Barrick Gold Problems in the americas
In Reno Nevada, Barrick Gold failed to report that it released toxic
chemicals including mercury, cyanide and lead. The Dominican Republic
asked for a review of a contract it had with the Canadian mining company
that could threaten the government.
The Chilean Story
A month prior to the Atacama Water Board in Chile was to request that
Barrick Gold Mines Corporation should be fined for not fulfilling its
promise to protect the glaciers within the borders of its bi-national
Chile-Argentina project, called Pascua Lama, Barrick was fined in Reno,
Nevada for releasing toxic chemical substances.
Days after a Chilean court
upheld the injunction
rendering their multi-billion dollar investment indefinitely stalled,
Barrick Gold executives said in a shareholders meeting in Toronto that
they might abandon the Pascua-Lama project altogether.
Three high-level executives from Barrick's South America branch resigned
Thursday, further complicating the mining giant’s South American
operations. The resignations include the company’s regional president,
Guillermo Caló. Robert Mayne-Nicholls and Rodrigo Jiménez, the director
of operations and the regional vice president, also announced their
departures.
In the Canadian company’s annual report, Chairman
Peter Munk lamented the unanticipated financial issues at the mine,
though he prioritized its rebound.
“We suffered a significant
delay and a major cost overrun at our flagship Pascua-Lama project on
the border of Chile and Argentina,” Munk said
in the report.
“Since that fact surfaced — so unexpectedly — the main focus of our
company, at every level, has been directed at ensuring that this project
will meet its new cost and schedule estimate.”
A 48 percent
decline in the company’s share price and disappointing gold prices have
characterized a challenging year for Barrick, Reuters reported
Wednesday.
The court of appeals in Chile’s northern Copiapó Region granted an indigenous community’s
request to suspend
the mine’s operations April 10. Minera Nevada, S.P.A., the Barrick
subsidiary operating Pascua-Lama, has deflected allegations of negligent
environmental behavior for most of its decade-long existence on the
border between Argentina and Chile.
The American Story
According to the Huffington Post, the Environmental Protection Agency
ordered three mines in northern Nevada to pay a total of $618,000 for
failing to report this release of toxic chemicals, including cyanide,
lead and mercury from 2005-08.
All three mines are subsidiaries of the Toronto-based Barrick Gold
Corp. — Barrick Cortez Inc.'s Cortez Gold Mine near Crescent Valley,
Barrick Gold US Inc.'s Ruby Hill Gold Mine near Eureka and Homestake
Mining Co.'s Bald Mountain Gold Mine near the Ruby Lake National
Wildlife Refuge, according to the Huffington Post.
The three agreed to pay a total of $278,000 in fines and spend an
additional $340,000 on an environmentally beneficial project as part of a
settlement for allegedly underestimating reports of their toxic release
inventory required under the federal Emergency Planning and Community
Right-to-Know Act, EPA officials said.
"Cyanide, lead and mercury used at these mines have the potential to
pose a health threat," said Jared Blumenfeld, EPA's regional
administrator for the Pacific Southwest Region, based in San Francisco.
"We insist on accurate reporting of chemical releases so that citizens
have a clear idea of the risk from the facilities near their
communities," said Blumenfeld.
The supplemental project will be conducted at the Cortez mine to
identify the metal compounds formed in its oxide mill process and test
methods to verify the quantities of new chemical compounds manufactured
during the process.
The companies also agreed to perform audits at all other U.S. mining
operations Barrick owns in Nevada and Montana and to determine if any
reporting violations occurred and if so pay a $10,000 penalty per
violation up to a total of $250,000
"Nonetheless, to achieve regulatory certainty regarding its TRI
obligations, Barrick has agreed to enter into a settlement agreement
with the EPA," said Louis Schack, director of communications for Barrick
Gold of North America, based in Salt Lake City, Utah.
