Photo: Jerry Garry. Credit: Post Courier
The Mineral Resources Authority will make all of the mining industry's operating live data available online in the coming months.
According to Mineral Resources Authority executive director Jerry Garry, the mining amendment Act of 1992 mandates mining corporations to supply the state with information and data.
Mr Garry said: “This was at a time when we were not so advanced and so in 2020 we were trying to specifically address that by saying that we want digital live information.”
He said that all of the country's operators have no visibility, that they are manufacturing gold and exporting it without anyone understanding what they are doing.
“To address this, we embarked on tapping into the heart of the mineral processing system of every mine that is from the crusher right down to the tails and end product, and if they have advanced process systems, we want to tap into it so that we can replicate this information in MRA.”
“This means that on a second by second basis or minute by minute basis, whatever is produced in that processing plant is also in MRA just to manage the perception, and also we want to go down the path of reconciliation to reconcile the figures given by the company independently by the state so that we can all agree that we have been producing this much,” he said.
Mr Garry stated that they have spoken to all tenement holders in the nation and that they have all voluntarily invited MRA engineers to visit their mine sites and that the feasibility study has been completed satisfactorily.
He stated that they would begin actual work next year to collect all live data on all active mines, as well as data from the mineral processing plant.
“This is a breakthrough, and we have done it. We piloted this now with Ok Tedi,” he said.
All the other mining companies will be online in the next year.
Reference: Post-Courier (22 April 2022). “Industry To Have Mining Data Available Live”.
