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Nautilus Minerals CEO Mike Johnston Talks Underwater Mining
VIDEO AT BOTTOM OF PAGE >>>>>
http://copperinvestingnews.com/23505-nautilus-minerals-mike-johnston-underwater-mining-papua-new-guinea.html
Disclosure ........Currently do not own any stock of NUSMF
PDAC 2015: Nautilus on track to seafloor production, but funding challenge remains
Part of this article is what concerns me (below) and that filing last week says more dilution might be possible.I think the stock for some strange reason has gotten ahead of itself again by jumping into the .40s so early on.Too much wait and see stuffium for me...but we'll see what develops.I could just be mad at myself for not getting in when it dropped to the low .30s briefly ....nice 20% gain for those that did.At least I'm honest about it !!
"Of course, one big barrier remains: capital. Nautilus has spent about US$180 million to date, but will need significantly more money – potentially around $200 million. That is almost as much as the company’s current market capitalization.
Raising that amount through equity, if it can be done, would be extremely dilutive. But Mr. Johnston maintained the company has a number of other options. Royalty and streaming companies were interested in Solwara 1 before the government dispute, and he thinks they might get interested again now that it is settled. The state of Papua New Guinea has an option to boost its stake in the project, and the company is looking at potential joint ventures with mining companies, service providers, or offshore oil and gas firms.
There is still skepticism out there, but Mr. Johnston said the PDAC crowd is getting genuinely excited about his story.
“It’s a lot more exciting than going to Caterpillar and buying some trucks,” he joked."
http://business.financialpost.com/2015/03/03/pdac-2015-nautilus-on-track-to-seafloor-production-but-funding-challenge-remains/
If you are looking for a good place to buy NUSMF, in my opinion we are due for a Fibonacci correction back to perhaps the .35/.36 area or possibly higher now. Here's the chart. You can make your own decision on an entry point ... http://scharts.co/1EfGqEd
I'm a swing trader. I buy when I get a signal to buy. I sell when I get a signal to sell. So, I honestly can answer your question until it's time to bail out.
Not exactly an article about NUS only, but very interesting. Confirms reports I had read previously.
Seabed mining story
Awe, Muffin. You having a bad day? LOL WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
See OCLG? FRZT? WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE AGAIN.
I <3 Haters. They're adorable.
How long do you recommend holding?
I've just completed an analysis of the Weekly Price Chart for NUSMF and in my opinion, this stock looks like a good speculative buy for risk takers NOW and in the not too distant future, it could prove to be a strong buy for more conservative investors. You can see the chart here: http://scharts.co/RycjCf I intend to buy this somewhere in the $0.30 to $0.35 range following a further analysis of the daily and hourly price charts. More conservative investors should look to buy a close above the 84-day moving average following a weekly trendline break to the upside.
"$10m shipbuilding deposit misdirected after cyber attack An investigation has been launched, Nautilus Minerals says."
insert-text-here
by Kip Keen | 2 February 2015 18:21
"A $10 million deposit on a ship-building contract as part of an underwater mining project was stolen as part of a cyber attack, Nautilus Minerals, a Canadian-listed junior said Monday.
Nautilus said it “paid the deposit to a bank account which it believed to be MAC’s (the shipbuilder), but which MAC has advised was not its account.”
The misdirected payment was made following “a cyber attack by an unknown third party.”
Nautilus said it has since turned the issue over to authorities that an investigation has started.
Meantime, it has agreed with MAC to pay $10 million of an $18 million payment that was to be paid once the vessel was officially chartered.
“The original deposit of $10 million was lost, so as an act of good faith we’ve prepaid $10 million of the $18 million charter guarantee,” John Elias, Natilus’ North American spokesperson said in an email Monday.
As for payment of the deposit to MAC, Nautilus said the two parties would address the matter after the police investigation.
Elias said he did not have more details to share on how the cyber attack unfolded.
Nautilus Minerals is developing a seafloor mining project off the coast of Papua New Guinea."
