RE:RE:RE:Let's find middle ground- name the negatives of this projectWe should also take into account that established companies such as Barrick and Goldcorp, for example, are struggling to make adequate profits from their mines.
It's a very costly business. There are companies that own patents to the technology of the high end equipment to extract the gold. Many of these companies are from far away countries. Such as Hatch Technologies who own many patents on technologies used in gold mining. For example, Hatch owns patents on autoclaves. This means they must engineer the autoclaves and charge ridiculous prices. They use their people to over see the work. Equipment will have to be manufactured over seas and delivered by ship and eventually truck. Roads will need to be built just for delivery.
It won't be cheap for your non typical player to produce a mine, just look at all the mines that have been abandoned because the technology they had wasn't adequate...but later taken over by a bigger player(s).
I know when I was at Pueblo Viejo, they were using new equipment and the mine went over budget by over 3 billion by the time I left.
Not everything is rosy with mining gold right now. It's highly expensive. The ONLY advantage I see in Ecuador right now is fuel prices. However, I am not too familiar with the government policies but have read there are changes coming.
Some things that need to be investigated:
Remote
Poor infrastructure
Low grade
Skilled workers shortage (don't fool yourselves, workers will be expensive to bring to Ecuador)
archeologists (will there be burial grounds or other archeological artifacts at the site holding up construction?)
Power
Water
Technology
Shipping and delivery of material
Environmental and social impact (these are studies which are conducted and they take a LONG time)
Local unrest - protesters
stripping ( is ore at the surface?)
Loans (how easy is it to get loans at these gold prices? Even the biggest players need loans)
A few things just from the top of my head.