be, and you'll need alternate information, but the information is always accurate and can always be continually updated and integrated as new information becomes available. As you learn more about the physics, the rocks in those areas, the more accurate your ability is to review the data and understand the geological significance of the measurements.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

If someone wants to explore further and uses your data, do you have another device that they can use before they drill?

[Keith Morrison]

It depends on the application. In some situations--what we call direct detection--if you're looking for something that is very large and very heavy, like an iron ore deposit or coal deposits, a company may be comfortable going directly to drilling from the airborne data. In the situation of a petroleum company, where the cost of a well may be in the order of tens of millions of dollars, they're probably going to look to have additional information to mitigate the risk in that decision.

Our information will help them initially to understand the prospectivity, why they should look there, and the complexity of the geology. What other type of additional information would they want to have in order to make a risk decision on the deployment of that level of capital? Again, it depends on the application, but it's fundamentally a good geological measurement that's of utility both to mining companies and to petroleum companies.

[Wladyslaw Lizon, Conservative, Mississauga East—Cooksville, ON]

My next question is for Mr. Kolebaba.

You use the geomapping data in your work. What other elements would you say are important in mineral exploration, especially in northern Canada?

[Mark Kolebaba]

A lot of the work that the Geological Survey of Canada would do would be physical mapping and using this kind of technology as well as other forms of geophysics to identify units and then essentially ground-truth them to understand what the lithology is.

A lot of geochemical surveys are useful for us: big regional stream sediment samples or lake bottom surveys that identify different elements like nickel and gold, and big broad regions that you can start targeting for further exploration, that kind of thing. Also, probably, modelling different areas, taking in all the different geological layers they have--geology, geochemistry, geophysics--and starting to develop models for different deposit types that might actually attract business to those areas.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you, Mr. Lizon, your time is up.

Our time for this meeting is up.

I would like to thank all of you for coming in and making your presentations. I apologize for the interruptions. That happens here sometimes.

Mr. Swarbrick, you didn't even get to answer any questions. Had we been here longer you probably would have.

[Bernie Swarbrick, Vice-President, Capital Projects and Studies, Advanced Explorations Inc.]

I was here for moral support, and if required.

[The Chair, Conservative, Leon Benoit]

Thank you for coming too, though.

Thanks very much to all of you.

The meeting is adjourned.