Nautilus Minerals

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Nautilus Minerals
TypePublic
TSX: NUS
IndustryMining
Founded1987
Headquarters
Toronto

Nautilus Minerals Inc. was an underwater mineral exploration company headquartered in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.[1] It is the first company to commercially explore the seafloor for massive sulfide systems, a potential source of high grade copper, gold, zinc and silver.

As of October 2010, Nautilus planned to commence production utilizing a newly constructed mining ship in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea.[2][needs update]

In 2015, the company claimed to fall victim to a cyber scam where a payment of $10 million was made to the wrong account.[3] No investigation report was ever made public to shareholders and the company stated it could not give any assurances that internal fraud was prevented.[4] PWC did not record this fraudulent cyber scam in their annual 2015 audit. The CFO at the time, now works for Lepidico Ltd.

As of 2016, the mining ship is being built and scheduled to depart for Papua New Guinea in 2018.[5]

The world's first deep-sea mining robots, built for Nautilus by , have been ready to go since 2012.[5]

The company planned 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. The company collapsed due to a lack of liquidity, poor management and ability to secure funding.

The company's board had secured loans through Deep Sea Mining Finance Ltd, a finance company setup by Mawarid Mining LLC a major shareholder of Nautilus Minerals. Deep Sea Mining Finance Ltd received Nautilus's assets after the company's bankruptcy. [6]

Solwara 1 Resource[]

Nautilus's first mining site, Solwara 1, is 30 kilometers off the shore of Papua New Guinea's New Ireland Province.[5]

The company's Solwara 1 Project is located at 1600 metres water depth in the Bismarck Sea, New Ireland Province.[7] It will be the world's first deep-sea mining project.[7][8] The deposit is a high grade copper-gold seafloor massive sulphide (SMS) resource.[7][needs update]

In 2007 the exploration team drilled a 43-101 resource on the Solwara 1 Project using newly developed remotely-operated vehicle (ROV) drills. The resulting high grade copper-gold resource was the world's first Seafloor Massive Sulphide ("SMS") resource statement. In 2010/11 further drilling was conducted at Solwara 1 resulting in an increase in the resource base. Results of the updated resource were as follows (November 25, 2011):[9]

Indicated Mineral Resource: 1,030kt @ 7.2% Cu, 5.0 g/t Au, 23 g/t Ag, 0.4% Zn

Inferred Mineral Resource: 1,540kt @ 8.1% Cu, 6.4 g/t Au, 34 g/t Ag, 0.9% Zn

The 2011 Golders Resource update also saw the companies second resource declared for the Solwara 12 project (230K t), some 25 km NE of Solwara 1, in the zone of Exploration License (EL) 1324.[10]

Deep Sea Mining Finance, a privately owned company in which the Sultanate of Oman has an interest, took over all of what was formerly Nautilus's undersea mining venture including equipment and underwater robots, and intends to exploit the Papua New Guinea Solwara 1 mining licenses.[11]

References[]

  1. ^ "Geoscience BC". November 2010.
  2. ^ Terrestrial Telerobotic Mining Technology: An Enabler for Extraterrestrial Habitation, Mining and Construction, recorded on 31 October 2010, 52.25, Prof. Greg Baiden, Laurentian University, Talk given at the Space Manufacturing 14 conference, 29–31 October 2010, Space Studies Institute
  3. ^ Nautilus Minerals falls victim to cyber scam, prepays $10m into wrong account, miningweekly.com, 2 February 2015
  4. ^ NAUTILUS MINERALS ANNUAL REPORT 2015
  5. ^ Jump up to: a b c Peter Fairley. "Robot Miners of the Briny Deep: Nautilus Minerals will test machines that will dig for gold in deep-sea vents". IEEE Spectrum. 2016-Jan.
  6. ^ Notice of Application re Leave to Appeal, recorded on 03-10-2019
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b c "Solwara 1 Project – High Grade Copper and Gold". Nautilus Minerals Inc. 2010. Archived from the original on 12 August 2010. Retrieved 14 September 2010.
  8. ^ Hill, Matthew (2010-09-07). "Nautilus says could start undersea mining in 2013". Mining Weekly. Retrieved 14 September 2010.
  9. ^ Lipton, Ian (2008-02-01). "Mineral Resource Estimate, Solwara 1 Project, Bismarck Sea, Papua New Guinea for Nautilus Minerals Inc" (PDF). Nautilus Minerals. Golder Associates. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2010-07-05.
  10. ^ Earle, Sylvia (21 July 2016). "Deep Sea Mining: An Invisible Land Grab". National Geographic. National Geographic. Retrieved 21 April 2019.
  11. ^ "Deep Sea Mining Finance". Retrieved 19 Aug 2021.

External links[]


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