Latest update September 15th, 2026 10:20 AM
Guyana goes high-tech to uncover mineral wealth
…as Govt. launches $4B mineral mapping project
The aircraft to be used in the aerial mapping project
Kaieteur News – The Ministry of Natural Resources and the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission on Wednesday launched a new project to map out Guyana’s mineral wealth.
Launched at the Ogle Airport, the project aims to modernise mineral exploration in Guyana and strengthen the country’s mineral database for better management and investment decisions.
The programme involves gathering, processing and integrating geological survey data, both new and old, across Guyana. Its goal is to support responsible, sustainable mining, aligning with Guyana’s Low Carbon Development Strategy (LCDS).
Minister of Natural Resources, Vickram Bharrat, emphasised that the project will balance economic development with environmental protection, which is crucial for Guyana’s future.
“This project ties in perfectly into our Low Carbon Development Strategy, which speaks to sustainable mining, logging, and it is also a roadmap to balancing economic development with environmental sustainability,” the minister said.
He noted that advancing this initiative is seen as critical to the country’s future. Minister Bharrat said that the project is vital for a small, sparsely populated country where many regions depend on mining.
The government is investing $4 billion in this initiative.
The project hopes to pinpoint mineral resources more accurately, close gaps in existing data, and attract future investment
The officials posing with the mapping aircraft.
Guyana’s Mineral Advancement and Prospecting Strategy (GMAPS) identified priority exploration areas, like the Takutu Mountains and Coupang. The new data will help Guyana track mineral reserves, improve investor trust, and guide decisions to benefit communities nationwide.
Meanwhile, Commissioner of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) Newell Dennison told the media that the acquisition of this type of data over the next few months by the aircraft marks an important step as it will be merged with both historical and legacy data which are fairly recent and not so recent.
“…this can be about gold, but this is also about so much more. It’s about an organised infantry of our mineral resources. It is about the geological and the geochemistry and structure relationships of our massive mineralised terrains, the influence on the locations, their accessibility and availability for exploitation, which in turn, contributes to how we plan to invest, and how we banner investments at the various scales of operations,” he told reporters.
Emily King the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Global Ventures told the media in her address that the mineral endowment that Guyana has is a source of opportunity for the nation and it is the responsibility for all of them to work in and around the sector.
“High quality geo-science is the foundation for doing things the right way, guiding smarter exploration, supporting better environmental planning and enabling investments that deliver long term value for the people of Guyana, airborne geophysics, as Jared explained, may sound really technical, but the idea is very simple. We’re flying systematic precisely space lines over large areas to measure subtle variations in the Earth’s magnetic and radiometric fields,” she explained.
King went on to say that the measurements help them to see beneath the forest canopy and soils to better understand the geology and where the rocks change, structures trend and there are just the right conditions for mineralisation. When this is integrated with mapping along with geochemistry and drilling as well as local knowledge, this data really helps to transform uncertainty into insight.
“Good data shortens timelines. It reduces unnecessary environmental disturbances and improves outcomes. It helps the government set evidence-based policies and regulate efficiently, and helps companies target their work more responsibly, and most importantly, helps communities’ benefit from mines of all sizes that are well planned from the start because they have the best data available. I would like to give huge credit to the ministry and GGMC, because from the very beginning, we’ve emphasised three principles that guide this program in the collaboration of putting this together amongst those all those parties, quality and transparency, the survey is being flown and quality control,” she added.
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