Almost all of our troubles with recent press coverage comes from the Dow Jones story on Nov. 5th. It quotes Sanz as saying

" In the statement, Mining Minister Rodolfo Sanz insisted in "rescuing the most important mining deposits in Venezuela in order to increase production capacity in strategic minerals like gold, diamonds, bauxite and uranium."

The Las Cristinas gold mine, which according to Crystallex has reserves reaching 16.8 million ounces of gold, "will be recovered and will be operated by the state," starting in 2009, according to the statement.

The uncertainty revolves around word translated to mean rescue, recover take control, etc. We have argued how can Mibam take back or nationalise LC when Kry doesn't own it. The following was from today:

The Basic Industries & Mining (Mibam) Ministry, headed by Venezuelan Guayana Corporation (CVG) president Rodolfo Sanz, has received a further Bs.F 60.7 million ($28.27 million)to make long-overdue compensation of Bs.F 10,000 ($4,657) each to just over 6,000 southern gold miners in La Paragua who had pledged not to develop further mining activities in unauthorized areas as part of the National Assembly's determination to re-take control of Las Cristinas so as to protect legal mining in the Caroni basin.

I believe our current MOA has Kry in charge of some 25 or 30 groups of permited workers on LC. It isn't in the area where the mine will be built but it is still part of LC. Kry is responsible for helping these miners and trying to show them ways of not damaging the enviornment.

Todays statement says re-take control of LC. Could all this confusion be over the fact that the VZ government is now taking control of these miners that were under the control of Kry? It is sure sounding that way to me.

So lets take a quick look. Sanz talks about taking back LC from Kry on Nov. 5th and is referring to small scale miners that Kry supervises. The Russians are in VZ at the time and signing agreements left and right including some mining agreements The whole story gets twisted around to where Sanz is taking away LC from Kry and giving it to Rusoro.

Sanz has since denied that story and now we get today's news that the Venezuela national assembly has approved funds for the miners who are currently working at LC. In other words Mibam is now responsible for them not Kry. The Vz ambassador to France who was the head of Minamb in VZ and knows all about LC says he can't comment till after the elections.

Kry has asked for clarification from the government about the public stories but haven't heard anything. Given what Ambassador Perez said it isn't suprising that we haven't heard YET.

I may be the only one but I'm starting to feel real good again about our chances. Don't know where or shareprice will end up but it certainly looks like we will either be mining or compensated.