Forms and fees

The annual regulation fees for exploration licence holders are based on three new spatial zones:

Exploration Regulation Fee Zone 1:

Comprises all areas of the state not within Zone 2 and/or Zone 3. Licence holders will be charged a minimum $565 or $13.10 per square kilometre or part of a square kilometre, whichever is greater.

Exploration Regulation Fee Zone 2:

Comprises all areas of the State within the Geological Survey of South Australia’s Gawler Craton Airborne Survey (GCAS) boundary, but not within Zone 3. Licence holders will be charged a minimum fee of $757 or $17.50 per square kilometre or part of a square kilometre, whichever is greater.

Exploration Regulation Fee Zone 3:

Comprises areas within both a 200 km radius of Olympic Dam deposit and within the Gawler Craton Airborne Survey boundary. Licence holders will be charged a minimum fee of $953 or $22.10 per square kilometre or part of a square kilometre, whichever is greater.

The boundary of the Gawler Craton Airborne Survey and a radius around the Olympic Dam deposit are used to define the new zone structure, reflecting relative prospectivity and new high quaility data now available for the area.

The fee is determined by the zone in which the licence is located. A map has been published on the South Australian Resources Information Gateway (SARIG), showing the boundaries of the three zones and allowing tenement holders to accurately assess their interaction with the new zones.

All current tenement holders/exploration licence holders and tenements currently in the application process are subject to the new fees. From 1 January 2020 the new fee rates will apply at the next anniversary date of the tenement grant.

When a tenement intersects one or more of the three new exploration regulation fee zones, the higher fee will apply to the entire licence.

From 1 January 2020, the practice of not charging the full rental to tenement holders who are also the freeholder owner of the relevant land will cease. This means that where a holder of a Mining Lease, Retention Lease or Miscellaneous Purpose Licence is also the holder of the freehold land, the tenement holder will be invoiced for 100% of rental fees, rather than invoicing for 5% as has occurred in the past, and there will be no entitlement to distribution of rent.

There are new fees for the assessment of operating plans for exploration, quarrying and mining operations. These fees are tiered to reflect scale, complexity, and the associated cost of regulation over the life of the operation.

Operating plan assessment fees have been divided into two groups:

• Initial/New/First PEPR or MOP submissions
• Review(s)/Alteration(s) to approved PEPRs or MOPs