According to Industrial Info Resources, over 2013 and into the first quarter of 2014, 18% of projects have fallen out globally, with the Oceania region tracking the highest worldwide at a 31% fallout rate.

It saw about $US30 billion ($A32.3 billion) of projects being cancelled or put on hold.

“We’re seeing a lot of project fallout occurring in the mining companies, both majors and minors,” Industrial Info Resources vice president for global analytics Shaheen Chohan told delegates today at the Mining & Engineering Western Australia conference in Perth.

“Many of the projects which we’re tracking at the moment are experiencing some degree of uncertainty and how the pipeline progresses will really be driven in part by the demand fundamentals out there for certain commodity classes.”

About $150 billion worth of active projects are due to kick off in the next 20 months.

Already for Australia alone in 2014, some $20 billion worth of projects have been put on hold or cancelled, including $14.5 billion in grassroots development already being shelved by the first quarter.

In WA already this year, some $11 billion worth of projects have been put on hold or cancelled that were due to kick off in 2014 or next year.

About $7.8 billion in grassroots development has been parked that was due to start up in the next two years.

Globally, 167 mines are due for start-up this year, while Australia accounts for 25% of new mines potentially being operational this year.

“We see some really big and quite hefty numbers but the reality of it is there is an inevitability which is fallout,” Chohan said.

“Under the current market conditions, certain amounts of uncertainty are still prevailing, a certain degree of price volatility is happening as well as there being a lot of over-capacity still residing in the marketplace.”

Chohan noted that the biggest victims of that had been iron ore and coal mining.

“On one hand we’re seeing large amounts of new development, expansions, additions, certainly some grassroots development – but on the other we’re actually seeing the market chip away,” he said.

“The asset owners are really trying to balance a need of anticipating where demand is going to be coming from and what that demand profile looks like and weighing up within their very own portfolios where they want to place their bets.

“They’re still investing in certain commodity classes and mine types, while still extracting and taking projects off the table.”