Presidential candidate for the conservative National Integration Party (PIN in Spanish), Diego Castro, caused controversy in Costa Rica after he called environmentalist groups “eco-terrorists.”
Castro, who has been compared by local media to Donald Trump and Rodrigo Duterte, as well as accused of right-wing populism, said that if he wins the election, he would not yield to ecologists’ “petty demands” and would allow for the country’s oil and gold reserves to be exploited. “I know who they are, I’ve dealt with them and I’ve stopped them,” he said.
Costa Rica has a moratorium on fossil fuels extraction, which expires in 2021. The legal measure was enacted by former president Laura Chinchilla and ratified by her successor Luis Guillermo Solís. Congress also banned open-pit mining operations.
Colombia is synonymous with fine emerald, and production is believed to date back well over a thousand years. Over the centuries the beautiful verdant gemstone, which emerges from areas that are also a lush green, has been linked to violence and human exploitation. Nevertheless, the desire of the Colombian people to mine for this treasure and strike it rich has endured, with enough dreams coming true to drive their passion.
In recent years, industry changes have accelerated, perhaps more profoundly than ever before. While government ownership and regulation, criminal activity, and violence have affected production over the years, the industry’s greatest opportunities may still be ahead. Multinational companies are investing heavily in Colombian emerald mining, which has led to modernization.
The government’s position on emerald mining has also improved dramatically in this period. Calls for transparency and traceability have led to branding and a revamping of the industry’s image. The loose system of independent miners (figure 1) is seeing efforts at formalization. These landmark changes are occurring at a time when most of the country’s emerald reserves have yet to be mined.
Illegal gold molded into our wedding rings, dangling around our necks and hidden in our smartphones is polluting the rainforest with toxic chemicals and exploiting workers in Latin America.
Gold miners have stripped roughly 415,000 acres of South American tropical forest, an area twice as big as New York City, according to researchers at the University of Puerto Rico — and the rate of deforestation is only getting worse.
In Colombia, teenagers swim in mercury-filled pools of water as they use powerful hoses to suck up gold, an investigation by Massachusetts-based nonprofit Verité found. This week Pope Francis will bring his moral authority to the crisis when he visits Peru’s epicenter of illegal gold mining, Madre de Dios.
The Chicago drug dealers working for notorious Mexican gangster El Chapo had a big problem on their hands: What should they do with the millions of dollars in cash they earned from selling cocaine?
They bought gold. Tens of millions of dollars worth from pawnshops — rings, necklaces and watches. Then they had to find a place to fence it all.
More than a thousand miles away, in an industrial warehouse in South Florida, they found the perfect partner: an obscure gold-trading company called Golden Opportunities. El Chapo’s crew shipped the metal in dozens of FedEx deliveries to the Hallandale Beach company, according to federal court records.
BARBACOAS, COLOMBIA – The Black Hawk helicopters roared over a remote jungle in southwestern Colombia, ignoring the patchwork of emerald-colored coca fields that seemed to make easy targets.
Instead, they homed in on a yellow backhoe, far from the nearest village or road, tearing into a riverbank searching for a metal that has inspired dreamers and criminals since the Spanish quest for El Dorado: gold.
As the choppers hovered over the muddy clearing, heavily armed police, bristling with grenades, body armor and automatic rifles, rushed at the machine. The stunned backhoe operator fought back briefly, swinging the mechanical arm like a club, before running into the jungle amid a cloud of tear gas.
When Juan Granda ventured into Peru’s Amazon rainforest to score another illicit load of gold, he boasted that he felt like legendary Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar. “I’m like Pablo coming … to get the coke,” he told two co-workers in a text message in 2014.
A 36-year-old Florida State University graduate who once sold subprime loans, Granda was no cartel kingpin. But his offhand comparison was apt: Gold has become the secret ingredient in the criminal alchemy of Latin American narco-traffickers who make billions turning cocaine into clean cash by exporting the metal to Miami.
The previous year, Granda’s employer, NTR Metals, a South Florida precious-metals trading company, had bought nearly $1 billion worth of Peruvian gold supplied by narcos — and Granda and NTR needed more.
Canada’s Tahoe Resources (TSX:THO)(NYSE:TAHO) is laying off 250 employees, or roughly a quarter of the staff from its flagship Escobal silver mine, in Guatemala, as a legal battle to having the mining license for the site reinstated drags on.
The Vancouver-based company had to halt operations at the mine last July after the country’s Supreme Court provisionally ordered so following an appeal from environment and human rights organization CALAS. The group alleged the Ministry of Energy and Mines had not consulted with the Xinca indigenous people before awarding the license to Tahoe’s local unit, Minera San Rafael.
Tahoe says the Guatemalan Constitutional Court heard appeals of the Supreme Court’s decision to reinstate the Escobal mining license on Oct. 25, but has not issued a verdict of its own despite being required to do so within five days of the public hearing.
The Canadian Mining Hall of Fame was conceived by the late Maurice R. Brown, former editor and publisher of The Northern Miner, as a way to recognize and honour the legendary mine finders and builders of a great Canadian industry. The Hall was established in 1988. For more information about the extraordinary individuals who have been inducted into the Hall of Fame, please go to their home website:http://mininghalloffame.ca/
Few modern-era exploration geologists have made the transition to company builder and mine developer as successfully as Terry MacGibbon. He applied the expertise and experience gained over a 30-year career with nickel giant Inco to build four substantial mining companies: FNX Mining, Torex Gold Resources, TMAC Resources and INV Metals.
He acquired non-core assets from major producers for each of his companies — starting with past-producing properties in Ontario’s Sudbury Basin for FNX — and made a series of discoveries later developed into seven mines. Along the way, he earned a reputation as a financially astute entrepreneur, innovator, and allround positive role model for the Canadian mining industry.
