A GENERAL VIEW ABOUT THE LEVEL OF STUDY ON THE GEOLOGICAL STRUCTURE AND ORE POTENTIAL OF ALBANIA UP TODAY

Albanian mining history dates back more than two thousand years, which belong to the Illyrian culture (Pirust tribe). The traces found in districts of Koça, Mirdita and Puka are witness of mining and processing of cooper by Illyrians, the Albanian ancestors. Although the traces found for mining and the processing of cooper no written documents until the mid of eighteenth century do exist in our archives. The geologists of the Austro-Hungarian expeditions, at the first quarter of nineteenth century, were the first which mapped out large areas of the territory of Albania and produced high quality maps at 1; 200000 scale on geology and ore minerals of Albania. Later Italian and German expeditions carried out studies on the geology and the ore potential of Albania at different scales and archived important information on geology and ore minerals. During this period except for cooper the chromium and oil and gas were the important targets for evaluation.From 1946-1989 Albania was virtually cut off from the rest of the world by the ultra-Stalinist and xenophobic Enver Hoxha regime. During this period the discovery record of Geological Survey, the state mineral exploration agency was such that by the mid-1980s, Albania was one of the worlds leading producers of chromium and copper. The information on the geology and the ore minerals collected during this period is very large, but because of Hoxha's strictly enforced state security, the release or exchange of any information pertaining to the country's mining industry was forbidden.Since the fall of the regime in 1989 and despite some political turbulence in the late 1990's, Albania has evolved into a stable parliamentary democracy with a modern free market economy and a regulatory environment structured to attract foreign investment. The Albanian Mining Law promulgated in 1994, was specifically designed to encourage foreign investment in the exploration, development and exploitation of the country's mineral resources. The law is already improved with some amendments. Based on this the interest of foreign companies is increased.Although the large information in our archives on geological structure, mineral resources, geophysical and geochemical studies etc. The main objective of Geological Survey of Albania is creation of data base and digitalization of numerous maps at different scales