An airborne geological survey of the country’s entire area will be carried out within the next three years; ISNA cited the deputy head of the Geological Survey of Iran (GSI) as saying.
Equipped with two helicopters and cutting-edge technology, the GSI is capable of surveying the country’s entire area and aerially explore potential reserves at a depth of 250 meters, said Behrouz Borna.
Mountainous areas will be surveyed via helicopters while airplanes will be deployed for other areas. Surveying the entire country will require 1 trillion rials (over $362 million based on official currency exchange rate) with every square kilometer costing around $100, said Borna.
The high cost of surveys, especially the aerial ones, have so far prevented officials from surveying the whole country, as only 10% of Iran’s area has been surveyed and explored so far. Costly operations have also prohibited the private sector from taking part in the project.
Earlier GSI officials gave assurance that the information on the new explorations would be publicly accessible.
This is while the country’s high potential in the mining sector has not been properly introduced to the public and experts say if the GSI, that is responsible for carrying out geological and mineral investigations throughout the country, widely publicizes the information on the country’s mineral resources, many domestic investors will step forward to finance mining projects.
According to mining experts, the budgets allocated by successive governments during the past decades were too tight and the private sector has not been able to perform such costly and complicated operations on its own.
They also say as much as $84 billion have been spent across the world over the past decade for explorations, while the figure in Iran hardly reaches $25 million.
