The future of a mining ship newbuilding has once again been plunged into uncertainty after Canada's Nautilus Minerals went bankrupt.
The Vancouver-listed company, one of the world’s first sea-floor miners, had been hoping to form a joint venture to take over the ownership of the 68,000-gt MAC Goliath/Nautilus New Era, ordered in 2014 by its partner, Dubai's Marine Assets Corporation (MAC).
Nautilus had earlier agreed to pay a charter fee of $199,901 per day over five years for the ship, which was cancelled by the yard in July 2018 after MAC failed to pay a third instalment of $18m.
Nautilus officially went bankrupt in the last week of November, its court-appointed monitor, PricewaterhouseCoopers reported, according to Mining.com.
It had filed for protection from its debts in a Canadian court in February 2019.
In August, court approval was obtained for creditors to liquidate the company to get back some of what they were owed.
Gold and silver
Nautilus was trying to develop its Solwara 1 deep sea gold, copper and silver project off the coast of Papua New Guinea.
The two main shareholders, MB Holding and Metalloinvest, have now effectively taken control of a ‘new’ Nautilus, said Andy Whitmore, advocacy officer at Deep Sea Mining Campaign, in a press release.
Nautilus said in court papers that once liquidation occurs, there could still be a buyer for at least some of the new company’s assets.
Work continued
The yard had continued to install components of the company's seafloor production equipment.
An operating console was fitted in mid-November 2018.
The vessel had originally been due for delivery at the end of 2017.
The 227-metre-long, 40-metre-wide unit is the equivalent of the oil industry’s floating production, storage and offloading (FPSO) vessel.
It digs out minerals from the seabed, extracts seawater from the slurry, separates the ore and stores it before loading it onto handysize bulkers.
In February 2017, TradeWinds reported that MAC had been subjected to a cyber attack.
Money stolen was reportedly intended for the MAC Goliath project.