Wow I don't know what to say... talk about bad luck lol... regardless this will be news and will bring lots of eyes, however... Lol how do you have trust in a company that misplaces $10m? But seriously, like it's the type of thing one might double check... I feel like I'm living inside a western union commercial lol
Have to agree. This threw me off when I read it today.
Cyber attack FTW!? This is some Hollywood chit right here
Nautilus Minerals completes assembly of the Collecting Machine
"This is an exciting time for the Company as we continue with the build of the seafloor production equipment while work has also started toward the build of our production support vessel. We look forward to finalizing the assembly of the third and final SPT, the Auxiliary Cutter.""
LOOONG.
Vancouver Resource Investment Conference January 18, 2015
Nautilus presents @ 1:30
This should help awareness
I'm still well up donkey
yikes...... gonna need a miracle here, thought you were smart not a noob lol
I want it to keep dropping! Cheap food for the bear
Well whether it is manipulation or something else, I am taking advantage and loading.
I can't understand why we are down? more than 130$ million in the bank? and down????
well I'm sure this is pure manipulation
BOOKVALUE= 0.70$ and we are at 0,35$ the same if the company were to be liquidated or BK??
say me if this is not manipulation???
Looks like there will be some opps between here and new year
I'd love to buy more at half of my current cost average.
Buy the year end tax selling now and watch what happens early 2015 IMO
incredible we have cash in hand and future and we are down? and the worse many are buys but we are down? pure manipulation here
I will wait to add more but the market is REALLY manipulated....
Deep sea mining is the future in Papua New Guinea
(Good article but I think it will be earlier than 2018)
"The world’s first deep-sea mine will open in 2018 in the waters off Papua New Guinea, with purpose-built machinery to extract precious metals from the sea bed"
In the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea (PNG), at a project known as Solwara 1, Nautilus Minerals has been granted the first lease to mine the deep sea for metals.
With scarcity in resources around the world and countries needing more and more metals to sustain everyday life, mining the ocean floor is being looked at as a way to meet this demand.
Nautilus holds approximately 450,000 km2 of highly prospective exploration acreage in the western Pacific – in PNG, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Vanuatu and Tonga, as well as in international waters in the eastern Pacific.
Nautilus Minerals has been given a mining licence by the PNG government for its Solwara 1 site, and production will begin in 2018.
Advances in technology and the development of a legislative framework by the International Seabed Authority have made what was once thought of as impossible a reality.
Mike Johnston, CEO at Nautilus Minerals, says: “Technology offshore has exploded within the oil and gas industry. The oil and gas industry is spending $300-$400billion a year on offshore petroleum technology. We are using those lessons.
“We have had all of this potential. The technological improvements we have seen over the last 40 or 50 years have allowed us to keep going into deeper and deeper water.”
Soil Machine Dynamics (SMD), which has been developing technologies for the subsea oil and gas sector since the 1980s, will be providing the vehicles to be used for the mine.
Mike Jones, managing director at SMD, says: “We have worked closely with Nautilus to develop three vehicles that will be remotely operated to extract and collect minerals from the mine. There are significant challenges to create a mining system that will reliably operate more than a mile deep on a seafloor terrain of peaks and valleys. We have taken machinery used daily in land mining and tunnelling and married it with our know-how in subsea robotics.
“The individual machines weigh about the same as 20 London buses. Each is designed to carry out the specific tasks to build the mine-site roads and benches; extract the ore through cutting; and then deliver it to a huge subsea pump that brings it to the surface. The operation of the machines is directed from a control centre on the vessel. Here, pilots and co-pilots monitor and control each vehicle using the sonar and camera images that are relayed from each vehicle via an umbilical link.”
Resources being mined on land are becoming scarcer. The demand for copper is doubling every 15 to 20 years, as countries such as China and India industrialise.
Preliminary discoveries have shown that resources on the seafloor are enormous. Johnston says: “Why would we want to continue to stress our planet and try to feed the world from the 30 per cent of the planet we can inhabit and ignore the other 70 per cent? That makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.
“Looking at the ocean, there are very large deposits of seafloor massive sulphides (SMSs), copper, nickel, cobalt and polymetallic nodules. And they are very high-grade compared with land-based deposits. On land the copper grade is now on average 0.6 per cent.
