The drone story continues to advance, with the main service providers being smaller companies who may have had a focus on ground magnetics to start with, or are simply caught up in the “romance”of carrying out aerial surveys and appreciate the low-cost-entry of drone systems. While it seems clear that drone systems will not be a“disruptive” technology that will put the main survey groups out of business, it is equally clear that profiting from a drone system could be challenging. Presumably a shake-out of this technology space will happen over the next two to three years, and will result in a few groups dominating various regional markets. Developments in airborne gravity appear modest, with the landscape looking similar to what it did when last reviewed two years ago. Governments appear to be the major users of gravity, along with the oil sector. SQUID magnetometer technology is emerging into the market after a long gestation period. Spectrem Air is offering this as a service, as is DIAS Airborne. The technology is termed HeliFTMG (Heli- Full-Tensor Magnetic Gradiometer). This development could draw more attention to the world of aeromagnetics, which has been fairly quiet for some time. Finally, something new in the commercial space is a report by a group Visiongain entitled: The Airborne Geophysical Services Market Forecast 2019–2029. An attention grabber from this assessment is the line:“The airborne geophysical services market will see increasing revenues over the next decade and is forecasted to be $4.3bn in 2019 due to surging demand for natural resources”. The report sells for £2,999.00. See https://www.visiongain. com/report/the-airborne-geophysical- services-market-forecast-2019-2029/ Ground developments The major focus of ground services is likely to be the continued roll-out of 3D IP services and equipment. As shown in Table 2, there are five groups who advertise they provide 3D IP services using their own proprietary equipment, and two groups who offer the equipment for an independent service provider to contract 3D IP services. One group, Newmont, keeps their internal system for proprietary commercial work. Processing of 3D IP data remains challenging but some papers are starting to appear that provide some guidance on how to tackle the often very large data sets (Devriese, Ellis, and Witherly 2019). One emerging technology that is starting to produce some interesting results is passive seismic. While not generally able to produce data of the same quality or depth as active source systems, passive seismic, because to its lower cost and small environmental footprint, could possibly fill a niche that is challenging for other methods. Figure 2 shows a depth slice from a passive seismic trial survey that was carried out at a Ni-PGE property in 2018 (SISPROBE 2018). If you have a story you’d like included in the next ET&D, please contact Pat Killeen at pkilleen@xplornet.ca. References Devriese, G. R. D., R. Ellis, and K. Witherly. 2019. Sensitivity-based data reduction of large 3D DC/IP surveys (accepted for presentation at AEGC 2019 Conference, Perth Australia, September 2019. Schodde, R. 2018. Where, what, when and who?Highlighting key global exploration opportunities, trends and a perspective on the cycle of mineral exploration. International Mining and Resource Conference (IMARC) 31st October 2018. Melbourne http:// minexconsulting.com/wp-content/ uploads/2019/04/R-Schodde- IMARC-Presentation-31-Oct-2018. pdf Accessed 28 05 2019 SISPROBE. 2018. Marathon Passive Seismic Project; SISPROBE Commercial report February 2018. Table 2.  3D IP services and equipment on offer. System Mode-Service/Equipment Company Base Orion Service Quantec Geoscience Canada DIAS Service DIAS Canada Volterra Service SJ Geophysics Canada 3D E-SCAN Service Crone Canada MIMDAS Service GRS Australia NEWDAS Service/proprietary Newmont USA Elrec Pro-Rx/TIPIX orVIP-Tx Equipment IRIS Instruments France Allegro Equipment Instrument GDD Canada Figure 2.  Depth slice derived from passive seismic trial. Source SISPROBE (2018). Ken Witherly Condor Consulting, Inc. ken@condorconsult.com News Industry 15 PREVIEW JUNE 2019