Harmony’s 18-Year Wait: What Wafi-Golpu’s Delay Is Costing Morobe and PNG

“We’ve been continuously talking, but we’re not getting to a favourable outcome,” Harmony Gold chief executive Beyers Nel told Miningmx in March, describing his company’s attempt to secure a special mining lease for the Wafi-Golpu copper-gold deposit in Morobe Province.

Harmony has been trying to develop Wafi-Golpu for nearly 18 years, Miningmx reported, and the deposit makes up close to half of the South African miner’s mineral resources. Seven months after Nel spoke, the lease still has not been issued. On 26 October, The National of South Africa reported that Harmony’s 2026 integrated report describes the project “with engagement on the special mining lease continuing.”

Prime Minister James Marape has said the Government would present “a ‘take it or leave it’ position that reflects the best interest of Papua New Guinea,” he told Parliament in March, according to his office and The PNG Sun. Exepreneur found no public record that the position has been delivered.

What the State is asking for

The demand at the centre of the talks is a share of total project value. Marape’s office said in March that the State is targeting about 55 per cent of total benefit for Papua New Guinea, counting royalties, equity and other fiscal returns.

Most of the terms behind that figure were agreed in the April 2023 Framework MoU signed by the State, Harmony and Newcrest, whose Papua New Guinea assets Newmont now controls. The Prime Minister’s office set them out in September and October 2024. State equity is 30 per cent, with 10 per cent carried for Morobe Province and landowners. Royalties are 3 per cent with no deductions, and a 2 per cent fiscal stability tax sits on top of the full 30 per cent tax rate.

Harmony and Newcrest also committed an extra US$394 million for social and community infrastructure, alongside the Government’s K1.2 billion Infrastructure and Business Development grant, according to the same statements. The lease would run for 40 years. It would first be issued for 30 months. To keep it, the joint venture would have to complete front-end engineering design and reach a final investment decision inside that window.

In September 2019, then Commerce Minister Wera Mori told Reuters that Papua New Guinea wanted to keep 40 per cent of the gold produced at the mine. “They get 60% of the production, we get 40%,” Mori said.

In March 2025, Marape told Parliament that three key issues remained and that a letter to the chief executives of Harmony and Newmont said the Government would not compromise on them, The National reported. Exepreneur found no public disclosure, from either side, of what the three issues are.

Marape has pointed to Lihir to explain the hard line. He told Parliament the State had received limited corporate tax from that mine even with gold above US$3,000 an ounce, according to The National. Newmont has published its own figures. Lihir paid K441.5 million in corporate taxes between 2013 and 2023, the company said in September 2024, out of K3.2 billion in total taxes, levies and royalties, The National reported.

Equity funding is the other pressure point. In Davos in January, Marape said the State intends to take its 30 per cent. “The State must not be questioned about its ability to finance its equity,” he said, according to his office.

Two teams, one mandate

The State Negotiating Team is led by officials from Treasury, the Department of Mining and the State Solicitor’s Office. Dairi Vele chaired it at its 2024 and 2025 meetings with the Prime Minister, according to his office. Nel told Miningmx it holds the mandate to negotiate mining leases. Marape commended the team in March for defending Papua New Guinea’s position, his office said.

Beside it sits a second body. The Prime Minister’s office calls it a Peer Review Team, set up to assess whether the negotiations are fair and reasonable. Its members are former Chief Secretary Isaac Lupari, former minister Arthur Somare and Anthony Smaré, president of the PNG Chamber of Resources and Energy.

Harmony’s account of the review differs. Miningmx described it as a project review team convened by Marape to understand why Wafi-Golpu had not advanced, reporting to the negotiating team. Nel called it a third party seeking common ground, and he compared the two groups. “We believe the PRT; there are some individuals who are slightly more business-minded than those at the SNT,” he told Miningmx.

Whether the two bodies agree is not on the public record. Marape said in January that the review team’s findings were due before the end of that month, his office reported. In March he told Parliament the report “will be submitted shortly, after which the Government will present its final position to the investors.” Exepreneur’s checks of Prime Minister’s office releases, PNG and South African business media, and Harmony’s FY26 results and annual filing found no published findings and no public statement that the final position has gone to Harmony and Newmont.

