Golden opportunities for profits, corporate plunder for OceanaGold Corporation

TNC Watch / Issue No. 1 / August 2018

Aside from the largest transnational corporations (TNCs) in the mining industry, there are so-called “junior” mining corporations. They operate with relatively smaller capital, but sizeable enough to invest abroad for the extraction of mineral resources. Their entry into Southern countries is still subject to whether state actors have a blanket open-door policy to foreign investment. In many cases, grassroots movements still critique these “junior” mining companies as operating at the cost of social, economic, and political rights of peoples in the South.

An important example of this “junior” corporation is OceanaGold. An Australian-Canadian TNC, it operates in mineral extraction in parts of New Zealand, the United States and the Philippines.

Contents

• Introduction
• Past mergers, current shareholders, operations
• OceanaGold in the global South and the role of state actors: El Salvador and the Philippines
• Higher profits due to intensified extractive activities in the South
• Small but terrible: Are attacks on people's rights worth its weight in gold?
• People's resistance