"Crumbs for your gold, the dominican story”
Meanwhile, in the Dominican Republic, independent deputy Carlos Gabriel
García commented on Barrick Gold’s Manuel Rocha’s insistence that the
government must comply with its agreement with Barrick. Gabriel García
referred to this as “challenging” the national interest.
According to the Dominican portal,
El Nacional, Deputy García
believes that Rocha aims to silence the domestic sectors that have
spoken out in favor of revising the agreement with Barrick, in which the
Dominican government “will receive crumbs in exchange for its gold.”
He said it seems that Rocha is unaware that the company Place Dome was
the one that won the bid to explore for gold and that the agreement
signed back in 2002 was beneficial to the Dominican government.
The author of the draft resolution of the Chamber of Deputies that asks
the government for a revision of the agreement with Barrick, believes
that “this agreement cannot be above the interests of the country.”
Rocha, Barrick Gold representative in the DR, defended the 2009 gold
exploration agreement with the government. “Since the beginning, we have
been very clear that this contract was negotiated in a process that
went on for nearly 2 years, between the government and the company along
with an expert brought in from Europe, France specifically, and from
the Inter-American Development Bank,” he said.
But in fact that gold exploration agreement is a big scam , with so many picky details that dominicans will never see a dime out of the mine, and the dominicans see themselves in the eyes of Chile, where Barrick Gold spend
16 years exploiting a Chilean mines, and Barrick Gold
NEVER pay a dime out of it.
The Chamber of Deputies decided that three commissions will present a
report on the agreement with Barrick Gold. Mateo Aquino Febrillet,
Rector of the Autonomous University of Santo Domingo (UASD), is one of
the illustrious Dominicans who also supports the revision of the
agreement.
In the Dominican Republic, meanwhile, the soaring price of gold has the
government wanting more from the Pueblo Viejo mine, which has
20 million
ounces of gold reserves as well as silver, copper and zinc.
Barrick
owns 60 percent of the venture and Goldcorp Inc. of Vancouver, British
Columbia, owns 40 percent. The companies reopened the mine last year
after investing nearly $4 billion, the largest direct foreign investment
ever in the Dominican Republic, and have estimated it will eventually
pay about $7 billion to the government.
But President Danilo
Medina and Congress
have yet to see any money. They want to rewrite the
25-year contract, which promises royalties only after the two Canadian
companies recoup their investment and the venture's profits rise above
10 percent.
Barrick's executives
"have to change their attitude, because if they don't, the president has
told them: 'Either you negotiate or more taxes will be imposed,'" said
Ramon Peralta, Medina's administrative minister.
President Danilo Medina’s "prudent deadline" issued to Barrick Gold
Corp to renegotiate the gold mining contract expires today and has the
population on edge awaiting the outcome of the standoff between the
government and the Canada-based company which operates the facility at
Pueblo Viejo (central), El Caribe reports.
It said Medina is expected to refer to the topic this week before leaving for the summit in Costa Rica.
The chief executive is expected to announce the result of the talks
before month’s end, according to Presidency Administrative minister José
Ramón Peralta.
Medina’s deadline to Barrick Gold formed part of his speech to
Congress on February 27, and has since been accompanied by the retention
of several shipments of ore at Customs, on violations including the
miner’s mistaken ship manifest of the precious metal’s
country-of-origin ( smuggling).
In country after country, the world's biggest miners are facing new
environmental standards, confronting changing tax and currency laws and
defending long-term contracts they thought were written in stone.
Barrick gold only provides misery and toxic pollution to the communities were they go.They use tons of cyanide and mercury in their operations for gold extraction, regardless of poor peasants, crops, river and cattle in the exploited areas.
The situation now is just unbearable for the affected communities..And there are a lot of riots every week in different part of Dominican republic because of that.
They have a long history of scams, heavy pollution, illness, bribery and heavy metal contamination.
In a small island like Dominican Republic the consequences are simply lethal...
They are just destroying the island, were no other kind of human, vegetable or animal kind of life can surface out of there in any circumstances...
Say no to Barrick Gold TODAY !
