Speculators getting ready to bid for PLU's 9 concessionsToday it was included on the printed version of "El Comercio" an article about the 9 concessions and the interest they will garner from speculators on November 2nd. My main takeaways are:
1) Hundreds of speculators will try to put their hands on the 9 concessios.
2) Susana Vilca's "relation" with PLU was an "open secret" by the time she was appointed as Minister of Energy and Mines. She has been pointed out as having an obvious conflict of interest, and this is obviously the reason why she has not been able to help PLU, despite being the fair thing to do.
3) There seems to be legal ground for a partial solution: declaring the 9 concessions as an
Area of Non-Admission of Petitions (ANAP) until the judicial process comes to an end. Should provide relief in the case the Medida Cautelar is not granted in the short term.
4) What will happen when the congressmen at the Energy and Mines Comission read this news? (!)
https://gda.com/detalle-de-la-noticia/?article=4226781 Lithium. Ingemmet will put 9 concessions of the Macusani project up for sale. They warn of a possible conflict of interest of the head of this institution.
By Juan Saldarriaga V.
November 2nd will be an unusual day for tenants over Av. Canada 1740. As rarely, the officials of the Geological, Mining and Metallurgical Institute (Ingemmet) will have to deal with a river of people in search of a mining claim.
Industry specialists estimate that more than 200 people will crowd the door of the state institution that day to request a concession for the most precious metal today. Gold? Copper? No, lithium. Lithium from the Macusani project.
Why would the concessions of a well-known mining project go to a natural person?
The reason is that Ingemmet has decided to withdraw of the mining cadastre and make 9 of the 32 lithium and uranium concessions disputed with Macusani Yellowcake available to the public, as a way of promoting said areas.
The result, as it is easy to see, will be an explosion of petitions that will have adverse consequences.
The most immediate will be to put the hundreds of applicants who will crowd at the doors of Ingemmet at health risk to win their concessions by putting their hand before others (there is not yet a procedure to request the petitions online).
Even more worrying, the administrative measure could generate a new delay in the development of the Macusani-Falchani project, the only lithium and potassium project in Peru, as Romulo Mucho, former president of Ingemmet, points out.
Lithium and potassium
Mucho showed a study suggesting that the Falchani project harbors, in addition to lithium, enough potassium sulfate (potash) to supply domestic demand for fertilizers.
Lithium (and potassium) offer the brilliant opportunity for Peru to advance more than it can advance with copper, he says.
However, the decision taken by Ingemmet would hamper these projections.
Ulises Solis, general manager of Macusani Yellowcake, says that unnecessary administrative chaos will be created, as the Judiciary is about to grant them a Meduda Cautelar on the nine concessions, which will leave the petitioners and the company in a confrontational situation.
In addition, he argues that Macusani shareholders will look more cautiously at their investment in Puno because although the withdrawal of the nine concessions does not diminish the current dimension of the Falchani project, it does deprive the company of new areas of expansion.
"Of the nine concessions, two have been found to have uranium and one lithium. As for the others, it is not that they do not have, but that we still had to explore them", he explains.
But, how did this strange situation happened in which the State itself puts the development of a strategic project at risk?
History of a delay
The story goes back to 2018, when Oscar Bernuy (now deceased) presided Ingemmet. Then, this institution decided to cancel 32 of the 151 Macusani Yellowcake concessions in Puno, arguing that they had not complied with paying the corresponding validity fees on time.
Macusani assures, on the contrary, that they did pay on time, although at the last minute.
Given the protests of the company, the case was taken to the Mining Council, which confirmed the expiration of the 32 concessions (in July 2019).
Faced with this, Macusani went to the Judiciary and obtained a Medida Cautelar for part of the concessions (17). According to Solis, the company was in the process of obtaining another Medida Cautelar for the remaining concessions (15) when Ingemmet published the withdrawal of nine of them (September 30th). Ingemmet affirms that the measure is legal since said concessions did not count with a Medida Cautelar to shield them.
However, there are several facts that deserve to be clarified, such as the alleged conflict of interest in which the Executive President of Ingemmet, Susana Vilca, would have incurred.
Conflict of interest?
Various sources consulted for this report coincide in pointing out that Mrs. Vilca served as an advisor to Macusani Yellowcake in the crucial months in which the company discussed its case in the Mining Council.
Even the same sources detail that Vilca visited that Institution (Ingemmet) twice to advocate for Macusani Yellowcake and ask that the late payment of validity rights be forgiven. The curious thing is that this advice is not recorded in the Sworn Declaration of Interest (DJI) presented by Mrs. Vilca in the State Transparency Portal.
Asked about it, Vilca replied that she only interacted with representatives of Macusani Yellowcake, but that she never advised them or provided professional services, which is why she does not mention it in her DJI.
The company, on the contrary, assures that Susana Vilca did advise them in the litigation against Ingemmet. Who doesn't tell the whole truth?
Controversy
Lithium in the eye of the storm
Potential
The Macusani-Falchani project not only houses lithium, but also uranium, potassium and even rare earths, says Romulo Mucho.
ANAP and figureheads
Experts propose that an Area of Non-Admission of Petitions (ANAP) be formed with the 9 Macusani concessions that have been withdrawn from the cadastre to prevent them from disintegrating or figureheads doing their thing.