Nel declined to tell Miningmx whether the process would reopen the 2023 MoU’s fiscal terms.

Deadlines that came and went

The joint venture lodged its lease application in August 2016, according to Business Advantage PNG.

In August 2023, Morobe Governor Luther Wenge said the lease would be signed that November, The National reported. Marape’s office said in October 2024 that the mine development contract and lease had to be finalised before PNG Investment Week in Sydney that December. In January 2025, Marape said the contract would be finalised in the first quarter, The National reported. A month later he said he wanted it done “within the next two to three weeks,” according to his office.

In March 2025 the target moved to 16 September, ahead of the 50th Independence anniversary, and Marape apologised to landowners and Morobe leaders for the delay, his office said.

Vele told RNZ in February 2025 that once agreements were signed, “within six to 12 months, we would hope [to] have boots on the ground in Morobe Province.”

Bulolo MP Sam Basil Jr asked in Parliament in March whether the project was being “warehoused,” and whether the Government would consider cancelling the licences if progress stayed stagnant, The PNG Bulletin reported. Marape replied that land boundary verification would not delay the wider negotiations, according to his office.

The lease is not the only gate. Harmony’s Form 20-F annual report for the year to June 2026, filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, says the project “remains subject to the finalisation of fiscal and regulatory arrangements with the PNG Government” and to “the outcome of proceedings concerning its environmental permit.” The filing does not name the proceedings.

In September 2021, The National reported that Deputy Chief Justice Ambeng Kandakasi had stayed the project’s environmental permit. The Morobe Governor and provincial government had sought judicial review of it over deep-sea tailings placement.

The same filing flags the draft PNG Mining Bill 2025, which would let the State acquire up to 30 per cent equity in mining projects with deferred payments, adjust royalties and ban riverine tailings. Harmony said those changes could have a material adverse effect if applied to its PNG operations and projects.

What the wait costs

Harmony’s 2018 feasibility update, released on 19 March 2018, put average annual output at 266,000 ounces of gold and 161,000 tonnes of copper over about 28 years. Initial capital was about US$2.8 billion and life-of-mine capital about US$5.4 billion.

Miningmx’s March report cited different 2018 figures, 250,000 ounces of gold, 180,000 tonnes of copper and a 26-year copper mine life. Exepreneur has used the numbers in Harmony’s own release.

That gold output alone is about 40 per cent more than Harmony’s operating PNG mine, Hidden Valley, which produced 189,818 ounces in the year to June 2026, according to Harmony’s FY26 results. Wafi-Golpu would add 161,000 tonnes of copper a year on top of that.

At the conservative prices Harmony uses to report Wafi-Golpu’s reserves, US$1,200 an ounce for gold and US$3.00 a pound for copper, according to its FY26 results, one year of average planned output is worth about US$1.38 billion. That is Exepreneur’s calculation: about US$319 million of gold and US$1.06 billion of copper. Each year the lease slips pushes that output a year further out. Harmony’s 20-F warns that delays may “defer expected cash flows, increase funding requirements and reduce project net present value.”

In 2015, the joint venture targeted first production in 2020, Business Advantage PNG reported. The 2018 study puts first ore milled at about 4.75 years from the grant of the lease. Miningmx reported that a lease awarded in 2026 would mean production no earlier than 2031.

The 10 per cent carried equity and the US$394 million infrastructure commitment depend on a signed contract. So do about 2,600 construction jobs, an estimate by the Mineral Resources Authority cited by Business Advantage PNG. Wenge said in August 2025 that the province had drafted an agreement with lease-area and pipeline landowners and told Harmony and Newmont its position, The National reported.

Harmony’s FY27 capital guidance excludes Wafi-Golpu, and the company describes the project as “an important source of long-term optionality,” according to its FY26 results. Its copper spending has gone to Australia. Miningmx reported that Harmony spent US$1.3 billion buying the Eva Copper project and the CSA mine, plus at least US$1.55 billion in development costs, mostly at Eva.

On the 2018 study’s clock, ore reaches the mill four and three-quarter years after the lease is granted. The 30-month window to a final investment decision starts the same day. Neither clock has started.