“SMS deposits have copper grades alone of nearly eight per cent, plus they contain around five or six grams of gold, which is a higher grade than most gold mines on land. Then if you look at the nodules, the deposits have grades of more than one per cent copper and more than one per cent nickel, 26 per cent manganese, and nearly 0.3 per cent cobalt. There is more copper on the sea floor than all the reserves on land.”
As this is the first commercial deep-sea mining project, Nautilus has been receiving interest from governments, authorities and other companies to see how it can be done environmentally safely and economically.
Johnston says: “The trick is to do it right, which is what we are trying to do. We have been watched very closely and most people you talk to will tell you we are doing it right.”
Johnston explains the carbon footprint of deep-sea mining is smaller than on land. He says: “We are going to great lengths to make it, environmentally, one of the smallest footprints of any operation anywhere in the world.
“There is only so much recycling we can do, and there is only so much we can do on land. If mines get bigger, the footprints are getting even more enormous, the strip ratios are getting higher and higher. With seafloor mining, the footprints are very small and it is highly scalable. Once you do the first one and learn the lessons, the next one will be even better and then you will be able to do debt finance and people will want to be able to provide that finance.”
Countries in the western Pacific want to know more about the project as a way of helping to sustain their development.
“We are talking to a lot of governments in the western Pacific – smaller nations which are interested in it because they do not have any other opportunities,” Johnston says. “They only have a bit of fishing and that is about it.
“Some of these countries do not even have a tourism industry as they are too remote. Exporting resources on the sea-floor is something they are interested in doing, so long as it is done right. A lot of them are watching and speaking to the PNG government to try to learn about it.
“The PNG government is a very supportive partner for us, and over the last six months they have worked really hard to get these final deals secured, bring us into production and make it happen.”
In partnership with SMD, Nautilus Minerals is pioneering the development of undersea mining. Governments, authorities and companies are already looking to it for guidance on how deep-sea extraction can be achieved safely and economically.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sponsored/business/business-reporter/11288285/papau-new-guinea-sea-mining.html
Not what I expected but I've been surprised many times what happens when the end of year close-out season is done and new tax year starts
Not enough people know about this thing yet I guess. The only way I found out was an article on Fox news quite a while ago and I was curious enough to see if they were listed/public. Of course when I learned about the company I started adding.
This is one of those things where an ad campaign can't really help. They aren't selling "mining services" to the general public... and until they have ore they have only trials to PR about just before they are ready to pull actual material from the ocean floor.
I think we just need to relax. We are fortunate to get in this low, and the longer it takes for people to wise up to this, the longer we have to add.
We all know this isn't really a short term play, and if you ARE looking for a flip, you'll be pissed at yourself in 5 years.
Also there isn't really any volume so I think I'd be hesitant to start talking about manipulation. This is simply a pristine situation at the moment.
https://www.google.com/finance?q=TSE%3ANUS&authuser=0&ed=us&ei=oxuLVNDuCsX1wAOt7YCQDw
not down and we are down???
stupid and HIGH monster manipulation market if gold, silver, and copper, rare earths are not moving the world is not going anywhere
incredible!!! what we need a billion $ into the bank to move this a 10%???
the market is in stupid mode look at AIM londo stock they are destroyed a 50 or 70% this year but with resources, someone big is playing with all people here, the resources are needed, if the resources aren't need is really the planet growing and creating real jobs????
someone remembers this?
http://seekingalpha.com/article/811341-nautilus-minerals-this-1-stock-is-worth-a-look
Conclusion
Now is a good time to acquire a base position in NUSMF. The volume from Tuesday and Wednesday of this week signals that the bottom looks to be formed around the $1.00-$1.10 range. Upon the company confirming the finalized arbitration agreement with PNG, I will be looking to add to my long position.
1$?? and now with agreement with PNG and cash in hand we are sitting at 0,45$??????????????????
who is playing with all shareholders here????
