Brazil’s geological survey is considering giving companies that help pay for airborne surveys temporary exclusive access to the results, raising concerns that large funders could secure promising exploration ground before smaller rivals.
The proposal comes as Brazil prepares a 10-year geophysical survey plan estimated at 3.3 billion reais ($650 million). The Geological Survey of Brazil (SGB) said the proposed budget includes 300 million reais a year to expand knowledge of the country’s mineral potential, subject to congressional approval.
The aim is to expand Brazil’s survey capacity, SGB president Vilmar Medeiros Simões said in written answers to The Northern Miner. Exclusive access would give a funder “a temporary advantage associated with an investor’s participation in financing a specific survey,” if legally permitted.
The stakes are high because Brazil’s Mining Code gives priority to the first qualifying applicant for exploration rights over available ground. Early access to survey results could therefore help a funder identify and apply for prospective areas before competitors see the same information.
Target finders
Airborne geophysical surveys measure properties such as magnetism and electrical conductivity to help geologists identify rock formations and potential exploration targets beneath the surface.
Anyone with early access to a regional survey “will be able to apply for the best areas before everyone else,” Luís Maurício Azevedo, chairman of the Brazilian Association of Mineral Exploration and Mining Companies (ABPM), said.
The SGB, a state-owned company that maps the country’s geology, is in talks with state-controlled oil company Petrobras and mining giant Vale (NYSE: VALE) about financing surveys for critical minerals, Simões said.
Funding flights
The SGB and Brazil’s Ministry of Mines and Energy opened a public consultation on PlanGeo Geofísica on Sept. 28. The consultation runs until Oct. 28 and allows companies and other participants to suggest priority survey areas, the SGB said.
“There are talks underway with Petrobras, Vale and other players, but so far there is no signed instrument with these companies to carry out airborne geophysical surveys,” Simões said.
Vale declined to comment. Petrobras representatives attended the Sept. 28 launch event, the SGB said, but the company didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Terms unresolved
Any agreement would define which data would be restricted, how they could be used and how long they would remain confidential. All the data would become public when that period ended, Simões said. The arrangement would need a legal basis and a formal agreement.
The SGB hasn’t specified how long exclusivity would last. Asked again about the proposed duration, it said only that a legal agreement would be drawn up if funding came from outside the federal budget.
The agency also hasn’t clarified whether it is considering any commercial benefits beyond temporary data access, such as arrangements to earn an interest in exploration properties.
Funders wouldn’t have sole say over where surveys are flown. “Private financing cannot, by itself, determine surveys that depart from this planning,” Simões said, although partners could suggest areas of interest.
The SGB’s airborne survey data are now available free of charge. Before 2017, companies paid for the data, while universities and research institutes received them six months after projects were completed and the data became available, according to the agency’s 2020 atlas of airborne geophysical surveys in Rondônia state.
Overseas models
Australia offers a precedent for time-limited confidentiality. In a 2019 survey around Cobar in New South Wales, exploration companies paid for an additional 800 km of flight lines to provide more detailed coverage of selected areas. Those results were withheld from the initial public release under confidentiality agreements, with publication planned after a 12-month moratorium, according to Geoscience Australia’s survey record.
Western Australia takes a different approach, contributing up to 50% of the cost of company geophysical surveys, capped at A$250,000 ($174,000) per project. Reports and data become public three months after the funding term ends, even if a company finishes its work earlier, according to the program guidelines.
In the U.S., a partnership with Rio Tinto (LSE, NYSE, ASX: RIO) doubled the area covered by a U.S. Geological Survey airborne study in southwestern Montana. The agency said the data collected through the survey partnership would be made public.
In Canada, Natural Resources Canada’s Geo-mapping for Energy and Minerals program and its successor, GEM-GeoNorth, publish geoscientific data openly to support exploration and other land-use decisions.
Brazil’s proposed terms remain unsettled, including how long funders would have exclusive access and what safeguards would apply to other explorers.
Explorers seek safeguards
Early data access “would help in prioritizing areas, acquiring mineral rights and defining exploration investments,” José Marques Braga Junior, Brazil executive director of Viridis Mining and Minerals (ASX: VMM), said in written answers. The company is developing the Colossus project for rare earths at Poços de Caldas in Minas Gerais state.
Viridis sees co-financing as “an interesting alternative, as long as the exclusivity period is limited” and the data are then made broadly available to the public. If relevant information stays restricted for long periods to companies that can pay, “that could reduce competition and potentially slow the emergence of new projects and the development of the sector itself,” Braga Junior said.
For smaller companies, “the main guarantee should be the existence of clear, objective and non-discriminatory rules,” Simões said, adding that attracting junior companies is “one of the central objectives” of the SGB’s survey strategy.
The ABPM supports the search for private funding but wants exclusivity to be an exception, capped at six months and confined to the co-funded area, Azevedo said. It also wants agreements to operate “without creating any priority over mineral rights.”
The association plans to submit those proposals to the PlanGeo consultation. For small and medium-sized companies, the effect of early access for funders “would be negative and potentially serious,” he said.
“Basic geological data works precisely because it levels the playing field,” Azevedo said. The small company and the big one start from the same point.”
