Program 2 - Innovative Drilling
Government Co-funded Exploration Drilling
Applications for 2012–2013 grants open soon
Applications for grants for drilling to be undertaken in the 2012-2013 financial year will be open between 23 February 2012 and 5pm WST, 30 March 2012. Over $5 million will be made available for co-funding of projects in this round.A category providing co-funding of up to $30,000 is available for genuine prospectors.
Co-funding in all categories of applications will remain at up to 50% of direct drilling costs which will be capped at $150,000 for general, multi-hole applications, $200,000 for a single hole application and $30,000 for a prospector application. Co-funding will be available for exploration drilling only. Resource definition drilling will not be eligible for co-funding.
The grant process is competitive with marks (detailed in the application forms) being assigned to the various criteria. Applications will be ranked according to the total marks gained and funding allocated till it is exhausted.
Applications close at 5pm WST 30 March 2012. The application forms will be disabled at this time.
Online Application process
Online application forms will be deployed on this website between 23 February and 5pm WST, 30 March 2012 for lodgment of applications.
Applicants will be guided through questions which will address administrative as well as technical criteria. Bearing in mind varying character limits in individual fields in the online form, it is suggested that proponents prepare their application using word processing software and then copy and paste it into the appropriate field in the online form. Please ensure that the character limit is not exceeded as the online form will issue an error message and will not accept the text into the field.
When the system is live between 23 February and 30 March, applications may be “parked” and amended prior to submission.
Applicants can use the print facility at the bottom of the form before submission of the application to ensure they have a record of their application.
Because of DMP firewall and security restrictions, zip files will not be accepted and the total size of files added to the application must not exceed 10Mb.
There are two online application forms available, one for General applications and one for Prospectors applications.
Until the online application system is launched on 23 February, these non-interactive forms for GENERAL GRANTS and PROSPECTOR GRANTS, which ask the same questions as the live systems, are available to assist applicants in preparing their applications.
Please note: these forms are NOT LIVE and an online application must be lodged between 23 February and 30 March 2012.
Please ensure that you use the correct form for your application. Using the incorrect form may mean your application will be invalid.
Prospectors may apply using either the prospector or general application to compete for funding with the associated conditions in the respective category.
Prospector Grants
A pool of up to 5% of the total funding for 2012 will be available for grants to bona fide prospectors. The maximum co-funding in this category will be $30,000 per project.
Conditions of prospector grants are:
o Available only to genuine prospectors who hold a single or small holding of granted tenements
o No public company ownership
o Only 1 application per tenement
o 25% of the co-funding must be spent on geochemical analysis of samples from the drilling if non-coring drilling techniques are used.
Handicapping of multiple applications
Where an applicant has submitted multiple applications and one application is successful in attaining co-funding, all subsequent applications from the same source will be handicapped by 5 scoring points.
This policy decision was taken to reduce the possibility of any one applicant with a significant remote tenement holding dominating the co-funding program.
One application per tenement
Only one application per mineral tenement / combined reporting group, geothermal exploration permit or petroleum exploration permit or drilling reserve will be accepted from applicants per application round.
Advice for applicants
Multi-staged projects where second or subsequent stages are conditional on results of previous stages will be considered for funding for guaranteed stages only.
Proposals which show that concepts have been ground–truthed have a higher chance of success. This means that proposals on tenements that are still in the application stage (not yet granted) are less likely to be successful.
As the Co-funded Drilling Program supports exploration drilling in underexplored areas, proposals which cover projects where previous effective drilling has been undertaken or which could be considered to be resource definition drilling will not be considered for co-funding.
