Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

starts, the operation could take place on a more tentative basis and confidence
could be built up without taking massive financial risks.
Mr. Malnic described waste products as the cause of 90 percent of
environmental disasters around mining operations on land. He said that at
Bougainville, the tailings were a huge issue. By offering a mining investment
that generated a much reduced volume of tailings, Mr. Malnic said that
seafloor massive sulphides deposits mining would have an advantage over
terrestrial mining.
With a slide, Mr. Malnic showed a picture of environmental problems
involving effluents from a copper and gold mine in west Irian formerly called
Irian Jaya in Indonesia. The picture showed tailings from the mine emptying
into a nearby river. While noting that the situation could have been worse,
Mr. Malnic said that the discovery of this practice drew a lot of attention to
the operator’s environmental protection procedures, including generating
legal issues. Therefore, in Nautilus’ efforts to promote the mining of its
seafloor massive sulphides deposit, Mr. Malnic said that the possible
environmental impacts from this operation are offset against the kind of
damage that would be created from the recovery of the same metals in a
terrestrial environment.
Mr. Malnic recalled an earlier statement that he had made that highgrade
ore means a low proportion of waste products. He said that terrestrial
mines, the alternative source of the metals that are found in seafloor massive
sulphides produce increasingly high proportions of waste as grades of ore
decline. He also said that the greatest amount of liability faced by operators
of these mines is related to tailings, especially acid mine drainage. He said
that at active seafloor massive sulphides deposits hundreds of tonnes of
mineralisation is likely to regenerate every year in the wake of mining. He
said that as long as the heat and fluid emissions at these sites continue to
provide an oasis in this environment, life would return to it. He pointed out
that the key environmental factors are the heat and hydrogen sulphide (H2S)
emissions as opposed to the presence of the large volume of sulphides that is
ready to be fossilized. With the example of coal, Mr. Malnic said that such
deposits were created through chilling the carbon compounds because the hot
waters that were part of their formation have ceased to exist. Mr. Malnic
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