Crystallex International Corp. says it will do 'whatever is necessary' to protect its shareholders' rights and move along the Las Cristinas mine in Venezuela, despite comments by the country's environment minister that open-pit mining would be blocked.
Last week, the Venezuelan minister said the country wouldn't allow open-pit mining. That followed similar comments in a letter last month by an official in the ministry's permits office, which the company disclosed on April 30.
Crystallex said it still believes the new position is in conflict with ministry approval of a Las Cristinas environmental impact study, construction compliance bond and environmental tax, as well as National Assembly directives.
'We don't think this is the end of the story, but certainly we've got some obstacles that we're working to deal with,' said Richard Marshall, vice-president of investor relations at Crystallex. He said the company believes Venezuelan policy, law, decrees and resolutions are all supportive of its position, and noted iron ore, nickel and bauxite are all mined through open pits.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What's the big issue for us with open pit mining in Venezuela, Roy?
ReplyDeleteThere's quite a lot of it done in the USA, not so much in the UK, I believe. And here it is ALWAYS an environmental nightmare, sometimes involving literally leveling a mountain, dumping the spoil into the valleys below and permanently polluting all adjacent water sources with such pleasant stuff as arsenic.
Anyway, Venezuela needs to stop being a mere resource provider for other countries if she wishes to progress technically, and thus socially. She is big enough and wealthy enough to build up her own industrial base.
These European, Canadian and US multinational mining and other resource extraction firms are bad news -- always into at least corrupting local officials if not into fostering outright subversion and even financing death squads.
Maybe Venezuela is better off just now leaving some of these minerals in the earth rather than trading them for rapidly depreciating dollars which only accelerate their domestic inflation. Exploiting an excuse that public officials need time to build up an environmental code might be a good way to do this without unduly damaging further their relations with the industrial nations.