The new BHP Billiton project, or Borneo's Organgun.

Defenders of nature from the international organization "Friends of the Earth" are concerned that the Indomet project of the largest Australian company BHP Billiton will violate the ecosystem of the central Borneo, inhabited by rare species of orangutan.

“The project requires cutting down significant volumes of forests in the Barito basin, in the province of Kalimantan. These forests are sensitive to any changes and complete biological diversity are under the threat of disappearance. Many areas of this area have never been studied, so we can lose many species of living organisms and plants not known to science, ”says Nick McClin, a spokesman for an environmental organization.

“In my native village, we saw the depressing consequences of gold mining in the Barito basin,” says Arya Rumpes from the Friends of the Earth in Kalimantan, “if the BHP continues to use open coal mines, this will become a catastrophe for local residents and the fragile ecosystem of the entire region.”

Billiton, according to the INDOMET project, plans to extract 1 million tons of coal coal in 2014 in Borneo and increase volumes of up to 10 million tons per year in the future.

“Our plans do not include coal mining in the forest massifs of Central Kalimantan, under protection. Any development of the mining industry in the Central and Eastern Kalimantan will anticipate a detailed environmental and social expertise of the consequences. We will conduct appropriate research and receive permission of ecological commissions before we start any activity in the region, ”the VNR company said in the official message.