Qualla: Panguna Mine https://qualla.com/panguna-mine en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/s/panguna-mine-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Panguna Mine https://qualla.com/panguna-mine Panguna Mine: Introduction https://qualla.com/panguna-mine/ Photo credit NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team, Public domain. From cruising altitude the pit looks like somebody erased part of the island. A roughly circular void in the Crown Prince Range, rust-coloured tailings streaking down the Jaba River toward the west coast, vegetation still absent three decades after the last truck drove out. Panguna is a place the global economy wanted very badly - an estimated billion tonnes of copper ore and twelve million ounces of gold, so rich that in its operating years it generated twelve percent of Papua New Guinea's gross domestic product and over forty-five percent of the country's export revenue. It was, in its time, the largest open-pit copper-gold mine on Earth. It is also the place where the arithmetic finally broke, and an island decided that being poisoned to pay for someone else's independence was not a bargain it would honour.

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Image: NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/s/panguna-mine-wp/rqys-panguna-mine-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Panguna Mine: A Mountain's Worth of Copper https://qualla.com/panguna-mine/ Photo credit Robert Owen Winkler, Public domain. The ore body was discovered in Bougainville's Crown Prince Range in the mid-1960s. Conzinc Rio Tinto of Australia formed a subsidiary, Bougainville Copper Limited, and opened the mine in 1969. Production began in 1972 - the pit, the ore mill, the tailings discharge into the Jaba ...

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Image: Robert Owen Winkler | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/s/panguna-mine-wp/rqys-panguna-mine-a-mountains-worth-of-copper.mp3 0:06 2 full Panguna Mine: The Jaba River https://qualla.com/panguna-mine/ Photo credit Robert Owen Winkler, Public domain. Every day the Panguna mill produced copper concentrate and, as waste, enormous quantities of finely ground rock laced with the metals that could not be economically extracted. There was no tailings dam. The waste was discharged directly into tributaries of the Jaba River, which c...

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Image: Robert Owen Winkler | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/s/panguna-mine-wp/rqys-panguna-mine-the-jaba-river.mp3 0:06 3 full Panguna Mine: Francis Ona https://qualla.com/panguna-mine/ Photo credit Robert Owen Winkler, Public domain. Francis Ona was a Nasioi man, a Panguna landowner, and for a time an employee of Bougainville Copper. In 1988 he broke with the existing landowner association, arguing it had been co-opted, and demanded compensation on an entirely different scale - ten billion kina, a share of on...

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Image: Robert Owen Winkler | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/s/panguna-mine-wp/rqys-panguna-mine-francis-ona.mp3 0:06 4 full Panguna Mine: The Ghost Town https://qualla.com/panguna-mine/ Photo credit Robert Owen Winkler, Public domain. Walk the edge of the pit today and what you see is an enormous circular step-terraced void, its walls striped in the colours of the exposed rock, its floor holding a murky lake. Buildings remain - parts of the ore mill, workshops, housing blocks - in the half-jungled state of pla...

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Image: Robert Owen Winkler | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/s/panguna-mine-wp/rqys-panguna-mine-the-ghost-town.mp3 0:06 5 full Panguna Mine: Whether To Open It Again https://qualla.com/panguna-mine/ Photo credit Robert Owen Winkler, Public domain. Bougainville is moving toward independence. In a non-binding referendum in 2019, roughly ninety-eight percent of voters chose independence from Papua New Guinea, and the territory and Port Moresby have been negotiating since. An independent Bougainville will need a revenue base. ...

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Image: Robert Owen Winkler | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/q/y/s/panguna-mine-wp/rqys-panguna-mine-whether-to-open-it-again.mp3 0:06 6 full