The Northern Territory Government has today released details of individual environmental security bond amounts held for nine major mines.
Security bonds are held in the event a company is unable to clean up after itself once production on a mine ends or is prematurely terminated.
It is a blow to the mining industry which has argued the amount of the respective bonds must not be made public, as it would harm the competitiveness of operators and deter investment.
Emmerson Resources, which runs a small gold mine in Tennant Creek through a tribute agreement with the Edna Beryl Mining Company,
said the release of information would be especially hard on small operators.
Managing Director Rob Bills said the public should be content with having the total amount of bonds held released only — a figure of more than $1.3 billion.
"Disclosing is great on the one hand, but on the other it creates a lot of concern and work on our side," he said.
"For a little company like Emmerson we have to put our bonds up on our website, which we've done, and it just creates more paperwork, more work for us being a very small company, if you get a lot of enquiries."
According to Mr Bills the bonds, published on their own and without context, could create a misconception about the industry from the public.
"[There's] no sort of set calculation on how those bonds were set," he said.
"We're an exploration company, our environmental footprint is incredibly small.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/rural/20...nt-reveals-environmental-mining-bonds/8940332
https://www.australianmining.com.au/news/nt-government-goes-public-environmental-security-bonds/
