Co-funding innovative industry geoscience programs to encourage greenfields exploration across the Northern Territory.
The Geophysics and Drilling Collaborations (GDC) program is funded by the Resourcing the Territory initiative and aims to increase the intensity of exploration drilling and geophysics in greenfields areas of the Northern Territory.
The Northern Territory Geological Survey (NTGS) administers the GDC program which awards approximately $1 million in exploration grants annually, to be shared between the successful applicants.
Applicants are encouraged to apply for co-funding for drilling and geophysical acquisition projects where the outcomes are expected to improve geological knowledge and mineralisation targeting within a region, particularly at depth.
Successful applicants for Round 12 (2019-2020) of the GDC Program have been announced.
A call for applications for Round 13 (2020-2021) of the GDC Program will take place in February 2020 through the GrantsNT portal.
The GDC program provides co-funding assistance for half of the eligible direct program costs capped at:
$125,000 for selected exploration diamond drilling programs; and
$100,000 for selected exploration reverse-circulation (RC) drilling and geophysical acquisition programs.
All amounts specified throughout are inclusive of GST.
Projects that seek to use innovative exploration tools or to obtain geological information at depth are encouraged to apply. Applications that use integrated or new technologies that test a clear, targeted geological problem may be considered for smaller prospect-scale programs.
RC drilling will be considered in pure greenfields areas where evidence can be provided that no other drilling has been conducted in the area and a completely untested geological model is being investigated. Applicants are competitively assessed by an expert panel against specific assessment criteria.
Information gained from the successful projects will become open file and released to the public six months after the completion of field work to encourage further exploration.
The Territory Supplier Incentive offers an additional $10,000 of co-funding per project to engage NT enterprises to complete works in the NT. Refer to GDC Guidelines PDF (323.8 KB) for more information.
All reporting requirements are set out in the Schedules of the signed Funding Agreements executed between successful applicants and the Northern Territory Government.
