Porgera gold mine
| Porgera gold mine | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| General information about the mine | |||
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| Mining technology | Opencast mining , underground mining | ||
| Information about the mining company | |||
| Operating company | Barrick Gold | ||
| Start of operation | 1990 | ||
| Funded raw materials | |||
| Degradation of | gold | ||
| Geographical location | |||
| Coordinates | 5 ° 24 ′ 0 ″ S , 143 ° 4 ′ 0 ″ E | ||
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| Independent state | Independent State of Papua New Guinea | ||
| Country | Papua New Guinea | ||
The Porgera Gold Mine is a gold and silver mine in the Enga Province in Papua New Guinea . The mine is located approximately 130 kilometers west of the town of Mount Hagen and 600 kilometers northwest of Port Moresby . The mine’s production accounts for 12 percent of Papua New Guinea’s exports.
The mine is operated by Barrick Gold and is one of the ten largest gold mines in the world. Barrick actively operates 26 gold mines worldwide in 2012; it is the largest gold mining company in the world.
The Porgera gold mine has come into public discussion because of attacks on the indigenous population by the approximately 450 private security forces of the mining company and because of environmental pollution .
location
The gold and silver mining takes place above the Porgera Valley in a rainforest on a high plateau at 2200 to 2700 meters. The plateau lies in a zone where the Indo-Australian and Pacific plates collide, which frequently cause earthquakes . The highest mountain peaks in this area, more than 4500 meters above sea level, are separated by deep valleys and are drained by fast flowing rivers. There is heavy rainfall averaging around 3700 mm annually. This leads to erosion on the steep slopes of the Porgera Valley with frequent landslides and rockfalls .
history
Early years from 1938
In 1938, prospectors invaded the area, far from civilization, where the Stone Age people of the Ipili live, and discovered gold. In the minds of these indigenous people, Mount Waruwari , which is around 2800 meters high, was created by a snake spirit called "Kupiana" who left gold for the benefit of the people there in exchange for pigs and other utensils. Since different values apply in societies that operate barter trade, the natives there assume that they will only go to "heaven" when all the gold on the mountain has been mined and they have received gifts such as pearls and pigs. In the 1950s and 60s gold mining began , which the Ipili operated in their own claims or gave to colonialists in return for gifts. In the 1980s, 75% of the indigenous male population in this area was involved in gold mining.
Changes due to mining from 1998
After 1994, the open pit began with large-scale rock blasting, a fleet of 700 dump trucks and shovel excavators. The huge spoil heaps were sprayed with liquid sodium cyanide and produced toxic water in depots.
In 1998 the Canadian mining company Placer Dome submitted a proposal for mining and reached an agreement with 2000 Ipili on the mining rights. The Ipili assumed that they still owned the land and that the company only operated a mine there. In addition, there was a split in the population into those with and those without land. Placer Dome also promised that the mine would be built around their settlements.
Consequences for people and the environment
Mining resulted in 10,000 people living around a large mine that is not only operated underground , but also in open pit mining.
The fact that the area cannot be completely fenced off means that children get onto the dangerous area and natives who enter the area, either because they believe it to be their property or because they look for gold there, are deterred by a security team of 450 people. Up to 2006, there were 16 deaths from rockfalls and landslides associated with mining. 14 deaths occurred in conflicts with the security forces, while Placer Dome said 8 cases. Other sources speak of 21 killed in 2005. Human Rights Watch documented several attacks on human rights and sexual violence against women by private security forces employed by Barrick between 2008 and 2010. In 2010, Barrick fired six security guards over such incidents. An incident broke out in 2009 when residents on the edge of the mine were evicted by police and their homes burned down, which prompted Amnesty International to call on the Papua New Guinea government to investigate the matter.
However, the mine also brought electricity to an area far from civilization, schools were set up, hospitals and community facilities were set up. But there are also indications that a situation arose around the mine that is compared to the gold rush of the 1800s in California, with ethnic conflicts, the use of violence, prostitution and gambling addiction.
The dump truck fleet transports gold-bearing rock to the processing plant, where the gold-bearing rock is first processed by weight separation and grinding processes, placed in four autoclaves under high pressure and temperatures of almost 200 ° C, in order to be extracted in floating cells and using the cyanide leaching process.
Sodium cyanide is poisonous; it is sprayed in liquid form on the gold-bearing heaps near human settlements in order to loosen the gold from the rock. In the process of cyanide leaching , gold is chemically bound in highly toxic seepage water.
After filtration and precipitation, brown sludge is produced, from which raw gold is extracted after washing and drying by reduction . In this process, hydrogen cyanide and cyanides are produced , which can escape into the environment despite reuse of the lye. All substances produced in this process are poisonous. Although these are easily broken down and broken down in nature, the resulting large spoil heaps and cyanide dust can be distributed in an uncontrolled manner by wind and water, toxins can get into the environment and cause serious ecological damage. In addition, there is toxic arsenic in pyrite minerals that can be released.
The mine has a daily extraction capacity of 210,000 tons of rock, which corresponds to 76 million tons per year. The storage of the material that is created after leaching must be viewed particularly critically. A depot is located directly in a river, where the no longer usable rock is disposed of; such disposal is prohibited in other countries. Another problem is the discharge into a river that runs past the mine and carries millions of tons of contaminated alluvial material. It is assumed that the problematic materials to be disposed of, with a volume of 5 to 6 million tons, are transported over the Strickland River to the Gulf of Papua about 1000 kilometers away . Nevertheless, the mine received certification under the International Cyanide Management Code . Investigations in Lake Murray , the largest lake in New Guinea, also found high levels of highly toxic mercury used in illegal gold mining.
