Transcript
MICHAEL JOHNSTON: We ran extensive awareness campaigns with various government departments, so the department of conservation, the MRA and the fisheries association so the people in the area closest to the project, like I say we have run various campaigns and programmes to keep them informed. The process of getting mining licences and environmental licences is quite different to in New Zealand - you have to have public hearings from the very start, that's before you're even granted exploration. And then every two years once you're granted that exploration licence you have another public hearing,. So our first exploration licence was granted in 1997. That was granted after public hearings - they call it a Wardens Hearing and it's held in a local area. The warden records any issues that may be raised by local people and those may, or may not result in conditions being applied to the exploration licence initially. You actually get given your licence after public consultation. The warden can make a decision not to grant a licence, even an exploration licence if he deems the concerns raised by local people are valid and the project should not go ahead. I know NGOs around the countries like Australia and New Zealand jump up and down about free and prior informed consent. Well you actually have a system in PNG where it's actually obtained. When you come to get granted a mining licence, after you've submitted your EIS you have public hearings for the mining licence and the environmental permit. So for our mining permit back in 2008 we held public hearings in New Ireland, we also had them in Kokopo and Rabaul, which is the adjacent province and we also had them in Port Moresby and interest parties were able to come to those hearings and have their say and what was said - any issues were recorded and where appropriate were attached as conditions to our licences. So the process is quite robust contrary to what people who will try and mislead others would say.
In terms of minimising the effects to the local community and the environment, the very first thing we did before we started our EIS was have a workshop in Port Moresby where we invited all of the relevant government departments, we invited NGOs, and we invited scientists. We invited the WWF and Greenpeace - Greenpeace said we weren't on their radar back in 2007. And once again this is part of the process in PNG. What you do is you have a hearing - a workshop if you like we did. It went for 2 or 3 days, where you gather all the ideas and potential interested parties and all of those concerns are captured - we had a independent facilitator and you come up with what they call and inception report. So you write a report before you come up before you do your EIS where you define, with the government and other interested stake holders what needs to be addressed. This is something that they do routinely in PNG.
TIM GLASGOW: You've given the local communities and people who will possible be affected a lot of chance, in your mind, to come up with any concerns they have.
MJ: At the workshop that we held, that's when we effectively designed the system that we set out to build. One of the key issues that was raised by the parties is that they didn't want us mixing the water column. 1500 metres is quite different to in the surface- in the photic zone. In PNG in the photic zone the water temperature is between 28 and 32 degrees. In the deep ocean at 1500 metres, it doesn't matter if you're at the North Pole or the Equator it's 2.5 degrees Celsius and pitch black. The concern that was raised constantly was if you take water from great depths in the ocean and bring it up and do whatever you're planning to do on the vessel then discharge it into the water back in the shallows you could run the risk of creating large environmental plumes - algal plumes and the like. So we designed our system taking that on board and have a system where we take the water up on to the vessel, separate the ore-bearing material. It then goes through a de-watering plant which is basically a series of screens, cyclones and eventually filters to remove the ore material and we filter it to 8 microns and then the filtered water is then returned in pipes - so we have two smaller pipes on the side of the large central pipe and they are return order which is returned back to 1500 metres under pressure and that's what drives the pump itself.
TG: It's quite new technology isn't it? I mean this is going to be the first project of its kind if it happens?
MJ: No, everybody says that but the technology we are using is largely all in existence. The riser is straight out of the oil and gas industry, the pump is made by GE - made once again for the oil and gas industry. And 1500m in the oil and gas industry is just considered mundane these days. Deep water is anything over about 2000-25000 m. The machines that we are deploying are basically a modification of oil and gas of an oil and gas trenching machine
TG: Obviously it has been a really long process. When do you anticipate the mine being set up?
MJ: The first ore is schedule is to be produced in the first quarter of 2019. So that's the budgeted first ore date and we're tracking to that schedule at the moment so I don't see any reason why it won't achieve it.
