Gold mines in Papua New Guinea

Compiled by FRANK SENGE KOLMA
SINCE the gold rush days of the 1800s, mining the precious metal has been a steady business.
It is so prevalent, alluvial mining occurs in every one of the 22 provinces.
“PNG is a land of gold floating on a sea of oil” goes the cliché and, by the evidence of the projects in operation, the saying is no exaggeration.
In the interest of the ongoing debate on a gold project, we here present snapshots of the major gold mines, past and present.
The first mine in PNG was Bougainville Copper. It commenced commercial production in 1972 and, by 1988, had produced concentrate containing 3.0 million tonnes of copper, 299 tonnes of gold and 763 tonnes of silver. The production had a value of K4.9 billion which represented 45 per cent of the country’s exports over that period. Contributions to the Government in the form of dividends, taxes and royalties totalled K997 million or 17 per cent of internally-generated PNG Government revenue.
BCL was closed in 1989. Moves are currently afoot by the Autonomous Bougainville Government to revive the mine.
NEXT big player was Ok Tedi.
Operated initially by BHP Billiton, Ok Tedi mine in the Star Mountains of Western entered production in 1984.
The mine exports copper as a concentrate with contained gold and silver. Between 1984 and 2019, Ok Tedi produced 4.93 million tonnes of copper, 15.1 million ounces of gold and 34.2 million ounces of silver.
In 2013, the PNG Parliament passed laws to take over full ownership of Ok Tedi.
The laws also quashed a 12-year-old law giving BHP Billiton immunity from prosecution for environmental damage stemming from the gold and copper mine’s construction in the 1990s.
THEN came Porgera in 1990.
It began as an underground operation and, by 2002, the mine was utilising both open pit and underground mining methods.
Over time, Porgera produced more than 20 million ounces of gold at an average 400,000 ounces per year contributing about 10 per cent of PNG’s total annual exports.
The mine was closed in 2020 after the Marape Government refused to review its SML. This year, first gold pour occurred and it is expected to resume full production later this year.
LIHIR gold mine entered operation in May 1997 on Aniolam island in Namatanai, New Ireland.
The mine produced 687koz of gold as of 30 June 2022. Lihir employs about 4,500 residential and fly-in-fly-out workers.
In October 2023, US miner Newmont bought out Newcrest. Prior to NML was Lihir Gold Limited.
IN the mountains above the historic gold rush town of Wau is the Hidden Valley gold-silver project which began construction in mid-2006 and entered production by August 2009, in the headwaters of the Watut River.
The mine is owned and operated by the Morobe Mining Joint Venture (MMJV), which also owns the Wafi-Golpu project, comprising the Wafi gold deposit and the Golpu copper-gold deposit.
The MMJV is owned in equal shares by Newmont and Harmony Gold from South Africa.
Tonnage milled at Hidden Valley for 2023 was at 3.8 million tonnes, 19 per cent higher than the previous year (2022: 3.2 million tonnes). As a result, gold production increased to 4,370kg (140 498oz) from 3,707kg (119 182oz) in 2022.
K92 Mining is located in Eastern Highlands. Since acquiring the project from Barrick Gold in 2014 and restarting in late-2016, K92 has transformed Kainantu into a rapidly expanding entity.
In January, K92 announced a record quarterly production of 39,101 ounces gold equivalent and annual production of 117,607 ounces.