In January 2009, the Norwegian Ministry of Finance announced that the Norwegian state pension fund would divest investments in Barrick Gold because it is causing serious damage to the environment in the operation of the Porgera gold mine.
geology
The deposit is spatially and temporally connected to an intrusion from the Miocene with gabbroid and porphyry rocks , into which basaltic rocks penetrated. Magmatism and mineralization occurred in the early Pliocene when the northeast Australasian Plate and an island arc collided. This material and the volcanic vents formed the Porgera intrusion .
Mineralization occurred along the boundaries of the Porgera intrusion. Gold-containing pyrite , sphalerite and galena were formed in the process ; gold- and arsenic- containing pyrite, gold and electrum . The gold is mainly found in the pyrite in sub-microscopic form.
It is estimated that the gold-bearing rock reserves are 51.5 million tons with a gold content of 0.23 oz.tr. / t.
Ownership and Employment
The Porgera gold mine is the second largest mine in Papua New Guinea. It was acquired by Barrick Gold from Placer Dome in 2006 . Emperor Gold Mine held a minority stake of 20 percent which was sold to Barrick in April 2007. 5 percent is owned by Mineral Resources Enga , which is owned by Enga Provincial Government , the National Government of Papua New Guinea and the Porgera landowners.
In 2006, around 2500 people were employed in the mine, 93 percent of them of indigenous origin. Personnel, provided they do not live at the mine, are flown in to the mine by aircraft on alternating shifts. All equipment and materials for the mine must be transported by road from the port of Lae , 680 kilometers away .
In August 1994, 11 workers were killed by an explosion of explosives that was located on the mine premises.
On March 3, 2012, five people were killed as illegal prospectors on the mine site when a routine blast took place. Three survived who were detained.
production
| year | gold | silver | year | gold | silver | |
| 1990 | 265,890 | 224.227 | 2000 | 910.434 | 110.276 | |
| 1991 | 1,216,101 | 593,312 | 2001 | 760.622 | 113.043 | |
| 1992 | 1,485,077 | 139,619 | 2002 | 641.811 | 126,772 | |
| 1993 | 1,156,670 | 129,860 | 2003 | 851.920 | 164,691 | |
| 1994 | 1,032,768 | 133,890 | 2004 | 1,019,746 | 185.336 | |
| 1995 | 848.870 | 90,770 | 2005 | 867.925 | 157.740 | |
| 1996 | 854.822 | 106,535 | 2006 | 523.358 | 104,238 | |
| 1997 | 712,693 | 100,479 | 2007 | 513.177 | 79,561 | |
| 1998 | 726.806 | 91,614 | 2008 | 632.603 | 90,610 | |
| 1999 | 754.754 | 100,694 | 2009 | 572,595 | 94,764 | |
| 2010 | 527.399 | 96,878 |
Web links
- Barrick Gold website
- Len Murray, Mark Thompson, Malcolm Lane: Obstacles to On-Land Mine Tailings Disposal in Papua New Guinea (PDF; 329 kB). Klohn Crippen Berger Ltd., Lane Associates Ltd.
- Gold's Costly Dividend. Human Rights Impacts of Papua New Guinea's Porgera Gold Mine . Human Rights Watch, February 2011
Individual evidence
- ↑ barrick.com : Porgera Gold Mine , in English, accessed May 7, 2012
- ↑ a b c d canada.com ( Memento of the original from November 10, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : A deadly clash of cultures , accessed May 7, 2012
- ↑ minesandcommunities.org : Porgera landowners call for mine closure , March 30, 2005, in English, accessed May 7, 2012
- ↑ hrw.org : Gold's Costly Dividend , p. 1, from February 1, 2011, in English, accessed on May 7, 2012
- ↑ amnesty.org.en : Papua New Guinea: Undermining Rights: Forced evictions and police brutality around the Porgera gold mine, Papua New Guinea , in English, accessed on May 6, 2012
- ↑ regenwald.org : 12 questions and answers on the topic of gold , accessed on April 30, 2012
- ^ To the Ministry of Finance. Recommendation of August 14, 2008 . (PDF; 241 kB) Regjeringen.no , p. 6, accessed on May 7, 2012 (English)
- ↑ rimmrights.org (PDF; 3.8 MB): Barrick's Dirty Secret. Mining in Papua New Guinea , in English, accessed May 7, 2012
- ^ A b To the Ministry of Finance. Recommendation of August 14, 2008 . (PDF; 241 kB) Regjeringen.no , p. 9, accessed on May 7, 2012 (English)
- ↑ canadianminingjournal.com ( Memento of the original from July 21, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : Cyanide Management: Porgera, Plutonic gold mines certified , in English, accessed May 7, 2012
- ^ To the Ministry of Finance. Recommendation of August 14, 2008 . (PDF; 241 kB) Regjeringen.no , p. 25, accessed on May 7, 2012 (English)
- ↑ econgeol.geoscienceworld.org : Jeremy P. Richards, Robert Kerrich: The Porgera gold mine, Papua New Guinea; magmatic hydrothermal to epithermal evolution of an alkalic-type precious metal deposit , in English, accessed May 7, 2012
- ↑ mining-technology.com : Porgera Gold Mine, Papua New Guinea , in English, accessed on May 7, 2012
- ↑ newstro.com ( Memento of the original from July 15, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. : Blast kills five trespassers at PNG gold mine , in English, accessed May 7, 2012
- ↑ Information Booklet 2010 (English) ( Memento of the original from July 10, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
