Gravity Survey Cost in Pakistan: A Complete Pricing Breakdown for 2026

A gravity survey in Pakistan isn't priced off a fixed menu. It's quoted per station, per line-kilometer, or per day in the field — and the final number depends on terrain, station spacing, how remote your site is, and whether you're paying for a proper gravimeter crew or a two-man setup with a borrowed instrument. So before anyone quotes you a lump sum, understand what you're actually buying.

Honestly, that's the part most mine owners get wrong. They ask "how much for a gravity survey" like they're buying a ton of cement. It doesn't work that way.

Let me break down what moves the price, what a fair range looks like, and when you shouldn't commission one at all.

What actually drives gravity survey pricing in Pakistan

Gravity surveys measure tiny differences in the Earth's gravitational field. Dense rock (chromite, massive sulphides, iron) pulls harder. Low-density stuff (salt domes, voids, some sediments) pulls less. That's the whole idea. A gravimeter reads these differences, and a geophysicist turns them into a subsurface picture.

The cost is built from a few things:

• Number of stations. More readings, more detail, more money. A tight 50m grid costs far more than a loose 500m reconnaissance grid.
• Station spacing. Detailed deposit-scale work needs close spacing. Regional scoping can be wide.
• Terrain. Gilgit Baltistan and Balochistan slopes eat time. Flat Punjab ground is quick.
• Access. If your crew needs a 4x4, porters, or a helicopter to reach stations, that's in the price.
• GPS/DGPS elevation control. Gravity data is useless without accurate station elevation. Good elevation control costs more and is non-negotiable.
• Processing and interpretation. The raw numbers mean nothing until a geophysicist applies the corrections (free-air, Bouguer, terrain) and models it.

Here's the thing people forget. The field work is maybe half the cost. The interpretation is where you actually get something you can drill on.

A realistic 2026 cost range (and why I won't give you one exact number)

I'm not going to invent a precise per-station figure and pretend it's a national standard. It isn't. Prices vary by contractor, region, and year, and quoting a fake number helps nobody.

What I can tell you is how the quote is usually structured, so you can read one properly:

To get a real number for your site, ask two or three Pakistani geophysics contractors for a quote on the same scope — same area, same station spacing, same deliverables. If one is dramatically cheaper, ask what they're leaving out. Usually it's the terrain correction or the DGPS elevation control, and that's exactly what you can't afford to skip.

Get it in writing. Area in square kilometers, number of stations, grid spacing, elevation control method, and what the final report includes. Vague quotes hide expensive surprises.

When you should skip the gravity survey for now

Look, a gravity survey is a ground-based geophysical method. It needs a crew physically standing on your license area, reading an instrument at every station. That's slow and that's expensive — especially in the kind of terrain where Pakistan's real mineral wealth sits.

So here's my honest take as someone who owns 15 mines in Gilgit Baltistan: don't pay for a gravity survey until you've narrowed down where on your license to run it.

If you commission a full gravity survey across a large, unexplored block, you're burning money reading hundreds of stations over ground that may hold nothing. That's the mistake I see investors make all the time.

The cheaper, faster first step is satellite-based targeting. At GeoMine AI (yes, the same company people spell as geomines, geo mine, or geomining), we use Sentinel-2, ASTER, SAR, and SRTM DEM data to map alteration zones, structural features, and spectral signatures tied to minerals like gold, copper, chromite, and lithium. That tells you where the interesting ground is — before you spend a rupee on a field crew.

Then you send the gravity crew to the 2 square kilometers that actually matter, not the 200 you hold a license over.

• Use satellite prospectivity mapping first to shortlist targets
• Walk the shortlisted zones, collect rock samples, confirm the geology
• Run gravity (or magnetic) surveys only on the confirmed targets
• Use the gravity data to plan drill holes

That sequence saves most clients more than the geomining report ever costs them. And it's the order a serious exploration program should follow anyway.

What gravity survey tells you that satellites can't

I won't oversell what we do. Satellites see the surface and near-surface expression of geology — alteration, structure, lithology. We can't directly image a dense ore body sitting 300 meters down. A gravity survey can hint at it, because density contrast carries through depth.

So these two methods aren't competitors. They're a sequence.

Satellite work (geomine, geo mine, however you spell it) is wide and cheap and fast. Gravity is narrow and slow and gives you depth. You use the first to decide where to spend money on the second. Running gravity blind is how exploration budgets die.

For chromite in a place like Muslim Bagh, where the target rock is genuinely dense, gravity can be excellent — after you've located the belt. For a disseminated porphyry copper system, gravity is weaker and you'd lean harder on alteration mapping and magnetics.

Match the method to the mineral. That's the part a good consultant earns their fee on.

Your next step

Before you request a single gravity survey quote, get your targeting done. Send us your license coordinates or area boundary at geomines.org and we'll run a satellite prospectivity analysis to show you where the ground is worth surveying. Then you go to the gravity contractors with a tight scope — a small defined area instead of a blank license — and watch how much that drops your quote.

That's the order that keeps your exploration budget pointed at rock that might actually pay.