Having had some past experience dealing with government bureaucracy the "apparent" permit delays may be attributable to the following reasons:

1) after the negotiations with KRY were concluded in August in principal, the Venezuelan bureaucracy must update the lengthy permit document in detail - this this process will take time and will most assuredly not be hurried by low level clerical staff and minor officials.

2) since the green light was given by the Venezuelan’s to restart the process (and given a sense of urgency) KRY took about a month to come back with the requested changes and modifications. To save "face" the Venezuelan bureaucracy (IMO) will take at least as long - possibly 1.5 times the time it took KRY to officially respond.

Given the above hypotheses it is my view that there will be a final review of the updated permit document with KRY towards the end of September and then the permit will be issued shortly thereafter (say by Oct 1/08).