Extractive industries policy and administration

The Sagaing Division chief minister will likely visit the controversial Letpadaung copper mine later this week after protesters prevented vehicles from leaving the compound on February 21 and demanded the mine cease operations. “We blocked five trucks carrying copper from leaving the mine,” U Pho La ...

A landslide in northern Myanmar’s jade mining region has killed 9 people, a local official said on February 11, the latest fatal incident to strike the shadowy billion-dollar industry. The men were believed to be searching for jade in Kachin State when a wall of unstable ...

Kachin people have complained that mining companies are dumping waste soil recklessly and that it could trigger natural disasters. “We’ve found some companies dumped slag near tributaries of the Uru River. The waste soil could block the river during the rainy season,” said a resident of ...

The nickel market has been undergoing wild swings this year, pummeled by Indonesia’s move to relax an export ban but later buoyed by expectations of a supply decrease from the Philippines. The Philippines said last Thursday that it will close mines responsible for roughly half of the ...

At a government-organised forum on sand exports on January 24, a Ministry of Mines and Energy official said an investigation had been carried out into huge discrepancies in data on sand export from Cambodia to Singapore but that the probe found no irregularities. UN data ...

The Republic stopped importing sand from Cambodia after a ban took effect in November last year, said the Ministry of National Development as the issue of sand imports once again takes the spotlight. Responding to media queries, the MND also stressed that Singapore sets strict criteria ...

Indonesia’s Energy and Mineral Resources Ministry on January 12 announced sweeping changes to mining regulations that allow exports of nickel ore and bauxite for another five years under certain conditions. The announcement illustrates the challenges facing the resource-rich country, which instituted a ban on mineral ore ...

The new Myanmar Mining Law could soon have regulatory teeth that support the implementation of the law and establish a state and Union power division in the licensing process, The Myanmar Times has learned. The Mines Rules, which will essentially provide the fine print details ...

Residents are angry and worried that illegal sand mining along the Bến Hải River in Quảng Trị Province continues unabated despite local authorities’ efforts to stop the practice. Dozens of households on the banks of the river in Gio Linh District have not only lost ...

Jade scavengers who have allegedly overrun mines operated by private companies in Hkamti township have been ordered to move out by the government, with a combat police battalion standing by to enforce the ban. ​The Ministry of Natural Resources and Environmental Conservation gave the itinerant ...