Photo by: Reuters
TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Chile's Environmental Court ruled on Monday that the Pascua-Lama project straddling the Chilean/Argentinian border had not damaged glaciers within the project's area of influence.
Barrick reaffirmed its commitment to work with stakeholders and local communities in Chile to advance Pascua-Lama in an environmentally responsible manner, respecting its legal and regulatory requirements.
The Pascua-Lama team was currently focused on resolving the project's outstanding legal and regulatory hurdles, and the completion of a new execution plan to optimise remaining construction activities and reduce ongoing project costs.
"Preserving and protecting glaciers from harm is essential to the work we do every day at Pascua-Lama. That is why Barrick worked with leading independent experts and glaciologists to develop and implement one of the most rigorous glacier monitoring programmes anywhere in the world,” Barrick's executive director for Chile, Eduardo Flores, explained.
Pascua-Lama's comprehensive glacier monitoring programme captured data from 27 points and provided results directly to regulatory authorities.
Chile's environmental regulator, known as the SMA, fined Barrick $16-million in May 2013 for not complying with some of the country's environmental requirements for its colossal gold/silver project.
But then the country's Environment Court found that the fines were not properly determined and, subsequently, the Supreme Court said it would not hear an appeal by the Canadian miner.
That left the door open for the SMA to re-evaluate the fines it previously imposed.
At one point, the project was Barrick’s biggest new development project, but development was halted in October 2013 after Barrick had spent more than $5-billion.
The project had been beleaguered by political opposition, permitting issues, labour unrest, cost overruns and a failing gold price.