BREE’s cupboard is dangerously bare

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The now dead Bureau of Resource and Energy Economics (BREE) has released its last update on the pipeline of major Australian resource projects and reading between the lines the future is bleak. Here’s the summary:

This release of the Resources and Energy Major Projects Report provides an update on resource and energy project developments over the period May 2014 to October 2014. It comes at a time when investment in Australia’s resource and energy sector has been declining in response to a general decline in commodity prices.

The environment of lower prices has encouraged resources companies to focus on improving productivity and reducing costs of production rather than investing in additional capacity. Exploration expenditure has been a main area that companies have targeted in their cost cutting programs. As a result, total exploration expenditure, including both minerals and petroleum exploration, decreased 12 per cent to $6.9 billion in 2013-14.

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About the author
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal. He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.