52 / 90
49
7
Tier 1
i
Tier
2 & 3
53
Economical
deposits
60
Non-
economical
Diamond-
iferous
deposits
1,000
Non-
diamond-
iferous
5,800
Kimberlite
pipes
sampled
6,800
FIG. 31:
NUMBER OF DIAMOND DEPOSITS
SUFFICIENTLY RICH TOWARRANT DEVELOPMENT
Source: De Beers
i
Over US$20 billion reserves. 7 ‘Tier 1’ finds are: Jwaneng,
Orapa, Udachny, Venetia, Catoca, Premier (now Cullinan), Mir
While the appetite for exploration remains high
(2013 spending was 2.5 times that of 2001), overall
spending has still not reached the record levels of
2007, when companies spent almost US$1 billion on
diamond exploration (see Fig. 30). The trend here
differs from the mining sector in general, where 2013
expenditure, although lower than in 2012, remains
well above 2007/2008 levels. De Beers and ALROSA
represented almost 75 per cent of exploration
spending in 2013
33
.
LOOKING AHEAD
LARGE-SCALE PROFITABLE DISCOVERIES WILL MOST LIKELY
REMAIN ELUSIVE
The large diamond mining companies are expected
to continue to invest in exploration, but the
probability of a major profitable new diamond
discovery will remain relatively low. This is simply
because finding economic diamond deposits is
difficult: even spending billions of US dollars
in exploration carries no guarantee of actually
discovering economically viable deposits.
Over the last 140 years, almost 7,000 kimberlite pipes
have been sampled by geologists, about 1,000 of
which have been diamondiferous. However, only
about 60 of these are sufficiently rich in diamond to
be economically viable. Just seven mines (Jwaneng
and Orapa in Botswana, Udachny and Mir in Russia,
Premier (now Cullinan) and Venetia in South Africa
and Catoca in Angola) are what miners refer to as
‘Tier 1 deposits’ with more than US$20 billion worth
of reserves (see Fig. 31).
Overall, the global mining industry is facing
increasing pressure on capital expenditure, and in
recent years many large-scale development projects
have been placed on hold.
This also puts pressure on exploration spending.
Across the mining sector, exploration expenditure
fell by almost a third to about US$14 billion in 2013
34
.
The geographical focus of diamond exploration will
be likely to continue to be in those areas where the
prospectivity potential is highest and where the least
exploration has been conducted to date, such as
Central Africa, Russia and Canada. In addition, South
Africa and Zimbabwe are countries with potential:
although they have a long tradition of diamond
mining, high-resolution exploration technology has
not yet been applied systematically here.