Monday AM: Official Opening and 2008 British Columbia, Alaska & Yukon Exploration Reviews In addition to the Opening Ceremonies, this session will provide British Columbia, Alaska, and Yukon exploration reviews. Monday PM: Sustainability Session As geologists and explorationists we do not necessarily have the stakeholder engagement experience nor the luxury of having in- house community relations professionals to guide field staff. Given that we are the first-point-of-contact with communities and landowners, the relationships that are established at the exploration stage are a critical, yet controllable variable in developing a successful project. Through practical examples ranging from international best practices to local experiences, this session is intended to provide participants with an understanding of the steps and tools to foster and sustain engagement with stakeholders and interest groups during the early stages of the mining cycle. The take away for the session will be an outline of the do’s and don’ts and specific user friendly tools of stakeholder engagement and community relations to apply to early stage exploration and mineral project development. The Monday afternoon technical session will consist of one overview presentation and two facilitated panel presentations and discussions focusing on the following stages of the mining cycle: 1) Early Stage Exploration and 2) Advanced Exploration.
Monday PM: Sustainability Session As geologists and explorationists we do not necessarily have the stakeholder engagement experience nor the luxury of having in- house community relations professionals to guide field staff. Given that we are the first-point-of-contact with communities and landowners, the relationships that are established at the exploration stage are a critical, yet controllable variable in developing a successful project. Through practical examples ranging from international best practices to local experiences, this session is intended to provide participants with an understanding of the steps and tools to foster and sustain engagement with stakeholders and interest groups during the early stages of the mining cycle. The take away for the session will be an outline of the do’s and don’ts and specific user friendly tools of stakeholder engagement and community relations to apply to early stage exploration and mineral project development. The Monday afternoon technical session will consist of one overview presentation and two facilitated panel presentations and discussions focusing on the following stages of the mining cycle: 1) Early Stage Exploration and 2) Advanced Exploration.
Tuesday AM: Public Geoscience – New Ideas, New Partnerships
Public geoscience programs provide an important foundation for developing new concepts and knowledge of geology and mineral potential. This work, by dedicated and experienced professionals, frequently encourages new mineral exploration activity and helps in the successful targeting of minerals related investments. Geoscientists from the British Columbia Geological Survey, the Geological Survey of Canada, Geoscience BC and the Yukon Geological Survey will highlight successes and new ideas from field and research programs throughout the Canadian Cordilleran during the previous year. Talks will highlight new ideas generated from current Cordilleran bedrock and surficial mapping initiatives and new geophysical and geochemical datasets, and will present new insights into the economic geology and mineral deposits of the Canadian Cordillera. An abundance of new public geoscience data has been generated through partnership programs, talks will include exploration successes related to geoscience provided through these partnerships.
Tuesday PM: British Columbia Exploration Highlights British Columbia has seen a significant increase in exploration spending over the last few years with over $415 million spent on exploration in 2007 (up from a mere $25 million in 1999). And BC’s share of exploration spending in Canada has increased from 5.7% in 2001 to over 16% in 2007. This increased exploration investment has resulted in new discoveries, and renewed exploration and development activity on a number of known occurrences and deposits. Overviews of a number of BC exploration programs and advanced development projects will be profiled in this session. A particular focus will be placed on the exploration and development of copper, gold and molybdenum porphyry deposits.
Wednesday AM: Canadian Exploration Highlights The commodity boom continued into 2008 where record high prices were achieved in a number of mineral commodities including iron ore, potash, copper, gold, metallurgical and thermal coal. Canada continues to shine as a resource rich country where increased exploration activity has led to exciting new discoveries and the development of new mining projects in the major export commodities. However, higher capital costs and energy costs, means that the investment community is looking for quality projects to advance through to production. This session looks at some of the quality projects that are exciting explorers and the investment community across Canada. Wednesday PM: International Exploration Successes The increased flow of venture capital into the mineral sector and burgeoning balance sheets for producers of all mineral commodities and metals have provided an unprecedented level of funding for exploration. This has resulted in exploration geologists stepping out of their comfort zone, both in terms of drilling higher risk targets that they would not have dared to test in the earlier part of this decade, and to venture into countries once regarded as off-limits. The increased intensity of drilling, and the greater risk taking, has generated numerous exciting exploration successes in 2007. Presentations in this session will showcase some of the exploration projects, teams, and approaches that generated exciting drill results last year. They will also demonstrate that the exploration sector abroad is alive and well.
Thursday AM: What is New in Exploration? New exploration techniques and sources of metals are constantly emerging as knowledge and technology of exploration and mineral processing emerge. This session examines emerging concepts in ore genesis and how these might be applied for future resources. Planned topics are diverse, and include conventional and unconventional deposits, exploration technology, and geometallurgy.
Thursday PM: Commodity Review: New demands, Old Products Investor enthusiasm for commodities has continued over the past year, driven by strong prices and increased M&A activity. Debate still abounds about where we are in the commodity cycle. Is there a cataclysmic end in sight or will China and India continue to underpin demand while supply is constrained by the long lead times for new mine development?
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