Assessment Reports and Property Reports

Mineral exploration assessment reports are technical reports submitted to the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources by holders of mineral exploration licences. Assessment reports describe the results of mineral exploration conducted on the ground held under the mineral exploration licences. Assessment reports are held confidential for two years from their date of submission to the Department. If the exploration licence expires before the two-year confidentiality period expires, the assessment report will then be publicly released. After the confidentiality period has expired, assessment reports are publicly released in hard copy for consultation and use in the NR&R Library in Halifax and in the NR&R Core Library in Stellarton, and PDF versions of the reports are posted on the Mineral Resources Branch (MRB) website. Assessment reports are publicly released on a monthly basis on the first working day of each month throughout the year.

Mining property reports are technical reports submitted to the Nova Scotia Department of Natural Resources that pertain to actively mined properties or mineral properties that are about to undergo mining or are being considered for mining. Commonly, they are reports submitted under a Mining Lease and usually describe the annual mining plan of the property. However, property reports can be somewhat varied, and may also consist of environmental assessment/impact studies, feasibility studies, geotechnical studies, or reclamation studies. Property reports are held confidential until the property is relinquished by the property licensee. After the confidentiality period has expired, the property reports are publicly released in hard copy for consultation and use in the NR&R Library in Halifax and PDF versions of the reports are posted on the MRB website.

Beginning in January 2007, full text scans in PDF format of newly released assessment reports and property reports were made available for public viewing and download on the Mineral Resources Branch website. The PDF versions are derived by scanning the entire original hard copy of each report. The scanning of assessment reports released prior to 2007 (7102 reports) is an ongoing project and will continue until all of the Mineral Resources Branch assessment reports have been scanned. The PDF versions of these assessment reports will be made available on the Branch website on an ongoing basis as the reports get scanned. All the publicly available property reports have been scanned and their PDF versions are also available on the Branch website.

Assessment reports and property reports publicly released up to the end of 2006 are also available on microfiche in the NR&R Library in Halifax, in the NR&R Core Library in Stellarton, and through the Regional Geologists in their offices in Lunenberg, Truro and Coxheath. Microfiche copies and hard copies (printed from microfilm) of these assessment reports and property reports can be purchased directly from Precision Document Management, 174 Trider Crescent, Burnside Industrial Park, Halifax, Nova Scotia, B3B 1R6 (Phone: 902-455-5451; Fax: 902-442-4145; Contact: Juliana MacEwen jmmacewen@precisiondms.com ). Microfilming of assessment reports and property reports ceased at the beginning of 2007 when the scanning of these reports was initiated.

All our assessment reports and property reports, along with all Mineral Resources Branch geoscience publications, maps, open files, contribution series and university theses on the geoscience of Nova Scotia have been geologically indexed and entered into NovaScan, the geoscience publications and maps database for Nova Scotia. NovaScan is updated monthly as newly released assessment reports, property reports and MRB geoscience information becomes available. Any NovaScan search which includes assessment reports or property reports in the results will contain an active link from the assessment report or property report record directly to the full text PDF of that particular report (so long as that particular assessment report has been scanned and the PDF version of it has been posted to the Branch website).

Search NovaScan for assessment reports or property reports … Click Here.