The Uranium mine 'to proceed' [02may06]

THE Honeymoon uranium mine in South Australia could have final approval to start production as early as June, Mineral Resources Minister Paul Holloway told a mining conference in Adelaide yesterday.Mr Holloway said the State Government did not have to wait until an anticipated change to the federal Labor Party's "no new mines" policy, at the party's national conference next year.
"We regard that Honeymoon is an existing mine," Mr Holloway said.
He said Honeymoon was only awaiting secondary licence approvals which could be issued by June.
By this time, sxr Uranium One, the company which owns the mine, would have finished a pre-feasibility study on the project and would be in a position to make a decision about whether to go ahead with production, sxr chief financial officer Leigh Curyer said yesterday.
The 2006 Paydirt SA Resources and Energy Investment Conference also heard that while South Australia's share of national mining expenditure had grown to 12.1 per cent, third highest behind WA and Queensland, more effort needed to be put into boosting exploration Australia-wide.
Mineral Resources and Energy Department executive director Paul Heithersay warned while exploration spending had jumped to $100 million in South Australia last year and was thus reaching the Government's 2007 target two years early, Australia's world ranking in terms of mining exploration had dropped markedly over recent years.
Australia's share of global exploration spending fell to 12.6 per cent in 2005, substantially down on the 17.6 per cent recorded in 2002, he said.
The SA Chamber of Mines and Energy backed the comments, saying Australia faced an economic disaster unless Canberra stimulated exploration efforts to uncover new mineral reserves.
Chamber chief executive Phil Sutherland said the Federal Government must offer tax incentives in next week's Budget for Australia to remain one of the world's leading commodity exporters.
"If we don't ramp up the exploration effort, it will only be a matter of time before the known deposits are mined out," he said. Mr Sutherland said to improve that position, the Federal Government should introduce a flow-through shares scheme which would allow tax deductions received by exploration companies to be transferred to individual shareholders.
Without such incentives, it could be that Australia would no longer have the raw materials available to satisfy growing global markets, Mr Sutherland said.
On the upside, Premier Mike Rann, who opened the conference, said 200 students were this year enrolled in first-year geology at Adelaide University - the highest figure in Australia.
Mr Rann said that as a result of the State Government's Plan for Accelerating Exploration, which provides exploration subsidies and other support, the perception of SA as a place to invest had also changed dramatically.
"The (Canadian) Fraser Institute's recently released 2005-06 Annual Survey placed South Australia at No. 6 among 64 jurisdictions on its so-called Mineral Potential Index," he said