environment

ANAM approves Petaquilla’s EIA

The company must post bonds totaling $14.3 million.

la prensa

Petaquilla Gold200811301

ANAM, the government's lead environmental agency, has given the green light to Petaquilla Gold to resume its mining operations in the district of Donoso in Colón.

On Wednesday, ANAM approved the project's environmental impact assessment (EIA). This action came a week after the agency fined the company $1.9 million for causing environmental damage and for operating without an EIA.

The decision outraged the Center for Environmental Impact.

“It’s surprising and clearly contradictory that ANAM has endorsed the continuation of work by a company that not only has caused serious damage to the natural environment, but which has been conducting its operations while routinely disregarding the country's environmental institutions in the country,” center officials said.

According to ANAM's decision, Petaquilla Gold must post two bonds totaling $14.3 million to cover any future environmental damage at the mine.

The company has an uneven history of posting such bonds, and questions remain about whether it has satisfied such requirements in the past.

Petaquilla Gold failed to post a $3 million bond for potential environmental when it began its operations in 2005, although a contract the company signed with the government in 1997 stipulated that the bond was to be paid before the project started.

In April 2006, Petaquilla Gold posted a bond of $750,000. On March 19 of this year, the remainder of the bond was posted, according to records of the Ministry of Trade and Industry.

The Comptroller General, however, does not have any records that the bond was ever posted. In October, the Comptroller sent a letter to the Center for Environmental Impact that said it had no record of it.

“We cannot provide a copy of the bond because the security of environmental protection referred to in its application is not resting in our entity,” the Comptroller's office stated.

Under government rules, both the ministry and the Comptroller should have received documents certifying that the bond had been posted.

Ministry officials declined to be interviewed in person for this story. In a letter, the ministry confirmed that the $750,000 bond had been posted, but did not make any reference to the remaining $2.3 million.