Photo: Ok Tedi Mine
According to the Chamber of Mines and Petroleum, the resources industry contributes 39% to the nation's gross domestic product (GDP).
As current mines near their end of life, such Ok Tedi, which will stop operating by 2030, vice president Philip Samar said exploration was essential for the industry's survival.
“Exploration is a high-risk business with a failure rate of 99 per cent,” he said.
“For every 1,000 exploration prospects, only 50 will move to advanced exploration followed by only two that will move to feasibility studies and only one will become a mine.
“Ramu took 50 years from discovery to development while Lihir, Porgera and Ok Tedi took just under 20 years plus a very significant amount of investment and expertise, so we need to act now to revive the exploration sector or the next 50 years will be bleak with no new mines for development.”
According to data from the Mineral Resources Authority (MRA), exploration licences were issued for the whole nation in 2011 alone.
With only a few exploration licences active in 2022, all of these operations have already ceased.
Samar stated that the chamber was dedicated to working in collaboration with the government to solve the crucial factors required to promote exploration and mining, such as:
- PROSPECTIVITY;
- CLEAR legal authority;
- SECURITY of tenure and transferability of exploration and mining rights;
- EXCLUSIVITY of exploration and mining rights;
- NON-DISCRIMINATION between local and foreign nationals;
- PREFERENTIAL right to convert an exploration licence to mining licence;
- REASONABLE royalty rates;
- TRANSPARENT licensing procedures;
- CLEAR and uniform policy on government ownership; and,
- PROTECTION against speculation.
Reference: The National (2 September 2022). “Exploration crucial for mining”.
