Source: Mining Weekly

Employees of Soil Machine Dynamics (SMD) work on a subsea mining machine being built for Nautilus Minerals at Wallsend, northern England April 14, 2014.

Prospective Canadian deep-sea miner Nautilus Minerals on Wednesday announced that it had started building its second seafloor production tool (SPT), the collecting machine (CM), at third-party manufacturer Soil Machine Dynamics’ (SMD) facility at Newcastle upon Tyne, in the UK.

Coffee buyers in Goroka, Eastern Highlands had a field day today as coffee growers brought their dried parchment coffee beans to town by the truckloads. Buyers set up buying points from the junction near the Mendikwae building all the way down to the main market and Chuave market near Aserufa fuel depot.

Source: PNG Loop

State minister and member for Yangoru Saussia Richard Maru is against the Special Agriculture and Business Lease (SABL) device being used to acquire customary land in the country.

Source: PNG Mine Watch

The Pacific Conference of Churches has supported calls from a PNG church for a halt to Deep Sea Mining (DSM).

About 1.2 million members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Papua New Guinea (ELCPNG) have said no to Experimental Seabed Mining after its synod on Karkar Island, Madang Province.

The members have also given their church leaders approval to address the issue with the PNG Government.

Source: PNG Loop

Expert Former Chief Land Title Commissioner Josepha Kiris has issued a stern warning to people selling  customary land in NCD to restrain or face the full brunt of the law.

Kiris, who is also a professional lawyer, told PNG Loop that customary land was not supposed to be sold as there was no law guaranteeing the buyer to own the land. 

Source: The National

SPECIAL agriculture business leases are nothing but a “scam” used by logging companies and will be outlawed immediately, Prime Minister Peter O’Neill says.

He told a radio talkback show yesterday that the logging companies and certain individuals in Government were preying on the innocent and unassuming people in rural areas.

He responded to callers from around the country on the FM100 talkback show complaining about SABLs and the damage they were doing.

Source: PNG Loop

Forest Minister Douglas Tomuriesa says he is developing a program with an aim to deliver services using funds from the Log Export Development Levy.

He says he has written a letter to every Member of Parliament outlining his plans on how the levies from logging companies should be spent on development.

Source: PNG Loop

Logging companies have been asked to show the government the number of developments carried out as part of their community obligation in communities they work in.

Forest Minister Douglas Tomuriesa says companies will have to show cause or their licence to log will be suspended.

He says for far too long local communities have been ignored on their own land and now it’s time to “show and tell’’.

Source: The National

PRIME Minister Peter O’Neill said Port Moresby was a rapidly growing city with so much land being illegally acquired.

He said the Government was repossessing pieces of land taken illegally by individuals and putting them into trust.

He was responding to a caller on FM100 radio talkback show who said Port Moresby did not have sufficient recreational facilities because of all the land grabbing going on in the city. The caller said recreational areas in Port Moresby had been taken up or sold to foreigners or individuals.

MIDAS (Managing Impacts of Deep-seA reSource exploitation) Project and EU DG Mare (Maritime Affairs and Fisheries) Stakeholder Consultation on Seabed Mining 

Source: EUCC News