Bougainville Panguna mine: Indefinite moratorium imposed at troubled site

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The Bougainville Government has imposed an indefinite moratorium on mining at the troubled Panguna site — once the world's biggest open-cut copper mine.

Key points: Community split on whether a licence for the mine's former operator should be renewed

Other developers still showing interest in running mine

Panguna mine was central to a decade of civil war in Bougainville

The moratorium followed a key meeting of landowners from the Panguna site who were asked to vote on whether previous operator Bougainville Copper Limited (BCL) should be allowed to renew its exploration mining licence.

The result was split and Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG) President John Momis said that division could be dangerous.

"If we went ahead now, you could be causing a total explosion of the situation again," Mr Momis told the ABC's Pacific Beat.

A decade of civil war in the 1980s and 90s tore Bougainville apart with an estimated 20,000 people killed.

The Panguna gold and copper mine was at the heart of the violence.

Landowner groups were concerned about the environmental impact while they largely missed out on massive profits.

The civil war forced BCL to shut down its Panguna operations in 1989, but it's been pushing to obtain rights to re-start the controversial mine.

"The people felt BCL no longer deserved the social licence," Mr Momis said.

"As far as the people are concerned and as the Government, we cannot allow foreign companies to be causing division and using a very emotional situation [on] the ground to cause another war."

But BCL said it believed it had strong backing in the community.

"BCL has retained strong levels of support among Panguna landowners," the company said in a statement.

"BCL has previously held community forums that also demonstrated strong majority support."

The move to indefinitely stop any mining is a significant turnaround for Mr Momis and his autonomous Government, which holds a 36.4 per cent share in BCL.

Bougainville is due to hold a referendum on independence next year, and mining has always been touted as key to the small island's economic viability.

Mr Momis said the moratorium was focussed more on closing the door on BCL rather than mining itself, and despite Panguna's history, there are other developers showing interest.

The ABC understands one is a Filipino company while another, confirmed publicly, is a consortium called Central Me'ekamui Exploration Limited, which the ASX-listed RTG Mining is part of.

"RTG has worked with all the major landowner groups in the Panguna group to build a social licence," RTG chairman Michael Carrick said.

"That social licence is a matter of hard work and trust which is built over a period of time."

Topics: mining-environmental-issues, mining-industry, activism-and-lobbying, government-and-politics, bougainville, papua-new-guinea, pacific