Panguna is a town next to the (now decommissioned) Panguna copper mine on

Bougainville Island Bougainville Island (; Tok Pisin: ''Bogenvil'') is the main island of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville, which is part of Papua New Guinea. Its land area is . The highest point is Mount Balbi, on the main island, at . The much smaller Buk ...

Papua New Guinea Papua New Guinea, officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea, is an island country in Oceania that comprises the eastern half of the island of New Guinea and offshore islands in Melanesia, a region of the southwestern Pacific Ocean n ...

. It was owned and operated by Bougainville Copper Ltd, a subsidiary of Rio Tinto. Beginning operations in 1972, the company hired thousands of workers, most from other parts of the country. By the end of its operations on May 15, 1989, when the mine was closed because of an armed uprising on the island, it was the largest

open-pit mine Open-pit mining, also known as open-cast or open-cut mining and in larger contexts mega-mining, is a surface mining technique that extracts rock or minerals from the earth. Open-pit mines are used when deposits of commercially useful ore or ...

in the world. It was accused of contaminating large areas due to its toxic waste, which affected land, water and air. Resentment against the environmental poisoning and the fact that most profits left the island, were major catalysts in the unrest in Bougainville in the 1970s and 1980s, leading to the

Bougainville conflict The Bougainville conflict, also known as the Bougainville Civil War, was a multi-layered armed conflict fought from 1988 to 1998 in the North Solomons Province of Papua New Guinea (PNG) between PNG and the secessionist forces of the Bougainvi ...

, which lasted from 1988 until 1998. In 2011 it was reported that former PNG Prime Minister Sir

Michael Somare Sir Michael Thomas Somare (9 April 1936 – 25 February 2021) was a Papua New Guinean politician. Widely called the " father of the nation" (), he was the first Prime Minister after independence. At the time of his death, Somare was also the lo ...

had alleged that Rio Tinto played a role in the conflict by helping finance the actions of the PNG government in Bougainville during the conflict in an attempt to allow the mine to be reopened.Callick, Rowan (16 July 2011)
"Battle intensifies over Bougainville copper"
The Australian. Sydney: News Corp Australia. ISSN 1038-8761.

References

External links

Google Maps link to the Panguna open cut mine
Populated places in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville Surface mines in Papua New Guinea Mining communities in Oceania Copper mines in Papua New Guinea {{Bougainville-geo-stub

See also

References

External links