Born in New Waterford, Nova Scotia, MacGibbon earned a BSc (Geology) from St. Francis Xavier University in 1968, before joining Inco’s exploration department. He was an early advocate of the Voisey’s Bay discovery in Labrador, later acquired by Inco, and supported other discoveries as he climbed the ranks culminating in him directing global exploration.
http://www.pendaproductions.com/ This video was produced by PENDA Productions, a full service production company specializing in Corporate Communications with a focus on Corporate Responsibility.
After leaving Inco in 1997, MacGibbon acquired five “non-core” pastproducing properties in the Sudbury Basin from his former employer for FNX, which went on to make eight discoveries and place five deposits into production. FNX was the best performer on the Toronto Stock Exchange from 2000 to 2010, when it merged with Quadra Mining to form Quadra FNX Mining. In 2012, Quadra FNX was sold to KGHM, a Polish copper mining giant, for $3.5 billion.
Sherritt International Corp.’s double-digit bond yields are beginning to lure investors, even as questions linger about whether the Canadian miner has unloaded enough debt and turned around its sputtering projects.
The Toronto-based firm restructured its Ambatovy mining joint venture in Madagascar last month, cutting debt by about C$1.3 billion ($1 billion) and ceding most of its stake in the money-losing business. But the nickel mine has never met production goals, and meanwhile an oil and gas venture with the Cuban state oil company has been delayed after failing to reach its first-round drilling target.
Strengthening commodity prices have spurred investors to push Sherritt’s bonds up from their 2017 lows, but skepticism is still reflected in the yield of nearly 11 percent, about twice the level of high-yield peers. In a world where credit spreads are at 10-year lows, the payout is too good to pass up for some investors.
This INNspired article is sponsored by VVC Exploration (TSXV:VVC). This article was written according to INN editorial standards to educate investors.
Mexico has a long and storied mining history that dates back to the Aztecs. The nation’s geology represents a treasure trove of natural resources, including gold, silver and copper.
The Sierra Madres region in Northern Mexico was home to many historic artisanal mining camps where precious metals and copper were mined close to surface.
Now, modern exploration technologies such as aerial drones and advanced geophysical surveys are enabling new exploitation in areas of known copper mineralization — much like the oil companies that have sparked a revolution in the country’s oil and gas sector, using modern drilling techniques to revitalize existing wells and add new zones in existing fields.
The future of BHP Billiton’s stake in the Samarco iron ore joint venture in Brazil is unlikely to be resolved quickly, as the iron ore giant and its co-owner Vale inch towards a restart of the operation.
Reports out of Brazil on Thursday suggested that Brazilian giant Vale and BHP were holding talks on the future structure of the Samarco venture, which has been shut since a deadly dam failure in November 2015.
A Bloomberg report suggested that one option could see Vale acquire Melbourne-based BHP’s half-share and taking full ownership of Samarco.
They offer steady jobs, but some miners would rather hunt stones on their own
AT THE bottom of a muddy basin surrounded by verdant mountains, Dora Alicia Hernández combs through black sludge and rock in the faint hope of finding an emerald valuable enough to lift her out of poverty. “All we need is one shiny stone,” she says, as rainclouds smother the mountains overhead. “Then we can get out of here.”
Alicia is seeking fortune near Muzo, a mountain town north of Bogotá that has attracted guaqueros (prospectors) from across Colombia since pre-colonial times. The region is renowned for both the quality and size of its emeralds.
Of the 20 that have sold at auction for more than $100,000 a carat, 19 were from Muzo or nearby. Guaqueros speak reverently of Fura, an 11,000-carat rock named after a mythical philandering wife who wept emeralds. Victor Carranza, who had started out as a guaquero and became Colombia’s emerald tsar, found it in 1999. As far as anyone knows, it has never been sold.
In the global rush to supply the electric-car revolution, lithium hot spot Argentina is grappling with a shortage of talent. Battery makers are depending on the South American nation’s high-altitude salt flats as a key new supply of the metal, with vast deposits and an investor-friendly government luring prospectors and developers.
Under President Mauricio Macri, Argentina has ambitions to become a lithium superpower, supplying as much as 45 percent of the market, up from about 16 percent now.
Projects have faced unpredictable weather and financing struggles. But perhaps the biggest barrier to development is a dearth of skilled workers.
The world’s renewed appetite for natural riches once again tests Latin America.
Demand is surging again for oil, minerals and grains – the basic goods to which Latin America`s fortunes have long been tethered. After a year of graft scandals and political whiplash, you can just about hear the sighs of collective relief. Or is that just a giant sucking sound?
Since the voyages of discovery, raw materials and farm goods have been Latin America’s blessing and its trap, filling official coffers but too often despoiling the environment and condemning economies to boom and bust.
Through last decade’s swoon, hopes ran high that China’s demand would help clients climb the value chain and become developed nations. Yet Latin America still relies on grains, minerals and raw energy for half its export revenues, the same share as three decades ago.
UYUNI, Bolivia (Reuters) – Bolivia hopes surging global lithium demand can lure foreign investors to the country where nearly a decade of state-led development has left output far short of goals for the metal, coveted by makers of batteries for devices from laptops to electric cars.
The poor South American nation boasts nearly a quarter of the world’s known resources of the world’s lightest metal. Still, production lags far behind neighboring Chile and Argentina. Bolivia hopes to sign a deal with at least one foreign partner to invest up to $750 million in factories to meet rising demand from China and other countries for lithium-ion batteries.
The country is eager to cash in on tightening supplies of lithium. Experts say spot prices have more than doubled to around $25,000 per ton from below $10,000 in 2015.
