April 4, 2022
THE Morobe Alluvial Mining Limited (MAML) received the Exploration License (EL) Grant from the Mineral Resources Authority (MRA) on Thursday last week.
This was a historical event for Morobe province because, despite being the province known as the ‘mining province’ it had not owned an exploration license or a mining lease over its land before.
This was changed when the current governor for Morobe, Hon. Ginson Saonu established a mining company for the Morobe Provincial Government and used it to apply for exploration licenses over the entire province.
MAML acquired its first asset of EL 2703 on January 26 which was granted by the Minister for Mining Johnson Tuke.
Governor Saonu said the whole idea of acquiring exploration licenses was to allow the OPPI Concept to conceptualize into reality.
“‘O’ means Ownership; every Morobean who has a resource must own it and not give it away to foreigners. ‘P’ means Partnership; every Morobean who owns a resource to partner with their Provincial Government. Another ‘P’ means Participate. Every Morobean who owns a resource must participate to yield from his/her own resource. ‘I’ means Investment; at the end, every Morobean who own a resource must invest to own big investments,” he said.
MAML CEO Brigitta Pondros said MAML is enhancing the OPPI Concept by applying for exploration licenses all over Morobe.
“The first grant is EL 2703. The EL tenement comprises 621 sub-blocks and covers approximately 2,117.61 square kilometers of land area in Morobe Province. The tenement boundary starts from the Huon Peninsula Coastline to Salamaua on the east and on the west is Owen Stanley Range and runs through to the north by the famous Markham River. The upper westernmost portion of the EL is located directly within the northeast trending Wafi mineralizing belt which hosts the giant Wafi Golpu deposit,” she said.
Pondros said the central part of EL 2703 WAs dissected by the major Sunshine Fault for most of its length and again intersected by the regional Wampit Fault that coalesces with the Ramu-Markham Fault Zone to the north of the tenement.
She said their favourable subsidiary structural splays have strategically position MAML to uncover potential mineral deposits.
“With the northeast and north-northeast trending structures in the EL, we believe they are excellent conduits for magmatic fluid flow pathway hence it has a higher chance of finding mineralization.
“This EL tenement has strategically positioned Morobe in a comfortable position as an equity for an equity financing in funding projects throughout Morobe. MAML has already generated couple of exploration targets and these will be confirmed by our geologists during initial reconnaissance survey this year,” she said.
Pondros said the next two years of exploration will build up the exploration data which MAML has to prepare itself for set target drilling.
She said the EL sits at the corridor of mineralization along the western areas where there is direct alignment with Hidden Valley Gold Mine and Wafi Golpu Mining Project.
Governor Saonu is overly optimistic that the tenement has a great potential for huge mineralization which open doors to business opportunities as more and more investors will show interests to invest.
The Governor’s ambition to make Morobe, a donor-funding province to become the eventual economic capital of PNG is starting to unleash itself through the grant of this EL 2703.
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Note: Morobe Alluvial Mining Company is now operating under the umbrella of Morobe Mineral Holdings Limited. MMHL is a group of company operating with various Alluvial, Dredging & Exploration Activities in Morobe Province and is a subsidiary company of Morobe Provincial Government.
