South African company dropped
Norway said on Wednesday it had excluded South African DRD Gold Limited from the portfolio of the Government Pension Fund.

The Government Pension Fund - Global is comprised of the Government Petroleum Fund and the National Insurance Scheme Fund. Commonly known as the "oil fund", it invests Norway's oil and gas wealth in foreign stocks and bonds for future generations. It is one of the world's biggest pension funds.

Norway's ministry of finance said in a statement that it excluded DRD Gold, which has mining operations in Papua New Guinea, from the fund's "investment universe" on the basis of a recommendation from the fund's Council on Ethics.

"According to the Council on Ethics, the Fund runs an unacceptable risk of contributing to severe environmental damages by continuing to invest in the company," the ministry said in a statement.

A brief initial statement did not give details of sales of DRD Gold shares, but a fuller version said the fund had held about NOK 4 million Norwegian (USD 663,200) worth of the stock at end-2006 but had sold it all by the end of March.

"The divestment process is now concluded," the finance ministry said.

Norway said it was the second time that the fund had excluded a company's shares for environmental reasons. In June 2006, it announced it ejected mining group Freeport-McMoRan Copper & Gold for environmental reasons, also blaming it for polluting a river on the Indonesian part of New Guinea.

Norway has earlier excluded defense contractors engaged in producing nuclear weapons from the fund, and last year it sold off its holdings in the world's biggest retailer, Wal-Mart of the United States, for ethical reasons, accusing it of abuses of human and labor rights.

Interesting. How many mining companies are there at Tolokuma? Was this DRD Gold limited there all along? I thought Emperor mines Ltd was the current miner.

DRD and Tolokuma went into a share sale and purchase agreement some years back..DRD owns appox. US$200m worth of Emperor shares. Basically DRD owns Emperor.

Thanks for the clarification. Maybe they can clean up their act first before the Global mine fund can reconsider investing in the company.

AUSTRALIAN junior Emperor Mines has signed a conditional agreement to sell its 20% interest in the massive Porgera gold mine in PNG to majority partner Barrick Gold for $US250 million.

This may happen within four months. Barrick will now own 95% of the mine. Mineral resource Enga owns the remaining 5%.

Emperor boss says the will continue to improve on Tolukuma mines.

Why didnt the PNG government bid to buy the 20%?

20%, I think government wasn't that interested, however, i do have a feeling that the new petromin company is formed to take on that responsibility. Idea is good but it seems the regulation in place for petromins operations have many people confused.

petromin, is that like oilmin?