Romanian Prime Minister Mihai Tudose plans to ask UNESCO to revoke an application to gain status of World Heritage site for the former mining town of Rosia Montana, as the potential nomination means important gold reserves can no longer be exploited.
The application, submitted to UNESCO by the former government, was the last nail in the coffin for Canadian Gabriel Resources’ (TSX:GBU) namesake project, which faced relentless local opposition and several attempts to block the proposed mine by the government.
Canada’s Gabriel Resources is seeking $4.4 billion in damages from Romania for losses related to its long-stalled project in Rosia Montana.
In 2014, parliament yielded to pressure from environmentalists, worried about the potential use of cyanide to mine about 314 tonnes of gold and 1,500 tonnes of silver, and halted the project.
By then, the Toronto-based miner filed had spent 15 years and about and $700 million trying to build its $2bn Rosia Montana mine, so it filed a request for international arbitration. The idea was to seek compensation from Bucharest for the many delays to the company’s flagship project.
Currently, Gabriel is requesting Romania to pay $4.4 billion in damages for losses related to its long-stalled project.
But Tudose believes the company won’t get what it wants because it “never actually invested in mining and the money was spent on development projects, including building a church and saving the patrimony in the area,” local News.ro reports (in Romanian).
The open pit operation would have been Europe’s largest gold mine and, according to the company, it would have injected up to $24 billion into Romania’s economy.
The damage claim sought by Gabriel Resources represents more than 2% of the nation’s forecast gross domestic product of just under $200 billion this year.
Romania has until early 2019 to respond to the suit. The court will hear arguments in September next year.
For now, a protest is being organized on Facebook against the idea of withdrawing Rosia Montana from the UNESCO list. The march is planned for this Friday, in Bucharest.
4 Comments
disqus_j52Bt3wbSX
Rosa Montana is only in the process of being designated and Romania can withdraw the application at any time up the next World Heritage Committee meting in mid 2018!
Rob Nemere
The thieves are back time to start protesting
Valy
Not the former government beat the last nail in the coffin but Gabriel. Besides, Gabriel went to business in Romania with the coffin and the amount of nails he needed until his last beaten. Follow the evolution of gabriel for 20 years in the Romanian business and learn with ease that he is not interested in mining in any form. In these 20 years, they have not even gained business experience. Romania has not tolerated and no longer tolerates mediocrity in business. Gabriel’s lack of professionalism is also proven by this process at the global bank.Gabriel, he must know that once the coffin is closed, nothing can resurrect . Please Cecilia, write articles about Romania. It will be interesting.
Owen Jones
This corporation is disgusting, why does Romania allow foreign interests to take away national gold resources? It is unthinkable for me and I don’t understand it. The only way I can explain is that there are many traitors in the Romanian government, that do not care about the protests of the people.I have visited Rosia Montana with my Canadian wife and my wife almost cried when she was told all that beautiful nature we saw could be turned into cyanide by a Canadian company.She felt appalled and shocked and disgusted , just like me.