By Peter Ehrhard

February 13, 2019 - This spring, Missouri S&T will offer professional development for geoscientists and mining, geological, metallurgical and other engineers to comply with new ethics and regulatory standards set by the U.S. Securities & Exchange Commission’s (SEC) updated mining property disclosure rules.

Missouri S&T professor Kwame Awuah-Offei spent a year and a half in Washington, helping the Securities and Exchange Commission write proposed new mining regulations.

Photo By Sam O’Keefe/Missouri S&T

A conference, titled “Public Reporting of Exploration Results, Mineral Resources and Reserves,” will be held April 9-10 at the Millennium Student Center, located on the University of Missouri-St. Louis campus. Dr. Kwame Awuah-Offei, associate professor and interim director of mining engineering at Missouri S&T, will lead the seminar.

This professional development opportunity is for mid- to senior-level engineers and geoscientists in roles such as chief engineer, resource manager, exploration manager or technical services manager/engineer, and those who will soon be in such roles.

“This course work is designed to help professionals comply with industry standards, particularly the SEC’s Regulation S-K subpart 1300,” says Awuah-Offei. “At the end of the course, participants will be able to report exploration results, mineral resources and mineral reserves per the new SEC standards.”

Awuah-Offei recently worked with the SEC from early February 2015 to mid-August 2016 to craft guidelines on disclosures on mine property and payments by publicly traded mining companies. The past mining property disclosure rules had been in place for 30 years, and the new ones — designed to bring the United States more in line with international standards — should last at least that long, according to Awuah-Offei.

Simplified, the new rules state that a company must disclose all of the payments it makes “to further the commercial development” of minerals, oil and gas. These include taxes, royalties, licenses and bonuses, among many others. The rule also allows a company to aggregate projects as long as they work toward a common end.

For more information about the conference, visit miningreporting.mst.edu. Register for the conference by contacting Missouri S&T’s professional and continuing education by emailing pce@mst.edu or calling 573-341-6222.