Coal Geology - where to from here?

Coal geologists are under pressure to minimise exploration expenditure, maximise interpretation confidence and produce the results often too soon. This pressure continues to increase as companies are forced to evaluate borderline economic deposits which are usually deeper and more hazardous, such as the Togara North and Togara South projects in Central Queensland. In response to this pressure, coal geologists are having to integrate and utilise every piece of infonnation available including stratigraphic, structural, analytical, geophysical, geotechnical, hydrological and more recently, environmental data. In Australia, coal geologists rely on research to continually improve both data acquisition and data interpretation. Some of these developments are discussed as well as suggestions for improvements in other areas within this paper.