Gag Island

Gag Island is one of the Raja Ampat Islands in the Indonesian province of West Papua. It is situated some 150 kilometres west of Sorong, the provincial capital.

Gag and the Raja Ampat Islands

The island's population is approximately 450 living at Gambier Bay. This community was established in the early 1960s by people moving to the island in the hope of finding work with nickel exploration ventures at that time.

Economy

Gag Island represents one of the largest nickel reserve in Indonesia having estimated reserves of 240 million tonnes of ore grading 1.35% nickel.[1] The 240 million tonnes of ore contains 3.24 million tonnes of nickel metal.[1]

In 1996 the PT Gag Nikel company was formed as a joint venture agreement between BHP Billiton (75%) and Indonesia's state-owned mining company, PT Aneka Tambang Tbk (25%). A contract of work was awarded in February 1998, and a program of exploration and preliminary evaluation was conducted. In late 1999, the Indonesian government enacted a forestry law prohibiting open cast mining in "protection forest" areas. The forest on Gag Island was subsequently reclassified as "protection forest", stopping any mining activity on the island.

Mining had resumed in Gag since 2017, following an exploration phase.[2]

References
  1. "Gag Island mine" (PDF). pdac.ca. 2012. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2014-01-03. Retrieved 2013-07-26.
  2. Suripatty, Chanry Andrew (8 February 2019). "Karyawan Lokal Mogok, PT GAG Nikel Raja Ampat Lumpuh". SINDOnews.com (in Indonesian). Retrieved 9 September 2019.

Sources
  • BHP Billiton's website on sustainability
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