The gold exploration area planned by the Canadian company Globex Mining Enterprises Inc. in Gondomar, Peñafiel and Paredes, in the district of Porto, was reduced from 70 to 42 square kilometers, a project source revealed to Lusa this Wednesday.
Called “Valongo,” the project initially included the municipality of the same name, but due to unspecified “problems” the company reduced the prospecting and research area, explained Rui Fernandes, representative of the Canadian mining company in the public clarification sessions that begin the week in Peñafiel.
In total, according to Rui Fernandes, there will be 15 sessions distributed among the parishes and headquarters of the three municipalities involved.
The project was in public consultation between November 13 and December 27, 2023 and had 27 participations, including opinions from the four municipalities, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Northern Regional Development and Coordination Commission.
Regarding the reservations presented in several of the opinions, specifically by the municipalities, he explained that “prospecting and research is not exploration, but trying to discover underground what exists and if its exploration is profitable.”
“Once the contract is signed [de prospeção e pesquisa]In the first phase, what we will do is study the area, taking advantage of the fact that the company has more sophisticated equipment than those used by previous companies that carried out exploration,” he added.
From paper to reality, Rui Fernandes estimates that prospecting will not begin before June 2025, a time that he hopes will elapse between the delivery of the final report that follows the clarification sessions and the expected approval by the Secretary of State and the Council General of Energy. and Geology (DGEG), which will culminate with the signing of the contract that authorizes the transfer to the land.
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 municipality, the guarantees they can have from the company.” .
“The work plan includes three years of prospecting plus two extensions, that is, five years to study the area. Assuming all goes well, the next step will be to deliver a final report to the DGEG. If it is accepted and we want to continue, since this depends on the mining policies of each government, we will request an environmental impact study that could take two years,” said Rui Fernandes.
According to the company representative, “in the best of cases and considering the possibility that there is a part of that area that is profitable, it will take more than 10 years to start exploration.”
Regarding the reservations presented by the municipalities in the public consultation, he stated that “they are due to the fact that they are poorly informed about what prospecting and research and exploration are, which leads them to think that the exploration begins the next day, and They ask questions that are not extemporaneous.”
“There is a very wide range of opinions, but I still say that municipalities put the cart before the horse. The city councils are giving a lot of importance to nothing, because they do not understand nor are they prepared to understand the work that is going to be done and whoever asked them for their opinion did not explain anything to them,” criticized the speaker.
In the prior consultation carried out with the municipalities, only Peñafiel admitted to having issued a favorable opinion, “as long as all recommendations of good practices for prospecting and research work are safeguarded”, while Paredes invoked “technical information issued by the Directorate of Urban Planning and Management and the Pelouro da Cultura” to justify the “unfavorable opinion” and Gondomar announced that it will maintain the “unfavorable opinion” until it is 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 in the same direction, with the municipality understanding that “it is not justified to assign new prospecting research rights to a territory where the issue of mining exploration of the aforementioned mineral deposits is framed by the municipality and is perceived by the population as part of the cultural heritage, specifically archaeological.”
In response to the opinion of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food that, in addition to the warnings issued by the intervention zone that partially affects the National Agricultural Reserve, drew attention to the fact that the project study area “intersects its entire extension to the Demarcated Region of Green Wines,” declared Rui Fernandes: “he thought for exploration and not for prospecting.”
Source: Observadora
