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Venezuelan government will claim all domestic gold production
Chavez Decrees Nationalization of Gold Industry Amid Surging Bullion Price
By Nathan Crooks and Corina Rodriguez Pons
Bloomberg News
Monday, September 19, 2011
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-09-19/chavez-decrees-nationalization-...
CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez today ordered the nationalization of the gold industry and gave companies 90 days to form joint ventures with the state as he seeks to boost control over the nation’s metals producers.
The government will hold at least 55 percent of any joint ventures, according to a decree in today's Official Gazette. The decree sets a royalty rate of 10 percent to 13 percent and says that all Venezuelan gold production will be sold to the state.
Chavez first announced the nationalization of the industry and plans to repatriate Venezuela's foreign gold reserves on Aug. 17. Petroleos de Venezuela SA, the state oil company, is forming joint ventures with both state and publicly traded companies to operate mines, including Las Cristinas, which Chavez confiscated from Canada's Crystallex International Corp.
... Dispatch continues below ...
Lewis E. Lehrman on How to Solve the U.S. Debt Problem
Lewis E. Lehrman, chairman of the Lehrman Institute, sponsor of The Gold Standard Now project, advises that to reduce the $1 1/2 trillion U.S. deficit, the Republican Party must initiate an investment program.
Working Americans are not saving, which enables the banks to lead the country into a cycle of debt, leverage, boom, panic, and bust.
Lehrman says: Eliminating the budget deficit of a trillion and a half dollars cannot be done overnight. The proposal by U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan was very dramatic -- one Republican called it radical -- but it was not happily received. The solution, of course, is to design an American program for prosperity, because you can solve these entitlement problems with a growing economy. We need a tremendous program of investment, and investment comes from savings. When you pay savers, middle-income professionals, and working people 0 percent at the bank, you are not going to encourage them to save. Then we are left with a bank cycle of debt, leverage, boom, panic, and bust."
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"The government will have a monopoly of gold production and sales," according to the decree. "All the gold that is produced from mining operations in national territory will be turned over to the Republic."
Rusoro Mining Ltd., a Vancouver-based company that produces 100,000 ounces a year of gold, said on Aug. 30 that it would transfer its assets to a joint venture controlled by PDVSA, as the Caracas-based company is called.
Venezuela produces 11 metric tons of gold a year, and illegal miners extract an additional 10 to 11 tons a year, Chavez said in May.
Chavez, who is currently in Cuba being treated for an undisclosed type of cancer, on Sept. 17 approved $130 million of new funding for the country's state mining holding company, Corporacion Venezolana de Guayana.
The funds will be used to pay salaries and overtime owed to workers, many of whom have been participating in strikes in recent months, the ministry of mining and basic industries said in a statement today.
"It's clear that the mining industry is not producing any dividends for the state at the moment," Chavez said on Sept. 17.
Of 18 arbitration cases pending against Venezuela in the World Bank's International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, at least three of them are mining ventures, including Crystallex's claim for almost $4 billion. Gold Reserve Inc., a Spokane, Washington-based mining company, is seeking $2.1 billion in damages after its Las Brisas gold and copper project was seized in May 2008.
The South American country, in an effort to boost stalled production and take advantage of rising prices, last year relaxed restrictions on gold exports to allow some companies and joint ventures with the government to send as much as 50 percent of their output abroad.
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Sona Drills 85.4g Gold/Ton Over 4 Metres at Elizabeth Gold Deposit,
Extending the Mineralization of the Southwest Vein on the Property
Company Press Release, October 27, 2010
VANCOUVER, British Columbia -- Sona Resources Corp. reports on five drillling holes in the third round of assay results from the recently completed drill program at its 100 percent-owned Elizabeth Gold Deposit Property in the Lillooet Mining District of southern British Columbia. Highlights from the diamond drilling include:
-- Hole E10-66 intersected 17.4g gold/ton over 1.54 metres.
-- Hole E10-67 intersected 96.4g gold/ton over 2.5 metres, including one assay interval of 383g of gold/ton over 0.5 metres.
-- Hole E10-69 intersected 85.4g gold/ton over 4.03 metres, including one assay interval of 230g gold/ton over 1 metre.
Four drill holes, E10-66 to E10-69, targeted the southwestern end of the Southwest Vein, and three of the holes have expanded the mineralized zone in that direction. The Southwest Vein gold mineralization has now been intersected over a strike length of 325 metres, with the deepest hole drilled less than 200 metres from surface.
"The assay results from the Southwest Zone quartz vein continue to be extremely positive," says John P. Thompson, Sona's president and CEO. "We are expanding the Southwest Vein, and this high-grade gold mineralization remains wide open down dip and along strike to the southwest."
For the company's full press release, please visit:
http://sonaresources.com/_resources/news/SONA_NR19_2010.pdf
