I am looking for some marketing information.

I want to know how many diamond drilling rigs are in active operation
globally. Diamond drilling rigs are used primarily in mining
exploration,
mine development, and mine operation. I am NOT talking about drilling
rigs for oil&gas exploration.

By active, I mean drill rigs that are busy drilling holes.

Simple searches on "diamond drill rigs", etc. return information from
individual mining companies and their drilling programs - this is
probably not the way to go about the search. There are a lot of mining
companies and not all mining companies report activity in this way.

Information for active oil&gas rigs is available at
http://www.bakerhughes.com/investor/rig/rig_int.htm - I am looking for
equivalent information for the mining sector.

At a minimum, I need a total active count estimate (with explanation of how
the estimate was obtained), but geographical distribution information
(such as is available for oil&gas at the above-mentioned URL) would be
a bonus (i.e., so many rigs in Australia, so many in South America,
etc.). I would also need to know is any geographical areas are
excluded from the estimate (e.g., former USSR).

Data must be for 2004 or later.

Since this information is required for a business proposal, I will
need to have the reference(s) for the information so that it can be
quoted in the document I am preparing.

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Request for Question Clarification by vercingatorix-ga on 30 Nov 2006 18:50 PST

I suspect this is not what you want, but I can get you regional
breakdowns by carat and by value for the world diamond-production
market. I'm still looking for an accurate count of mines, but it may
not be available.

If detailed information on carat and value would be useful, respond to
this post. If not, I'll keep looking.

V