Blog by Queensland Exploration Council chair Kim Wainwright

Drive through the Bowen Basin today and coal is impossible to miss. Trucks, trains and mines everywhere.

What you won’t see much of anymore is a drill rig out looking for the next generation of deposits.

The numbers back it up. Australian coal exploration expenditure has fallen sharply, from $79.3 million in the March 2024 quarter to just $43.2 million in March 2026.

That’s not a small correction – it’s a warning about what’s coming through the pipeline.

The strange part is the demand story hasn’t disappeared.

Metallurgical coal remains essential to conventional steelmaking, and Australia’s met coal exports are forecast to keep growing by around 1.1 per cent a year through to 2030-31, with prices expected to stay broadly stable in real terms.

Thermal is a different story. LNG supply disruptions have pushed up coal demand and prices in parts of Asia this year, but those pressures are expected to ease as gas supply normalises.

Producers know it, which is why nobody’s rushing to commit billions to brand new projects off the back of a short-term spike. Fair enough; however, exploration was never about what we need today. It’s about what we need next.

Related: Whitehaven highlights coal supply shortfalls on horizon

New capital for coal is becoming harder to attract. Some of this comes down to policy, regulatory and investment uncertainty shaping where companies choose to spend scarce exploration dollars.

Either way, the result is simple: fewer dollars drilling means fewer opportunities to discover, define and develop tomorrow’s mines.

Unsurprisingly, global competition isn’t standing still.

Australia once supplied around 80-90 per cent of India’s metallurgical coal imports. Today our share is closer to half, with Russia, the US and Mozambique gaining ground.

In China, Mongolia and Russia now dominate imported coking coal, accounting for roughly four-fifths of imports in 2025.

We shouldn’t pretend declining Australian exploration caused those shifts on its own. However, it should tell us something important.

Markets move, competitors respond, and market share is never guaranteed to the country that stops looking for more of it.

None of this means turning away from critical and strategic minerals, quite the opposite. Australia can and should do both.

Exploration is a long game. The mines supplying customers in fifteen or twenty years start with decisions being made today. Queensland built its resources industry by finding what was next. If we stop looking, someone else won’t.