1$ would be the minimum value for the stock now... we have a 50% share discount minimum with a liquidation value or bookvalue of 0,70 (and if we count cash in hand I think bookvalue is 1$)
where is a our 1$???
with production of ore, gold, rare earths, etc this should be a 2 to 3$ stock for sure and minimum
Yes lets hope so, this is an investment I told my wife about at the time, and she has never let me forget it. It would be nice to tell her I told you so lol.
US$113 Million Released to Nautilus and Solwara 1 JV Formed
Press Release: Nautilus Minerals Inc. – 2 hours 13 minutes ago
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TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Dec 11, 2014) - Nautilus Minerals Inc. (NUS.TO)(NUSMF) (Company or Nautilus) is pleased to announce that the sum of US$113 million has today been released from escrow to Nautilus. In addition, the joint venture between Nautilus and the nominee of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea in respect of the Solwara 1 Project has now been formed.
Under the terms of the agreement between the parties (Agreement), the nominee of the Independent State of Papua New Guinea (State) has now fully funded its 15% interest in the Solwara 1 Project up to first production.
Mike Johnston, Nautilus' CEO, commented, "We are excited to have achieved completion under our Agreement and to formally commence our partnership in the Solwara 1 Project with the State's nominee, Eda Kopa (Solwara) Limited (State Nominee), a wholly owned subsidiary of Petromin PNG Holdings Limited. We appreciate the continued support we have received from the State Nominee in reaching this significant milestone."
The focus of the Project will now be to complete the build of the seafloor production equipment and vessel so that Nautilus can make seafloor mining a reality. Nautilus is excited to partner with the State Nominee in the development of this new industry, which will generate significant economic activity within the State and the Province of New Ireland.
Links:
http://www.nautilusminerals.com/s/Media-NewsReleases.asp?ReportID=649293
http://www.nautilusminerals.com/s/Media-NewsReleases.asp?ReportID=652179
http://www.nautilusminerals.com/s/Media-NewsReleases.asp?ReportID=682236
http://www.nautilusminerals.com/s/Media-NewsReleases.asp?ReportID=685730
For more information please refer to www.nautilusminerals.com.
Neither the TSX nor the OTCQX accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this press release.
I'm totally allright with you I avg down in Rodinia Lithium and I'm losing 65% of my money since my first buy... let's wait for Nautilus to digest all the news, but I'm sure that with 113 million in the bank and the best all these minerals under the sea Nautilus could return to 1 or 1,50$ minimum and with the beguin of production 2 to 2,50$ are on the cards...
GLA
I bought at the price you are hoping it will go up to i.e $2 - $3. My average is around $2.70 and rode it all the way down to 20 cents. As I said "if" this takes off even $3 a share will seem cheap, so I'm just going to sit back and let things take there course.
Sometimes averaging down can be like throwing good money after bad, as far as investing goes, and I knew when I bought in that it was high risk.
The fact that the escrow money is now available should see some movement on the share price since back when I got in this was a well talked about venture on BNN which is the Business network in Canada. Hopefully it comes back into the spotlight.
what's your avg? I bought some between 0,20 and 0,30$ my avg is 0,28$ and I expect to see NUSMF in the 1$ zone the next year... but with full production in 2016-2017 I expect to see NUSMF in the 2 to 3$ range minimum
good luck...
So we have the money, about time, now lets get this show on the road. Held this for over 3 years and bought at much higher prices than this but not buying any more to average down. Way I look at it, if it's successfull even my buy in price will make good money. If it's a bust, so be it, that original investment is in the history books anyway.
China shipyard to build world's first deep-sea mining vessel
FUZHOU - A Chinese shipyard has inked a deal with a Singapore firm to build the world's first deep-sea mining vessel, which is due to be delivered in 2017.
Wu Pingshan from Fujian Mawei Shipbuilding Co. Ltd., which is based in east China's Fujian Province, confirmed on Thursday that the contract had been signed with a Singapore company but declined to disclose the name of the contractor.
Wu said the vessel will be 227 meters long by 40 m wide, with living quarters for up to 180 people and a maximum cargo load of 45,000 tonnes.
The vessel with 30 megawatts of power can serve as a platform for seabed mining as deep as 2,500 meters, and will have a helipad.
