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Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

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them to give proper attention to each operator’s reports, as they are not<br />

inundated with quarterly returns all at once. However, the provision remains<br />

problematic for those companies with a large number of licences, all<br />

commencing on different dates.<br />

The <strong>Minerals</strong> Act regime does not differentiate between onshore and<br />

offshore operators and as such, the latter are inhibited by a lack of flexibility<br />

in the application of the Act. In particular, section 76 does not cater for<br />

modern technology in the area of offshore geophysical surveys. The Ministry<br />

requires that all raw data collected during geophysical surveys be submitted<br />

to them. Most of the operators offshore use contractors based outside<br />

Namibia and the data is normally taken to Cape Town and processed there<br />

using very specialised proprietary computer systems. The raw data usually<br />

amount to large volumes of Gigabytes on tapes and CDs. The licence holder is<br />

then presented with the contractor’s interpretation of the data.<br />

Since the Ministry insists that raw data must be submitted to it, the<br />

licence holder has to ensure that its contractor returns all raw data to<br />

Namibia, resulting in costly administrative processes to retrieve the raw data.<br />

The raw data is of very little use to the Ministry, as they do not have the<br />

technical capacity (computer systems) to properly interpret such data at this<br />

point in time.<br />

4. Storage and Utilization of Data Submitted to the Ministry of Mines and<br />

Energy (Mme)<br />

The Geological Survey and the Mines Directorates of the Ministry are<br />

the custodians of all data submitted to the Ministry. The latter, as indicated<br />

earlier, use the data for monitoring performance. During the currency of the<br />

licence, the information and data submitted are kept confidential in closed<br />

files. This information is kept confidential until such time as the license area<br />

is relinquished or abandoned. Upon relinquishment, the information and<br />

data is transferred to an open file and is used by the Geological Survey for<br />

investment promotion.<br />

Any interested third party can have access to the open files, free of<br />

charge. The rationale used by Government in allowing free access to data on<br />

INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY 770

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