Gag Island is one of the

Raja Ampat Islands Raja Ampat, or the ''Four Kings'', is an archipelago located off the northwest tip of Bird's Head Peninsula on the island of New Guinea, in Indonesia's Southwest Papua province. It comprises over 1,500 small islands, cays, and shoals surrounding ...

in the

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

n province of

Southwest Papua Southwest Papua ( id, Papua Barat Daya) is a province of Indonesia, and is a fraction of Western New Guinea. Despite being named southwest, it is a misnomer and this province is actually located in the northwest edge of Papua. The area that belo ...

. It is situated some 150 kilometres west of

Sorong Sorong is the largest city and the capital of the Indonesian province of Southwest Papua. The city is located on the western tip of the island of New Guinea with its only land borders being with Sorong Regency. It is the gateway to Indonesia's ...

, the provincial capital. The island's population is approximately 450 living at Gambier Bay. This community was established in the early 1960s by people moving to the island in the hope of finding work with

nickel Nickel is a chemical element with symbol Ni and atomic number 28. It is a silvery-white lustrous metal with a slight golden tinge. Nickel is a hard and ductile transition metal. Pure nickel is chemically reactive but large pieces are slow to ...

exploration ventures at that time.

Economy

Gag Island represents one of the largest

reserve in

having estimated reserves of 240 million tonnes of ore grading 1.35%

. The 240 million tonnes of ore contains 3.24 million tonnes of nickel metal. In 1996 the PT Gag Nikel company was formed as a joint venture agreement between

BHP BHP Group Limited (formerly known as BHP Billiton) is an Australian multinational mining, metals, natural gas petroleum public company that is headquartered in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. The Broken Hill Proprietary Company was founded ...

(75%) and Indonesia's state-owned mining company,

Aneka Tambang PT Aneka Tambang Tbk, colloquially known as Antam, is an Indonesian mining company. The company primarily produces gold and nickel, and is the largest producer of nickel in Indonesia. Until 2017, Antam was a directly state-owned company, before i ...

(25%). A contract of work was awarded in February 1998, and a program of exploration and preliminary evaluation was conducted. In late 1999, the

Government of Indonesia The term Government of Indonesia ( id, Pemerintah Indonesia) can have a number of different meanings. At its widest, it can refer collectively to the three traditional branches of government – the executive branch, legislative branch and ju ...

enacted a

forestry law Forestry laws govern activities in designated forest lands, most commonly with respect to forest management and timber harvesting. Forestry laws generally adopt management policies for public forest resources, such as multiple use and sustai ...

prohibiting open cast mining in "protection forest" areas. The forest on Gag Island was subsequently reclassified as "protection forest", stopping any mining activity on the island. Mining had resumed in Gag since 2017, following an exploration phase.

References

Sources

"Working for a Sustainable Future"

Raja Ampat Islands {{SwPapua-geo-stub