CARACAS (Reuters) - Canadian miner Rusoro wants to mine Venezuela's Las Cristinas gold deposit but will raise the company's annual output to 360,000 ounces by 2012 even if the government does not give it access to the vast project, a company official said.

In February, Venezuela canceled a contract with another Canadian junior, Crystallex (KRY.TO)(KRY.A) to explore Las Cristinas, considered one of Latin America's largest gold deposits but undeveloped since being discovered decades ago.

"Such an important deposit requires the immediate start of extraction activities," Andrea Padovani, the head of Rusoro's operations in Venezuela, said in an interview for the Reuters Latin American Investment Summit.

Padovani said the government of President Hugo Chavez should take advantage of gold's current price of over $1,400 per ounce to develop the mine. He said the government was unlikely to meet its goal of producing 10 tones (353,000 ounces) of gold in 2011 because of problems at state-run mines.

In 2009 Chavez announced the creation of a joint-venture between Venezuela and Russia to develop Las Cristinas estimated reserves of 17 million ounces with the participation of Rusoro, which is owned by Russia's Agapov family and already operates mines in Venezuela.

Padovani said the company was seeking a $250 million loan from China to increase production at its existing Choco 10 mine to 360,000 ounces from 100,000 ounces in 2010. This year the target is 120,000 ounces.

"It is a credit line we are studying with the Republic of China, with Chinese banks and with equipment makers to build a new plant at Choco 10 and double the current production and processing capacity," he said.

Italian-born Padovani, 51, is well placed to understand the difficulties surrounding Las Cristinas. He arrived in Venezuela 27 years ago to work with fellow Italian adventurer Amalfi Grossi, who in the 1980s extracted gold from Las Cristinas. Since then, the mine has been licensed to several companies but has never again produced gold on an industrial level.

He said Rusoro was now looking at expanding its operations in other South American countries. He declined to name possible targets, but said Brazil was a very important market.

(Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by David Gregorio)

http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/03/31/us-latam-summit-rusoro-idUSTRE72U6VZ20110331