Loading ...Papua New Guinea’s autonomous region of Bougainville passed Friday a new mining bill that strips significant rights from Rio Tinto’s (LON, ASX:RIO) subsidiary Bougainville Copper Limited (ASX:BOC).
The ruling formalizes the province’s control of its own resources, which means the national PNG mining law no longer applies and that the agreement under which Bougainville Copper ran the Panguna open cut copper and gold mine for 20 years has been eliminated.
According to Radio Australia, locals worry the legislation —which transfers powers over mining from the Papua New Guinea government to the local legislature — gives too much power to Australian copper, gold, and silver company Bougainville Copper, whose Panguna mine sparked a civil war in the 1990’s and has not seen mining activity since then.
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