Relief may be finally on the way for stalled Venezuelan gold projects

After months of regulatory and bureaucratic limbo, the Venezuelan government may be lighting a fire under its ministries to reconcile and adopt policies that will allow the resumption of mining in the southeast Bolivar State.

By Dorothy Kosich

Domestic news reports over the weekend suggest that the Venezuelan government is urging both its Ministries of Basic Industries and Mines (Mibam) and the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (MinAmb) to agree on policies that will allow the resumption of gold-mining activities in the southeast of Bolivar State.

Caracas-based newspaper El Nacional quoted Merly Garcia, Vice Minister of Environmental (MinAmb) management and administration, who said the Venezuela will limit gold mining in Bolivar state to a 4 million hectare drainage area of the Rio Cuyuni near the mining town of Las Claritas and east over the border into neighboring Guyana.

The newspaper said that the government will limit mining activities to the jungle region of the Imataca Forest, according to a report by Bloomberg News.

On Sunday, VHeadline-Venezuela News reported that Venezuelan government has called on Mibam and MinAmb to agree to policies that will allow the resumption of gold mining in the area where Crystallex's Las Cristinas and Gold Reserve's Brisas gold projects are located.

Last June MinAmb Minister Yubiri Ortega de Carrizales said that open-pit mining would be banned in the Imataca Rainforest Reserve, which stalled both Las Cristinas and Brisas. President Hugo Chavez issued a decree in 2002 which set aside special areas within the reserve to permit hardrock mining. As a result nearly US$ 500 million has been invested to develop gold projects in the area.

VHeadline suggested that if the MinAmb Minister "was to have the last word, the nation's valuable mining industries in minerals and precious stones (diamonds, emeralds) would have remained paralyzed or continue to be at the mercy of ‘garimpieros' and/or small-scale miners who have traditionally polluted the fragile environment with mercury and other poisonous catalysts.