UPI
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- The future of deep-sea mineral mining off the coast of Papua New Guinea faces uncertainty.
PORT MORESBY, Papua New Guinea, Dec. 19 (UPI) -- The future of deep-sea mineral mining off the coast of Papua New Guinea faces uncertainty.
Canadian company Nautilus Minerals' Solwara 1
Project in the Bismarck Sea off PNG, embroiled in disputes over funding as well
as questions over environmental and social effects, has come to a halt after
two years of development, Inter Press Service reports.
Nautilus Minerals has referred to Solwara 1 as the
world's first commercial seafloor copper-gold project and launch of the
deep-water seafloor resource production industry, while "maintaining an
environmentally and socially responsible approach."
Last month, Nautilus announced it was terminating
construction of its $407 million seafloor production system.
Nautilus said the PNG government has a contractual
obligation to pay approximately $75 million associated with a 30 percent
investment in the project.
"The state disputes this interpretation and
Nautilus cannot continue to (exclusively) fund the build of the Solwara 1
equipment," Nautilus told IPS.
The PNG government, in issuing a license to Nautilus
in 2011 to mine Solwara 1, had agreed to take a 30 percent stake in the project
and co-finance it. But in June 2012 the PNG government carried out a legal
process to determine if it was obligated to contribute to funding Solwara 1.
"We were paying for it all ourselves and it was
becoming too costly," Michael Johnston, Nautilus' chief executive officer
told SciDev.Net. "We were at an expensive stage of the build. We were
spending US$3 million or US$4 million a week. For a company of our size, we
couldn't continue to pay for that ourselves."
PNG's previous government had preferred to take
equity in most resource projects, says Colin Filer, an associate professor at
the Australian National University. But the new government which came to power
in August 2011 -- after Nautilus was issued a license for the project -- has
taken a more strategic approach, Filer said.
Meanwhile, environmentalists have called for more
careful consideration of deep-sea mining.
"Another 10 to 15 years of marine research
really needs to be done so that we better understand the deep marine ecosystem
before we embark on deep-sea mining," Chalapan Kaluwin, professor of
environmental science at the University of Papua New Guinea, told IPS.
"We don't understand enough about the potential
impacts of this deep-sea mining project on marine biodiversity, fisheries and
coral reefs, as well as people and communities," Kaluwin said.
Nautilus says it holds more than 193,051 square
miles of "highly prospective exploration acreage" in the western
Pacific including the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu and Tonga, as well as in
international waters in the eastern Pacific.
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