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Projects
 
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The Project Development team is focused on delivering the Solwara 1 Mining System on time, and within budget, for mining operations starting in Q3 2010, subject to timely permitting. Equally important is meeting both environmental, health and safety commitments. Combining skills from onshore mining, dredging and deepwater construction, the team scoped out the specifications for the three main components of the mining system, which are the:
The first step in the mining process involves cutting the seafloor material and drawing it into the suction mouth of the Seafloor Mining Tool (SMT) as slurry. It is then transported to a pumping module and lifted up a steel riser pipe to the Mining Support Vessel (MSV) on the surface where the material is dewatered. After dewatering, the ore is transferred to barges on a continuous cycle for shipment to a nearby port facility. SEAFLOOR MINING TOOL (SMT) CONTRACT On December 18, 2007 the contract for the SMT was awarded to Soil Machine Dynamics of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. The £33 million fixed price contract is for the design and production of two identical 190 tonne SMTs which will be used for production on Solwara 1. The system is designed to operate at production rate of 6,000 tonnes/day. The schedule provides for the completion of assembly, testing and integration work on the MSV to meet the production timeline for the third quarter 2010. RISER AND LIFTING SYSTEM (RALS) CONTRACT A second contract with a US $116 million target price was awarded on April 3, 2008 to Technip USA Inc. to provide engineering procurement and construction management services for the Riser and Lifting System ("RALS ") components of the deepwater SMS extraction system, comprising the following:
MINING SUPPORT VESSEL The third contract, was awarded on June 20, 2008 when Nautilus entered into a binding agreement with North Sea Shipping Holding AS ("North Sea Shipping") to provide the specialist Mining Support Vessel ("MSV") . They will provide a 160m dynamically positioned specialist new build ship, on a five year charter basis with options to extend for another five years. The value of the MSV contract is approximately US$125 million over the initial five year period as operating expense to Nautilus. METALLURGY Results from mineralogical and metallurgical investigations of ore concluded that a highly marketable copper concentrate with grades of better than 28% copper can be produced using standard froth flotation techniques with copper recoveries of more than 85%. Additionally the low bond work index, indicates the potential low capital and operating cost for treatment of Solwara 1 ore. Analysis was completed on 10 composite samples recovered from 1.2 tonnes of Solwara 1 drill core collected during the 2007 drilling campaign at the Company's Solwara 1 Project, located in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea ("PNG"), as documented in the Resource Report completed by Golder Associates Pty Ltd.. Testing indicated that over 95% of the copper occurs as the mineral chalcopyrite The chalcopyrite is coarse-grained and can be liberated from the gangue with high recovery to produce a marketable concentrate. Grinding and flotation tests indicate effective liberation with a likely primary grind size of 80% - 55 micron and regrind size of 80% -25 microns. Comminution data tabulated indicates that the ore has an average Bond Ball Mill Work Index of about 11 kWh/t. The copper concentrates contain significant gold contents and in some cases payable levels of silver. Greater than 90% of the gold reports to sulphides either to a copper or a pyrite concentrate. Further work defining gold and silver deportment is in progress. (May 23, 2008) ON-GOING PROJECT DEVELOPMENT WORK In addition to these major contracts the Project Development team continues its work on mine planning, materials handling, shipping, metallurgical testing and processing studies. | | |
