The Iranian Mines and Mining Industries Development and Renovation Organization (IMIDRO) said it was beginning to carry out aerial geophysical surveys over 100,000 square kilometers of the country’s area to explore for mines, reported Fooladnews.
Mehdi Karbasian, deputy minister of industry, mine, and trade and the IMIDRO’s head, said negotiations were underway with a Russian company to jointly begin exploration operations for new mines, particularly in the provinces of Khorasan-e Razavi, Yazd, and Kerman.
Iran suffers from a historical backwardness in exploration of mines, Karbasian said. “No comprehensive or accurate survey has yet been conducted to explore mines in the country.”
The ministry of industry has recently allocated a budget of 1.2 trillion rials ($36.8 million based on official exchange rate) for the exploration operations.
Experts believe the mining sector has great potential for development but underline that more planning is required for this purpose. Some even argue that the sector could replace oil in revenue generation.
A board member of Iran Mine House has recently told Financial Tribune that one of the serious challenges facing the mining sector is the lack of authentic and reliable data on geological specifications in different regions as well as precise mine maps.
Iran has a 60-billion-ton potential mineral reserve based on limited exploration operations so far conducted. Many countries implement aerial exploration operations, detecting resources in the depth of 1,000 to 1,500 meters. In Iran, however, the average exploration depth does not exceed 150 meters, Bahram Shakouri told Financial Tribune.
With 64 different kinds of mineral substances, Iran has great potential to develop the sector if it improves domestic expertise and implement aerial geophysical surveys, experts say.
The Iranian government has so far allocated a small budget for such surveys, which in the past decade consumed $84 billion in budgets worldwide. The figure in Iran was hardly $25 million.
