TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Officials of a Kyrgyz environmental protection agency have averted the shutdown of Canadian miner Centerra Gold’s Kumtor mine on July 1 by approving the operation’s mine plan for the remainder of 2016, the company reported Monday.
The Kyrgyz Republic State Agency for Environmental Protection and Forestry had provided TSX-listed Centerra with all the necessary approvals for Kumtor’s 2016 annual mine plan to proceed uninterrupted.
Centerra advised that these permits included approval of the Kumtor project’s industrial safety and subsoil use, components of the 2016 annual mine plan, and the approvals of the maximum allowable emissions permit, the maximum allowable discharge permit, and the waste disposal permit.
Centerra, which operates Kyrgyzstan's biggest gold mine and economic dynamo, Kumtor, had been locked in a bitter dispute with the Central Asian nation's government over profit sharing and project ownership. Last month the company turned to international arbitration in the hopes of resolving the long-standing dispute.