Bougainville Copper
The Bougainville Copper Ltd. (BCL) is an Australian copper, gold and silver mining company. She is the owner of one of the largest open-cast mines in the world, the Pangunamine on the island of Bougainville , which belongs to Papua New Guinea . In addition to the Pangunamine, BCL owns another seven mining licenses on Bougainville, for which there is currently a mining moratorium. During the 1970s and 1980s, BCL's revenues contributed roughly 20% to the funding of the Papua New Guinean state budget.
Shareholder structure
Major shareholders of Bougainville Copper Ltd. are the Rio Tinto Group (53.6%), the state of Papua New Guinea (19.1%) and the European Shareholders of Bougainville Copper (ESBC) with approx. 4%. The remaining 23% of the shares are distributed among small shareholders, a large part of which is based on the island of Bougainville.
Seat of the company and board of directors
Port Moresby ( Papua New Guinea ) and Sydney ( Australia ).
Chairman: Peter R. Taylor
Company Secretary: Paul Coleman
history
After 17 years of activity, Bougainville Copper Ltd. on May 15, 1989 the mining in the Pangunamine stopped. The hasty closure of the mine had become necessary as a result of increasing life-threatening attacks by Francis Ona's Bougainville Revolutionary Army . The conflict over the Panguna mine quickly turned into the provincial bougainville crisis .
In his first statement after the election as president of the autonomous government of Bougainville, John Momis announced the reopening of the Pangunamine on the Australian national radio station Pacific Beat on June 8, 2010.
After the independence referendum in Bougainville in 2019 , various raw material companies expressed an interest in resuming copper mining in Panguna. The value of the raw material reserves is estimated at $ 60 billion. Local politicians would welcome a reopening of the mine, but have great distrust of foreign investors because of their past mistakes such as environmental destruction and political influence.
Individual evidence
- ↑ http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/pacbeat/stories/201006/s2921794.htm
- ↑ Will Bougainville Reopen the Panguna Mine? , Joshua Mcdonald, The Diplomat, November 22, 2019