gold

When one thinks about Costa Rica a lot of images come to mind; among the first ones would be huge tropical forests crowded with thousands of trees, white sand beaches, rivers for rafting tours, and off course excellent coffee; (I’m telling you guys it’s great!) however Costa Rica has never been famous for its gold production, until now.

It all began back in 2002 with a company far, far away (They are Canadians) named Vannessa Ventures; but before I started with the news, let’s find out a little bit more about this company before we move on.

Vannessa Ventures Ltd. is an advanced gold exploration company based in Calgary, Canada, in the process of transiting from junior explorer to gold producer.

Their Chairman and Director is Steven G. Dean, who has extensive experience in the gold mining business, including serving as President of Teck Cominco Ltd. to July 2002, (Info taken from their website.)

Ok, now we can continue.

The name of the project is Crucitas (Small crosses) located in the San Carlos area in Guanacaste; and the company in charge of the mining initiative is Vannessa Ventures. The Canadian company presented the first study about environmental impact in the area to the Costa Rican government back in 2002; and even though the project was already scheduled to start in 2005, several protests from different environmental groups forced the initiative to be temporarily postponed.

Taking into consideration that one of the biggest resources for Costa Rica definitely is its nature, it is only logical that the locals wanted to make sure the gold mining project did not represent a potential problem to the area.

The Costa Rican National Environmental Cabinet (SETENA) continued to monitor the new proposals from Vannessa Ventures, and finally gave the approval required to start the Crucitas project this 2008.

And here are some numbers!!!!!

The agreement between the Costa Rican government and the gold exploring company is for a total of 700.000 ounces of gold to be extracted in a time frame of 10 years.

The approval of this project will translate in more job opportunities for the Costa Ricans, and will definitely make quite a difference for the local towns surrounding the area; let us hope that only good things comes out from this initiative.