118th Sydney Mining Club Luncheon
David Heydon
CEO
Nautilus Minerals Inc
Nautilus is in the business of exploring for seafloor massive sulphide (SMS) deposits which are considered modern day analogues of Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide (VMS) systems - a prime source of the world's onshore copper, gold, zinc and silver deposits. The Company holds more than 300,000 km2 of tenement licences and exploration applications in the territorial waters of Papua New Guinea, Fiji, Tonga, the Solomon Islands and New Zealand along the western Pacific Ocean's Rim of Fire.
Listed on the Toronto (TSX) and London (AIM) exchanges, Nautilus has Anglo
American, Teck Cominco, Barrick and Epion Holdings (a company wholly owned by Russian investor Alisher Usmanov) as cornerstone shareholders, and has alliances and technical partnerships that position it as the world leader in underwater exploration. Nautilus is debt free and held cash balances of C$289M at the end of July this year.
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Exploration and mine planning is well underway for its Solwara 1 project located in the Bismarck Sea in the territorial waters of PNG. Nautilus has successfully completed the majority of the exploration fieldwork for this project with 92 holes drilled to date this year within this high-grade copper and precious metal massive sulphide system. Nautilus is developing a drill-tested geological model and anticipates releasing a preliminary resource for Solwara 1 later this year.
Solwara 1 is the first of a number of SMS discoveries in this area and will be the first to be mined. Subject to completion of the EIS and timely permitting, Nautilus plans to progress to construction and commissioning in 2009 with production in early 2010. This will be the first deep-sea mining project (>1,500m) in the world on a commercial scale and will be a presentation not to be missed.
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