Source: Deep Sea Mining Campaign
Author: Natalie Lowrey
Nijmegen, Netherlands and Brisbane, Australia, 25 October 2017
In a last ditch bid to rescue its experimental deep sea mining project ”Solwara 1”, the two largest shareholders of Nautilus Minerals Inc, Russian mining company Metalloinvest and Omani conglomerate MB Holdings, have formed a new company whose sole job is to secure funding for the project by October 31st.
It is expected that the first call will be on existing financiers of Nautilus, Metalloinvest and MB Holdings. These include HSBC (United Kingdom), ING Group (Netherlands), BNP Paribas and Société Générale (France); ABN Amro (Netherlands), and Unicredit (Italy).
The Deep Sea Mining Campaign (DSMC) and BankTrack are calling on the banks to publicly distance themselves from this financially and ecologically risky project.
Canada-based Nautilus Minerals has staked its reputation on the Solwara 1 project, which if successful would become the world’s first deep sea mining operation. However the wannabe deep sea miner has so far failed to inspire investors with confidence. Nautilus’ financing strategy for Solwara 1 has been spectacularly unsuccessful. Commercial operation has been delayed year after year since it received its licence to mine the floor of Papua New Guinea’s Bismarck sea in 2011.
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