didipio not closedfrom ogc :
Dear Dirk,
Thank you for your query. Didipio continues to produce gold and copper as planned and is not shut down. On Friday 12 July, a temporary suspension notice was issued by the Mayor of the municipality of Kasibu in the province of Nueva Vizcaya relating to a matter of obtaining a Mayor’s permit which is required to operate a business in the province. A requirement to obtain this permit is the approval from the local Barangay(village) council (in this case Didipio) which had been requested but not issued pending further discussions between the Company and the council. These discussions took place late last week and on Monday the necessary administrative clearances and permits were obtained resulting in Business as Usual. There was minimal impact on the overall operation and effectively no impact at the process plant.
As often is the case in the Philippines, there are groups with their own agendas that look to create noise to drum up support for their positions and we expect that the article that showed up on an online website a number of days after the fact was exactly that. As a triple listed Company we have rigorous disclosure requirements and thus anything that has a material impact or potential material impact on the Company is always disclosed. To respond to every blog site or online news report out of the Philippines quite frankly would probably result in four releases a week and thus not the appropriate way to manage the business or our communications with our stakeholders.
I hope that is helpful and thank you again for your interest in OceanaGold.
Best regards,
Sam