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In
some States of Australia, management of company-funded
airborne surveys has been largely left to the company
which initially commissioned the survey. These company
custodians have frequently sought to preserve a competitive
advantage by retaining the data as confidential material.
MAGNet has been established to encourage companies to
contribute their data to a centralised Database. The
Managers of the Database will be responsible for managing
the data and will endeavour to sell the data on a commercial
basis to other interested exploration companies, with
royalties payable to the contributing company on each
sale. The scheme has particular benefits for companies
with data holdings in Western Australia. Under the current
Airborne Survey Reporting Policy of the WA Department
of Minerals and Energy, data submitted to the Department
as part of a company's statutory reporting obligations
will not be released to open file while they are available
for unrestricted commercial sale through an agent such
as MAGNet.
This ensures that the commercial value of the data is
maintained. If companies elect not to take this path,
the data they have submitted to the Department may be
released to open file at the end of the confidentiality
period, eliminating any commercial value that they may
have.
ESSENTIAL
ELEMENTS
- Ownership
of data contributed to MAGNet resides with the contributing
company.
- Contribution
of data to MAGNet does not preclude the contributor
from making copies of its data available to other
companies as part of JV agreements.
- MAGNet
will only accept data that the contributor can legally
contribute.
- Data
contributed will be verified, indexed, and redundant
copies archived on CDROM. Data is transported at the
contributor's risk and MAGNet advises contributors
not to send unique copies ("only-copies")
of survey data.
- MAGNet
will promote the database holdings for sale through
its own web-site, exploration conferences and its
own promotional literature. Geoimage and Pitt Research
will support this activity.
- Contributors
will receive quarterly reports on sales and status
of their contributed surveys.
- Data
contributed to MAGNet will be publicly available,
and may be used without restriction by a purchaser
for its own use. It may not be re-sold.
- A
benchmark price ranging upwards from $1.35 per line
km has been set, with the matching royalty to the
contributor set at $1.00 per line km. This price structure
may be varied by consultation with the contributor.
Sales of airborne EM surveys are by negotiation. As
a guide, the sale price of airborne data is designed
to be approximately 1/3rd of the current acquisition
price.
- Value-added
products can be prepared but will only be available
to purchasers of the line-data and only on surveys
or parts of surveys for which the contributor has
been paid a royalty.
CONTRACT
AGREEMENT
A
contract agreement covering conditions of data contribution,
confidentiality, sales and royalties is required to
be signed by contributors. A copy can be obtained from
any Geoimage or Pitt Research office.
MAJOR
BENEFITS
For
contributor companies this represents an opportunity
to:
- recoup
part or all of the costs of their airborne surveying
programme,
-
outsource the task of managing their archive of airborne
geophysical data,
-
leave non-core activities such as geophysical data
sales to an agent.
Purchasers
have the benefit of improved access to existing data
from a centralised, current and consistent database.
Re-processing
services are available for older aeromagnetic surveys,
which will generally make a substantial improvement
to their utility and will enable them to be used alongside
new high-resolution surveys. Purchasers also have prompt
access to a range of high-quality value-added data products
such as hard-copy maps and geo-registered images to
assist their exploration programme.
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