Nautilus Minerals (Historic)

Nautilus Minerals was a Canadian-listed seabed-mining company that held the Solwara 1 project in the Bismarck Sea off Papua New Guinea, targeting seafloor massive sulphide deposits rich in copper and gold within PNG’s territorial waters. It secured a PNG mining lease in 2011 and ordered seafloor production tools and a production support vessel, but financing failed; the company went into administration in 2019, and its assets were sold. Solwara 1 became a reference case for deep-sea-mining controversy over environmental impact and benefit-sharing, and no production occurred.