Porto, Portugal, Oct. 30, 2024 (Lusa) - The gold prospecting area planned by the Canadian company Globex Mining Enterprises Inc. in Gondomar, Penafiel and Paredes, in the district of Porto, in northern Portugal, has been reduced from 70 to 42 square kilometres, a source from the project told Lusa on Wednesday.
Called ‘Valongo’, the project initially included the district of the same name, but due to unspecified ‘problems’ the company reduced the prospecting and research area, explained Rui Fernandes, the Canadian mining company's representative ahead of the public information sessions starting next week in Penafiel.
In all, according to Rui Fernandes, there will be 15 sessions distributed between the parishes and town centres of the three districts involved.
The project was under public consultation between 13 November and 27 December 2023 and had 27 contributions, including opinions from the four municipalities, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Northern Regional Coordination and Development Commission.
Regarding the reservations presented in several of the comments, particularly by the municipalities, he explained that "prospecting and research is not exploration, but rather trying to find out what is underground and whether it is profitable to exploit it".
"Once the [prospecting and research] contract is signed, in the first phase what we will do is study the area, using the fact that the company has more sophisticated equipment than that used by previous companies that have carried out prospecting," he added.
From paper to reality, Rui Fernandes estimates that prospecting won't begin until June 2025, which is how long he expects it to take between the delivery of the final report following the clarification sessions and the expected approval by the Secretary of State and the Directorate-General for Energy and Geology (‘DGEG’), which will culminate in the signing of the contract authorising the company to go into the field.
In the sessions, he said, they will explain "what they are going to do, who the company is, the object of the study, the study area in each parish and in each district, the guarantees they can have from the company".
"In the work plan there are three years of prospecting plus two years of extension, which means five years to study the area. Assuming everything goes well, the next step will be to submit a final report to the DGEG. If it's accepted and we want to continue, as this depends on the mining policies of each government, we'll ask for an environmental impact study, which could take two years," said Rui Fernandes.
According to the company's representative, "in the best case scenario and considering the possibility of there being a piece of that area that is profitable, we will have to wait more than 10 years to start exploitation".
Regarding the reservations put forward by the municipalities in the public consultation, he said that "they must be ill-informed about what prospection and research and exploration are, which leads them to think that exploration starts the next day, and they ask questions that are premature".
"There is a very wide range of opinions, but I still say that the municipalities are putting the cart before the horse. The municipalities are making a storm in a teacup, because they neither understand nor are prepared to understand the work that is going to be done, and those who asked them for their opinion haven't explained anything to them," criticised the presenter.
In the prior consultation with the municipalities, only Penafiel agreed to issue a favourable opinion, "as long as all the best practice recommendations for prospecting and research work are safeguarded", while Paredes invoked "technical information issued by the Planning and Urban Management Division and the Culture Department" to justify the "unfavourable opinion" and Gondomar announced that it would maintain the "unfavourable opinion" until it was presented with the "respective Mining Plan that allows the impact of the concession to be inferred in the first instance".
In Valongo, the decision was along the same lines, with the municipality taking the view that "there is no justification for granting new prospecting rights for a region where the theme of mining the mineral deposits referred to is covered by the municipality and is perceived by the public as part of the cultural heritage, particularly archaeological heritage".
In response to the Ministry of Agriculture and Food's opinion which, in addition to the warnings made because the area of intervention falls partly within the National Agricultural Reserve, drew attention to the fact that the project's study area "intersects the entire Demarcated Vinho Verde Region", Rui Fernandes stated: "it gave an opinion for exploration and not for prospecting".
JFO/AYLS // AYLS
Lusa
