Papua New Guinea's ocean floor gets ready for gold-copper mining

The mining process is expected to start up soon from the seabed of Papua New Guinea as the Government had approved the first deep sea level mining for commercial purposes.

Nautilus Minerals, one among the well-known Canadian companies, had received 20 years licence agreement for starting up the deep-sea mining project from the Papua New Guinea Government and the project is named as Solwara 1. There had been intense oppositions and contradictions towards this mining operation but finally Nautilus Minerals are about to start the extraction processes. Nautilus Minerals are knowingly famous for the Massive Sulphide developing business. While Nautilus successfully handles the onshore business of Copper, Zinc, Gold and Silver, Solwara 1 is yet another big and challenging one. The mining operation will be originating from underneath Bismarck sea. The operation coordinator, Helen Rosenbaum , tells "But Nautilus has found a place so far away from people that they can get away with any impacts. They've picked an underfunded government without the regulation of developed countries that will have no way of monitoring this properly."

Andrew Moran

Corporate zombies at open-pit mining protest.

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The mining operation has to go through various intermediate processes like water leveling, filtering out sediments, Water pumping to appropriate partitioned sections and so on. On the other side, few of the environmentalists have opened up objections to the project concerning the fact yet-to-be discovered sea organisms might get destroyed owing to the deep-sea mining. An activist from Papua New Guinea, Wenceslaus Magun, had expressed "We are really concerned because the sea is the source of our spirituality and sustenance.The company has not explained to us the risks of deep sea mining. They haven't responded to my requests for information." But Steve Rogers, Nautilus CEO, assures that no impact will happen to the environment. Steve had said, "This isn't in a fishing area and won't impact coral. Even if it were in a fishing area, it won't affect that upper area where the fish are.", as reported by the Guardian. Anyway, Solwara 1 project is being looked upon with much expectations among worldwide people, particularly other mining firms.