RE: Mining law ratified todayFrom the SRL website
Recent Developments
Ecuador's Assembly has approved a new mining law that lifts anine-month government ban on exploration, development, and mining whichwill allow companies to resume work at their projects. Legislatorsoverwhelmingly approved the bill by a 50-15 vote. President RafaelCorrea is expected to ratify the mining law within the next 10 days.The new bill establishes sufficient controls and environmentalregulations and would create thousands of new jobs for Ecuador.
After the law is published, the Ministry of Mines and Petroleum hasfour months to issue mining regulations to complete the industry’slegal framework. But firms whose concessions have not been revoked canrestart operations as soon as the law is made public. This includesSalazar Resources. After the April mandate, the government took away 75percent of 4,112 mining concessions throughout the country in a move toclean house from testaferros, or land speculators, and miningauthorities’ relatives. The newly approved law requires the auction ofall new concessions, according to Article 29, including those revokedwith no preference for firms that lost them. Salazar Resources is notaffected by these government actions.
The exploration programs at our Curipamba Project were beginning toshow positive results. A new VMS discovery was made at El Domo, LasNaves Central just prior to the Mining Mandate and is now the first andhighest priority follow-up. Four drill holes have been reported to datefrom this new discovery, all intersecting massive sulphides. The VMSbody has been expanded to over 300 metres in strike length and remainsopen in all directions. The potential of expanding the size and valueof both the discovery and the area in general is significant. Thereremain untested similar geophysical signatures at Las Naves Central.This bodes well as a single VMS deposit is generally associated withmany others within a locally contained area. The grades reported todate are also significant. The project is not in an area affected by"protected area status," nor does this target exemplify an open-pitmining scenario, all considerations of the new mining law. Theproject's concessions are in good standing and all environmentalpermits were accepted by the current government