Minerals Report - International Seabed Authority

an open file, is that a new company/investor interested in an area that has
been looked at previously need not re-invent the wheel. Government’s
interest is to promote the discovery of a deposit in the shortest possible time.
Most companies, however, feel that in today’s competitive environment, new
entrants should not benefit, free of charge, from data collected by others and
should preferably be left to their own devices when prospecting over the same
area.
The Ministry requires that information be submitted in an SEG-Y
format. However, the bulk of the information remains uncollated and stored
at the Geological Survey. The Geological Survey is understaffed and at the
moment, is not in a position to collate/interpret the data into a useful format.
Previously, before the advent of technology caught up with Namibia, the data
used to be stored in the raw format as received from the license holders and
was not compiled or collated in a user friendly format. We understand,
however, that the Ministry has put together a project as part of 2 nd National
Development Plan (NDPII) to build its capacity in this regard.
Summary and Conclusions
The Minerals Act provisions related to submission of data and
information to the regulatory authority are comprehensive. The data
requirement exists to enable the authority to monitor the operations and
thereby discourage land locking. Prior to the commencement of the Act, land
locking was one of the factors discouraging new entrants as speculators
controlled most of the prospective areas and sold the areas at prohibitively
high prices. The Ministry is severely understaffed and in need of support in
building its capacity to effectively monitor the industry. Collation of raw data
thus presents a tremendous challenge to the regulatory authority. The
collection of raw data and storage in that format is almost useless to any one
except the gatherer thereof. If the regulatory authority is not in a position to
make effective use of the data, it should not be necessary to require the licence
holder to submit information in the raw format, as this imposes a burden that
is discouraging to prospective foreign investors without any offsetting benefit.
The objective should rather be to facilitate the submission of readily
accessible information by the licence holder, which the authority can use for
INTERNATIONAL SEABED AUTHORITY 771