Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro met representatives of local and international companies at the country’s central bank, in Caracas, last week to discuss prospecting and exploitation of his country’s Orinoco mining arc, a non-oil area covering 114 000 km2 from Guayana Esequiba to Colombia. Maduro noted that more than 130 companies from 35 countries were interested in projects to extract gold, copper, diamonds, coltan, iron-ore and bauxite. Several memorandums of understanding were signed, including one with Canadian company Gold Reserve, which is to invest $5-billion.