How to Evaluate a Mining Lease in Pakistan Using Satellite Data Before You Sign Anything

Last March, a guy from Lahore called me about a chromite lease in Muslim Bagh. Asking price: 4.2 crore. He wanted my opinion in 48 hours.

We pulled the Sentinel-2 stack, ran an ASTER band ratio for ultramafic signatures, and checked the SRTM slope. The "active" mine he was shown on WhatsApp videos? That pit was on the neighboring lease. His actual polygon was 800 meters east, on a stretch that showed zero alteration and a slope angle nobody would ever haul trucks up.

He didn't sign. That's the whole reason I'm writing this.

What most buyers get wrong before they even look at satellite data

Here's the thing about mining leases in Pakistan — the paperwork almost never matches the ground. I've seen leases in Gilgit Baltistan where the KML coordinates were off by 1.3 km. I've seen Balochistan chromite blocks where two different sellers claimed the same polygon. And I've personally walked onto one of my own 15 leases in GB and realized the corner post was 340 meters inside a neighbor's boundary (that one cost me six months and a lot of chai).

So before we even talk about mineralogy, the first job of satellite data is boring: confirm the lease actually exists where the seller says it does.

Pull the official polygon from the provincial mining department (Punjab MMDD, Balochistan Department of Mines, GB Mineral Wing, or KP Directorate). Overlay it on a recent Sentinel-2 image. Then check three things:

• Is there existing activity inside the polygon, or 500m away pretending to be inside?
• Are the access roads real, or someone else's road you can't legally use?
• Does the terrain even allow mining (slope, river, protected area)?

I've killed deals on step one alone. Multiple times.

The actual satellite workflow I use for mining lease due diligence

Once the polygon checks out, this is the sequence. I'm not going to pretend it's magic — it isn't. It's just cheaper than sending a team to Chagai for two weeks.

Step 1: Sentinel-2 for surface mineralogy and vegetation stress. Sentinel-2 gives you 10-meter resolution across 13 bands, free, updated every 5 days. For a copper or gold target, I'm looking at band ratios that highlight iron oxides (B4/B2) and clay alteration (B11/B12). For lithium pegmatites, it's a different story — you're hunting bright, un-vegetated outcrops with specific spectral behavior in the SWIR.

Step 2: ASTER for hydrothermal alteration. ASTER has SWIR bands Sentinel doesn't. For porphyry copper systems in Chagai or gold in Waziristan, ASTER band ratios (like 4/6 for argillic, 5/8 for phyllic) will tell you whether the alteration halo the seller is bragging about actually shows up from orbit. If it doesn't show up at 30m resolution, be skeptical.

Step 3: SAR (Sentinel-1) for structure and ground movement. Faults host mineralization. SAR sees through clouds and picks up lineaments that optical imagery misses under haze — critical for monsoon-affected areas like Azad Kashmir emerald belts. SAR interferometry can also flag active landslides on the lease. You don't want to buy a mine that's sliding into a valley.

Step 4: SRTM DEM for economics, not just geology. Slope, aspect, drainage, haul distance to the nearest road. A perfect orebody on a 55-degree cliff face isn't an orebody — it's a photograph. I use DEM to estimate cut-and-fill volumes and access costs before I ever discuss price.

At geomines we bundle all four into a single report because honestly, running them separately in QGIS takes 2-3 days per lease and most buyers don't have that time. But you can absolutely do it yourself if you know the workflows. The free data is right there on Copernicus and USGS Earth Explorer.

Red flags that satellite data catches and sellers hope you miss

A few things I now check on every single lease, because I got burned or almost got burned on each one:

Historical imagery from 2015-2020. If someone already mined the good part and is now selling you the depleted block, Landsat archives will show it. I once looked at a marble lease near Buner where 60% of the resource had been extracted between 2017 and 2021. The seller's photos were all from 2016.

Encroachment on protected zones. Parts of GB, Deosai, and several Balochistan blocks overlap with national parks or defense-restricted areas. The lease document won't tell you. The satellite will.

Water bodies and seasonal rivers. A lease that looks dry in the November site visit can be under 2 meters of water in July. Multi-season Sentinel-2 solves this in ten minutes.

Neighbor activity. If three adjacent leases are inactive despite similar geology, that tells you something. Maybe the mineralization pinches out. Maybe the local logistics are broken. Either way — ask why.

What satellite data won't tell you

I need to be honest here because I've seen too many investors treat a remote sensing report as a green light. It isn't.

Satellite data tells you where to look and where not to waste money. It cannot tell you grade. It cannot replace a drill hole. It cannot confirm tonnage. What breeze geo mineral analysis and similar workflows do well is filter — take 20 leases you're considering, kill 15 of them in a week, and focus your expensive fieldwork on the 5 that survived.

That filtering is where the money is saved. A geological field crew in Balochistan runs 8-12 lakh per week. Killing bad leases from your laptop before you send that crew? That's the ROI.

So if a seller is pushing you to sign fast, or won't share the exact KML, or gets nervous when you mention satellite verification — you already have your answer. Walk away, or at minimum, spend the three days it takes to run the imagery.

What's the lease you're looking at right now, and have you even seen its polygon on a current satellite image yet?