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Nautilus Minerals informed that Earth Economics has released an independent Environmental and Social Benchmarking Analysis, based on natural capital accounting, on Nautilus’ Solwara 1 project.

Solwara 1 is located in the Bismarck Sea of Papua New Guinea and it is anticipated that the proposed Solwara 1 project will begin operations in the first half of 2018 subject to project financing and completion of the Company’s seafloor production equipment and vessel.

Earth Economics was commissioned by Nautilus to conduct an independent, objective environmental and social benchmarking analysis of the proposed deep seabed Solwara 1 project with terrestrial copper mines. Solwara 1 is expected to be the world’s first commercial high-grade seafloor copper-gold mine project.

The Report was released on May 31, 2015 and the key findings can be find HERE.

Specifically, the report compares the social and environmental impacts of the proposed Solwara 1 project with three terrestrial mines: Bingham Canyon (Utah, USA), Prominent Hill (South Australia, Australia) and Intag (a proposed mine in Intag Province, Ecuador).

The Report concludes that the Solwara 1 project has the potential to significantly reduce social and environmental impacts commonly associated with large surface terrestrial copper mines.

Mike Johnston, Nautilus’ CEO, commented: “Growing copper demand requires our industry to look at more sustainable ways to meet this demand. As showcased in Earth Economics’ Report, seafloor mining has the potential to not only provide economic benefits within the communities nearest to the operations while minimizing the impact of copper mining, it also has the potential to change the physical nature of the mining industry for the better.”

“We believe that the proposed Solwara 1 project will launch a new frontier in the blue economy and resource sector. As the first publicly-listed company in the world to commercially explore seafloor mining opportunities, Nautilus is committed to leading the way and setting a high bar for developing an environmentally and socially responsible approach for the industry. Commissioning this report is part of our ongoing process to review, estimate and evaluate project impacts through objective third-party experts,” he added.