Founded in 1866, the predecessor of Mawei Shipbuilding was Foochow Arsenal, China's earliest machinery shipbuilding company. It has now become a share-holding firm able to develop, build and repair vessels.
http://www.chinadailyasia.com/nation/2014-12/11/content_15202146.html
..............
http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/business/2014-12/11/content_19065869.htm
..............
http://en.people.cn/n/2014/1211/c202936-8821346.html
Going back a little further ,,,,,
Here's another ship that was built by Liya Pingtan Shipyard, a yard under the management of Fujian Mawei Shipbuilding NOTE: MAC was not involved but I suspect this is probably an industry standard ...Fujian Mawei is involved which is also working on Nautilus ship.
First CSS to undertake final sea trials and be delivered in December
CSS Olympia, the first of a new class of Compact Semi-Submersible (CSS) offshore accommodation units has completed an initial series of trials and is due to undertake a final period of trials in December. During trials CSS Olympia exceeded her design speed of 10.5 knots.
The final trials are due to start on 6 December; the vessel is due to be delivered on 20 December 2013.
The new unit was built by Liya Pingtan Shipyard, a yard under the management of Fujian Mawei Shipbuilding in Fujian Province, China. The contract for the unit was signed in April 2010.
http://www.oilpubs.com/oso/article.asp?v1=13930
The question is being asked on a different board about whether or not Sea trials will be completed before delivery of the vessel at the end of 2017?
Specifically the question reads "Here's a question for the board: do you think the "by end of 2017" timeline includes the sea trials? Or is that a subsequent activity to be completed in 2018?"
I will respond here as other boards aren't so "link" friendly
First of all I was on only one ship in 1977 that had sea trials after a yard period on a USN vessel,a guided missile cruiser and frankly it has been so long I couldn't tell you how long those sea trials lasted.
So having no experience I have set out to answer the question by samples of what other ships that have been built by the same company MARINE ASSETS CORPORATION MAC and/or Fujian Mawei MAWEI.
From my research my best guess says that sea trials will be completed when the vessel is delivered. If you think about it ,it kind of makes sense because who better to work out the bugs than those that built the ship in the first place.
First example >>>>>
"MAC/MAWEI multi-purpose vessel conducts sea trials"
A 60-metre first-in-class multi-purpose support vessel (MPSV), designed entirely in-house by a joint venture between Marine Assets Corporation and Chinese shipbuilder Fujian Mawei (MAC/MAWEI), has recently set sail for its first sea trials.
From this statement ,although not concrete,it sounds like they are conducting sea trials before delivery >>>>
The vessel will be capable of accommodating up to 50 offshore personnel, and will also carry a 15-pax fast response craft. Equipped for Fi-Fi 1 fire fighting operations, the vessel has already been sold to a Middle Eastern company.
http://www.bairdmaritime.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=15813:macmawei-multi-purpose-vessel-conducts-sea-trials-&catid=70&Itemid=62
As well this PR about the same ship several days prior to the one above makes it sound as though they are conducting sea trials and have not yet delivered >>>>>
"MAC's new vessel on sea trials"
MAC, in its press release, says that the vessel is already agreed to be sold to an unnamed company, with the second expected to follow her by Q4 2014. Two more sister vessels are under construction for delivery Q3 2015.
I also found it mentioned here and it is even more clear about sea trials and delivery >>>>
See "9th August 2014 - The first in class 60m MAC/MAWEI in-house designed MPSV sails for sea trials. - 10-08-2014"
It states clearly ><>>>>
The first in class is already agreed sold on delivery to a ME company, with the second expected to follow her by Q4 2014.
http://www.macoffshore.net/news.php
........................................
On the same page as above link ^^^^^ SEE >>>>>
14th September 2014 - 4th Compact SemiSub (CSS) - 25-09-2014
IT states >>>>>
Marine Assets Corporation is very pleased to announce the successful launch by the undocking of our 4th Compact SemiSub (CSS) which will be named Themis, following on from the Olympia and Venus. She will proceed to the jetty for final outfitting and commencement of commissioning, prior to sailing for sea trials towards the end of December. In the meantime as can be seen in the picture, the CSS Venus, the 3rd CSS in the production schedule, can be seen leaving for sea trials. Overall MAC has a build program for 7 CSS, with Olympia already delivered and working in Brazil. Venus and Themis will deliver Dec 14 and Feb 15. While the balance 3 will complete by Sept 15 - Sept 16 and May 17. MAC is now finalising orders for more in series CSS vessels.
