O’Neill alluded to the popular hostility that remains in PNG over BHP’s notorious departure from Ok Tedi in 2002. He said the company had been done “an enormous favour by the then PNG government and allowed to exit ownership of the Ok Tedi mine without accepting any financial or moral responsibility for the enormous environmental and social damage … in the 20 years it operated the mine.”
Over two decades, BHP dumped more than half a billion tonnes of tailings (rock waste) containing copper, zinc, cadmium and lead into the Fly and Ok Tedi Rivers. It ruined the lands of thousands of subsistence farmers, poisoned some 2,000 square kilometres of forest, polluted the Ok Tedi River and contaminated a section of the Fly River, PNG’s second biggest river system, severely depleting fishing stocks.
To avoid legal liabilities amounting to billions of dollars, BHP secured a deal from the PNG government, which enacted laws indemnifying the company against all compensation claims. BHP’s 52 percent shareholding in the mine was transferred to the PNGSDP, supposedly to provide the funds to repair the damage that BHP had caused. Prime Minister Mekere Morauta agreed to extend the mine’s life, in order to preserve the government’s 30 percent share of the mine’s profits, plus millions of dollars in royalties and taxes.
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