The Polish Geological and Mining Law (The Act) determines two types of mineral deposit ownership: State Treasury Ownership (STO) and Land Ownership (LO). The Act introduces the term - mining usufruct (term adequate to mining lease) that concerns extracting of STO or geological activity in rock mass belonging to the State. The Minister of Environment, on behalf of the State and with the exclusion of other persons, can benefit from the subject of mining properties or dispose of its right to STO exclusively by establishing mining usufruct. The establishment of mining usufruct shall take place in the form of a written agreement between the State and entrepreneur and requires paying predetermined remuneration to the State. The authors conclude that the Act contains imprecise regulations concerning the lower limit of land property. This causes numerous difficulties in recognizing which parts of land property belong to the State Treasury and which belong to the land owner. The authors suggest that it is necessary to differentiate in the Act two kinds of activities and consequently two types of agreement between the State and entrepreneur: 1) agreement of mining usufruct, and 2) agreement of geological usufruct.
The importance and the role of minerals in the economy of a country or the world is highlighted by the use of the following terms: scarce mineral, critical mineral, and strategic mineral. The validity of the raw material in the economic processes and knowledge about the sources of its acquisition, access barriers, and the shaping of prices on the domestic and international market allow the development of an action strategy. The strategy must take into account the objective of the action, time horizon, the kind of the instruments that need to be used, and the scope of international cooperation. The importance of the raw material for the country is not only the volume of turnover and volume of production obtained thanks to its application. There are also historical, cultural and social reasons for its importance. The authors present arguments for another meaning of the term – mineral criticality. They also point out the linguistic differences between the term “criticality” in Polish and English. They propose to consider water, medicinal raw materials, some rock resources and amber as critical raw materials for various reasons.
PL
Znaczenie i rola kopalin w gospodarce kraju lub świata przejawia się w stosowaniu różnych określeń: „kopalina deficytowa”, „kopalina krytyczna”, „kopalina strategiczna”. Ważność surowca w procesach gospodarczych oraz wiedza o źródłach jego pozyskiwania, barierach dostępu, kształtowaniu się cen na rynku krajowym i zagranicznym pozwalają na opracowanie strategii działania państwa. Strategia musi uwzględniać cel działania, horyzont czasowy, rodzaj instrumentów koniecznych do wprowadzenia i stosowania oraz zakres współpracy międzynarodowej. Znaczenie surowca dla kraju wynika nie tylko z wielkości obrotów surowcem i wielkość produkcji uzyskanej dzięki jego wykorzystaniu. Określa to również jego znaczenie ze względów historycznych, kulturowych i społecznych. Autorzy przedstawiają argumenty przemawiające za innym znaczeniem terminu „krytyczność surowców mineralnych”. Wskazują również na różnice językowe pomiędzy znaczeniem terminu „krytyczność” w języku polskim i angielskim. Proponują, aby za surowce krytyczne z różnych względów uznać wodę, surowce lecznicze, niektóre surowce skalne czy bursztyn.
For 60 years, the Polish Geological Institute as a geological survey has been preparing special studies on prospective mineral resources. During this time the title, form, content, model of presented data have been changed. Currently, the study is edited as “Balance of Prospective Mineral Resources of Poland”. The knowledge about mineral resources has a fundamental importance for the national mineral security and rational decisions concerning the country’s economic strategy. The authors present the evolution of methodology, scope and significance of the “Balance...”. The last edition of “Balance...” in 2020 is a comprehensive scientific monograph (citing over 1700 published and unpublished sources) containing information about over 50 major minerals, as well as marine minerals from Baltic Sea.
Studies on Baltic nodules have been undertaken since the1920s. In the 1970sand 1980s, the Polish Geological Institute - National Research Institute conducted researches on the bottom sediments of the Baltic Sea, which allowed identifying the regions of occurrence of Fe-Mn nodules in the southern part of the Baltic Sea (Mojski, 1989-1994). Nodules from the Polish Baltic Sea Zone are the least studied element of the marine environment. So far, there is a lack of information on environmental-geological conditions of formation and occurrence of nodules, their metal resources and deposit potential. The Fe-Mn nodules may be a valuable source of information on the contamination of the Baltic Sea water and bottom sediments. In cooperation between the Institute of Oceanography of the University ofGdañsk and the Polish Geological Institute-NRI, two research cruises were carried out in August and September 2020 on a 5 X 5 km testing ground in the Gotland-Gdańsk Threshold region. The seabed surface was profiled using multibeam echo sounders and a side-scan sonar. A hundred samples of Fe-Mn nodules, 25 samples of surface sediments associated with the nodules, and25 samples of clay rocks underlain by marine sediments were collected. The extensive documentary material will enable, for the first time, to estimate the nodule resources and determine the regularity of their occurrence.
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