..........................................................
Although it is not carved in stone the above information based on MAC's normal scheduling for production,then sea trials, then delivery seems to be apparent.
So,based on that my best guess is sea trials will be completed by the time of delivery so production of the vessel should be completed by early or late summer of 2017.
You're a day ahead of schedule .....the last PR states December 11th,2014
http://www.nautilusminerals.com/s/Media-NewsReleases.asp?ReportID=685730&_Type=News-Releases&_Title=Escrowed-funds-to-be-released-to-Nautilus
Nusmf is $113m in better shape as of today
wheres the volume?!
Today felt like a great day to lower my cost average a little on this one. I figure the lower my cost average, the better it will sound whenever I say it a few years from now.
"The fly in the deep sea mining ointment"
Doubt if you can find an article discussing deep sea mining without it mentioning Nautilus.It's my belief that once the 113 million is in the bank this week the stock will gradually start moving toward the 1.00 mark sooner rather than later.In effect once this deal is consummated there would be little to stop the project from continuing to first ore.
Article starts here >>>>
Glen Smith, JP, MP, is a One Bermuda Alliance parliamentarian
My colleague Mark Pettingill said in the House of Assembly last week that the Opposition was a party full of ideas, but not solutions.
He was talking about their championing of deep sea mining, which they claim is “an opportunity to add millions of dollars to our economy and assist in paying down the national debt all while protecting existing jobs and creating new opportunities for Bermudians,” as Shadow Minister of the Environment Glenn Blakeney put it.
But the fly in the ointment is that economic extraction of minerals from the deep ocean bottom is an idea still very much at the theoretical stage.
Starting the process in Bermuda now would be about as sound a venture as trying to start a trans-Atlantic airline right on the heels of the Wright Brothers’ first flight!
There has been successful shallow water mining of diamonds off the Skeleton Coast in Namibia, but the deposits there have been washed out to sea by river flow, and are comparatively easily retrieved.
It is known that mineral deposits exist on the ocean floor, especially in areas where new ocean crust is forming, often at depths of up to 12,000 feet. The process by which they are formed involves seawater being drawn down through fractures in the crust of the ocean floor towards hot molten rock, which transforms it to a hot acidic fluid which leaches metals from the surrounding rocks as it rises again to the seafloor, where those metals are deposited.
That was the process that created the ancient deposits which are now one of the world’s major sources of copper, zinc, lead, gold and silver at Kidd Creek in Ontario, Canada.
Getting those metals from the sea bottom, however, is a lot more difficult than on land. One attempt, about 40 years ago, to bring up manganese nodules from the sea bottom failed, costing investors almost half a billion dollars.
According to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, “Since then, the mining industry has been hard at work developing specialized dredgers, pumps, crawlers, drills, platforms, cutters and corers, many of them robotic and all designed to work in the harsh conditions of the deep ocean.
“In addition, increases in the price of many materials such as copper, plus increasing demand from emerging economies is making such ventures more economically feasible. Recent discoveries of rich deposits on the seafloor and advances in technology are generating renewed interest in seafloor mining, including more diamonds, iron sands, cobalt-rich manganese crusts, phosphorite nodules and even those problematic manganese nodules. The rising importance and increasing scarcity of rare earth elements is also making some take a new look at the possibility of refining these materials from seafloor sources.”
The first true deep water mining venture is due to begin soon near Papua, New Guinea. A Canadian company, Nautilus Minerals, has reached agreement with the government of that country and is in the process of having a production support vessel built. The process they will use involves excavating the sea bottom, pumping the ore up to a support vessel, “dewatering” it, pumping the seawater back to the sea bottom, barging the ore to a storage site some 50 miles away, then processing it.
