I spoke to Doug B of GRZ who said that the open pit mining issue was the first thing brought up at the MinAmb meeting with both KRY and GRZ representative present. Interestingly both had been independently invited to attend the meeting but were unaware untli they got there that they were both going to be at the same meeting.

The representitives of KRY and GRZ both dismissed the request to convert the projects to underground mining as completely unrealistic for the ore type present at both LC and Brisas. Apparently none of the other requirements were particularly troublesome and in fact both companies had already more than covered them to a large extent in the original submissions. Doug did comment that it appeared as if the people who were asking for changes had never read any of the original applications or subsequent approvals.

At the present time MinAmb approval of GRZ's open cut mine plan is still OK. The only thing they revoked was the permit to construct the mine... That's typical Venezuelean logic I supppose..