Pangunamine

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The Pangunamine in central Bougainville , Papua New Guinea , was the largest open pit copper mine in the world. Until 1989, copper , gold and silver were mainly mined. It was made by the Australian mining company Bougainville Copper Ltd. (BCL), a subsidiary of the Rio Tinto Group , based in Port Moresby and Sydney .

history

The Pangunamine was rushed and uncontrolled closed on May 15, 1989 due to terrorist attacks by the Francis Ona-led Bougainville Revolutionary Army (BRA). The BRA emerged from a group of landowners in the Panguna area. These new landowners community of Panguna ( english New Panguna Landowners Association ) had the previous landowners corruption and the mining company ecological overexploitation accused.

At the beginning of 2011 the opencast mine was still closed. Access was controlled by the "Real Me'ekamui", a splinter group of the former BRA, which declared the mining area a no-go area .

The six groups of landowners who have agreed on this plan want to take part in negotiations to revive Panguna. The government of Papua New Guinea may want to transfer its 19 percent to the autonomous government in Bougainville and the landowners.

After the independence referendum in Bougainville in 2019 , various raw material companies expressed renewed 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.

Environmental damage

Copper ore processing (typically: concentration through flotation ) caused considerable environmental damage through toxic processing sludge. A total of 600 million tons of heavy metal-containing and thus toxic residues were discharged into the Kawerong River, so that 30  km of the river and the entire estuary delta are contaminated over an area of ​​1,800  hectares .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The drama of Bougainville. The Panguna mine has been closed for political reasons for 21 years. That could change. FAZ , January 6, 2011, accessed January 15, 2014 .
  2. ↑ Will Bougainville Reopen the Panguna Mine? , Joshua Mcdonald, The Diplomat, November 22, 2019
  3. ↑ incorrectly in the original: metallic
  4. ↑ Thomas Oertel: Investigation and evaluation of geogenic and anthropogenic soil heavy metal accumulations as the basis of a geo-ecological environmental analysis in the Eisleben-Hettstedt area. Dissertation Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Chapter 2: Environmental changes in mining regions . Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, 2003. [1] (PDF; 252 kB)

Coordinates: 6 ° 18 ′ 57.5 ″  S , 155 ° 29 ′ 40.2 ″  E