The costs of this project are enormous. Seafloor mining tools have had to be created, a riser and lift system, a production support vessel, a dewatering plant and barges for transport. This is all cutting-edge technology. One early report pegged the total cost of the project at US$450 million, not including the vessel, which will add another $167 million.
Operating costs have been estimated to be about $250,000 a day. All these numbers, however, are three or four years out of date, and are likely to be revised upwards.
There are also great concerns worldwide about the damage this experiment might cause to the sea environment.
Once, it was assumed the sea bottom was dead, like a moonscape. But we have learned recently that the sea bottom is as environmentally rich as the land.
Some researchers have said they believe that removal of parts of the sea floor will result in disturbances to the ecology of the sea bottom, toxicity of the water column and sediment plumes from tailings.
Among the impacts of deep sea mining, sediment plumes could have the greatest impact.
Plumes are caused when the tailings from mining (usually fine particles) are dumped back into the ocean, creating a cloud of particles floating in the water.
Two types of plumes occur – near bottom plumes and surface plumes.
Near bottom plumes occur when the tailings are pumped back down to the mining site. The floating particles increase the cloudiness of the water, clogging filter-feeding apparatuses used by sea bottom organisms.
Surface plumes cause a more serious problem. Depending on the size of the particles and water currents the plumes could spread over vast areas.
The plumes could impact zooplankton and light penetration, in turn affecting the food web of the area.
That’s the last thing we want to do in Bermuda.
Even if Bermuda were in an area known for its sea bottom volcanic activity (which it is not), and therefore an area where mineral deposits are likely to occur, there is just no earthly reason for the Opposition to mislead Bermudians into thinking that this idea is going to be a quick fix for our economic woes.
That the Opposition has done nothing to inform Bermudians about the complexities and challenges of deep sea mining – even though it is an anchor of their so-called economic plan for Bermuda – makes me wonder how serious they are about this idea. The more you look at it the more it seems to be another example of sound bite politics. On the surface, it sounds good, but the deeper you go, the bigger the questions, issues and challenges become.
Once the world (and the Opposition) knows more about extracting deep-sea minerals, and understands the problems associated with the process, then perhaps it will be worth having a look to determine the possibilities for Bermuda. But let’s be very clear about one thing: This is not a “jobs now” idea, and the PLP spokesmen should stop trying to fool people into thinking that.
http://www.royalgazette.com/article/20141208/COMMENT/141209730
I think December 11th there will likely be a PR when the 113 Million dollars are released to Nautilus. I do think it is interesting to see the continued slight decline even after the ship deal was announced. I have seen this behavior quite often right before a jump in share price in line with a significant announcement.
Markets snoozing on news today
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United States sitting out race to mine ocean floor for metals essential to electronicsChina and other countries are racing to be the first to mine trillions of dollars worth of metals used in cell phones, supercomputers and more, while the U.S. is on the sidelines. 60 Minutes reports, Sunday at 7:30 p.m. ET and 7 p.m. PT on CBS https://www.cbsnews.com/news/united-states-sitting-out-race-to-mine-ocean-floor-for-rare-earth-elements-metals-electronics-60-minutes-2019-11-13/..
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Nautilus Minerals Inc (referred to on this website as "Nautilus", "Nautilus Minerals" or the "Company") is the first company to commercially explore the seafloor for massive sulphide systems, a potential source of high grade copper, gold, zinc and silver. Nautilus is developing a production system using existing technologies adapted from the offshore oil and gas industry, dredging and mining industries to enable the extraction of these high grade Seafloor Massive Sulphide ("SMS") systems on a commercial scale.
Nautilus’ copper-gold project, Solwara 1, is under development in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea. The Company has been granted the Environment Permit and Mining Lease required for resource development at this site.
The Company plans to grow its tenement holdings in the exclusive economic zones and territorial waters of Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, the Solomon Islands, Vanuatu and New Zealand as well as other areas outside the Western Pacific.
Nautilus has among its significant shareholders, two of the world’s largest resource companies and the nature of its alliances and technical partners place it firmly in pole position as the world leader in deepwater exploration and the development of mineral systems.
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