Ann: RECENT INTERVIEW/ARTICLE BY THE ABC, page-26

I could understand someone like you (who has little to no knowledge of what went on during the operation of the mine and shortly after and seems intent on staying that way from a couple of your comments last year) saying these things if Rio were still the major owner. But they aren't; its a whole new ball game and by the end of next month a Bougainvillean will be board chairman and almost the entire board will be PNG nationals. References to colonial attitudes etc sound great but it's meaningless in the context of the current ownership. You seem to think that the board (not to mention the National Government) is going to sit idly by while the ABG deals BCL out of the project. In spite of all the noise from the Miriori camp do you really think that this is going to happen? If it does then so be it ( and to be honest it's no skin off my nose) but as I have said all along it just doesn't make sense !! Surely only an RTG supreme optimist would think otherwise.

Of course the ABG, in a moment of self-flagellation, might hand over the baton to an RTG ( but only after the two year moratorium?) but there are then the other eight landowner groups and the SMLOLA Customary Heads to consider (and of course hard luck for the rest of Bougainville) but it's sounding like a cracked record of the bleeding obvious I am afraid.


Of course it helps to have a blind spot for sovereign risk - consider the infamous Momis letter in 1987 and subsequent train of events, later the 2014 action of taking the mining lease off Rio and for that matter some of his most recent statements.

All in all it sounds like a swimmingly great investment opportunity for a third party doesn't it ...