MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency
Falklands' gold: Newsweek's “two plus two makes ten”
“It looks like another case of someone putting two and two together and making ten”.
This was the immediate reaction of Councillor Dr.Andrea Clausen, the holder of the Falkland Islands Government's Mineral Resources portfolio, to the recent suggestion in the Argentine press that the current and on-going exploration for gold in the Islands was about to move into a new phase of exploitation.
The story in question, somewhat misleadingly headlined as "Kelpers find gold in the Malvinas with Chilean help" came from the Buenos Aires-based newspaper INFOBAE and seems to have stemmed from an earlier report in the magazine Newsweek, more soberly and accurately entitled, "The Search for Treasure." This article, in turn, deals with what is described as the "special discovery" made last austral summer by another Argentine journalist, Esteban Cichello Hubner.
Apparently as a result of a chance meeting in an airport, Hubner, who is somewhat inaccurately described as "the Argentine who has spent most time in the Malvinas" and who is reputed to know "almost all the inhabitants" found out that gold exploration is taking place in the Falkland Islands/Malvinas.
It's actually now quite an old story and by no means secret. The company which currently holds the only licence to prospect for gold in the archipelago is Falkland Gold and Minerals Ltd. and was set up as a result of field investigations carried out since 1999 by Australian geologist, Derek Reeves, currently the company's Operations Manager in the Falkland Islands. Each week the company's current share price is quoted in the Islands only newspaper, Penguin News.
When the last Governor of the Falklands, Howard Pearce, married his Dutch bride, Caroline in Stanley's Anglican Cathedral, each of the rings that the couple exchanged contained some small pieces of the gold discovered by Reeves in the streams of the Falkland Islands. There is no doubt that gold exists, but the problem in the Falklands as in every other potential gold field, lies in finding out exactly where it is.
Gold exploration, like the exploration for hydrocarbons, which is also going on in the waters around the Islands, is a gamble with high stakes, but with the prospect, if successful, of even bigger rewards. Hence the fact that FGML was able to raise an exploration budget of some £10 million, when it was launched on the London Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in 2004.
Since Reeves's early explorations with pan in hand in the gravel bottoms of streams, the available knowledge of what lies beneath the surface of the Falkland Islands rugged landscape has increased considerably and continues to increase with the every test drill made and every soil sample taken. For lack of laboratory facilities on the Islands samples are prepared in the company's base at Goose Green, scene of the first major battle of the Falklands Conflict in 1982 and then sent away from the Islands for analysis, usually in Australia or Chile.
An early aerial survey of the whole of the Falkland Islands by a specialist company based in Brazil identified some 23 target areas. The knowledge gained in these target areas in the sixteen months since the drilling campaign began, has also been supplemented by more detailed geo-magnetic surveys on both East and West Falklands, undertaken by GeoExplo, a specialist company from Chile.
Falkland Gold and Minerals has at this stage only been granted a licence to prospect for minerals, but not to exploit any resources, which might be discovered. Falkland Islands Government Director of Minerals, Phyllis Rendell, explained to Mercopress, that the Onshore Minerals Legislation introduced in the Falkland Islands in 2004 describes three distinct phases of activity: prospecting, exploration and exploitation, each of which requires separate licensing.
Environmental impact management plans are required by the legislation at each of the three stages, but for any company wishing to move to the exploitation stage, Mrs.Rendell underlined that the process becomes ?really serious' and full of ?checks and balances' including full consultation with a number of interested parties, but most particularly the Falkland Island people.
Given the complexity of the process leading to the granting of a licence to exploit minerals, the massive investment involved and the number of interested partiers to be consulted, including the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office, Mrs. Rendell agreed that it would be impossible for FGML or anybody else to approach this phase of operations with any degree of secrecy.
Meanwhile, two small but intrepid teams of drillers ? a cosmopolitan bunch from Australia, Chile, New Zealand and the Falkland Islands ? daily go out to face the rigours of the Southern winter, which currently include blizzards and stinging hail and if they are finding anything interesting, they are not allowed to say.
Falkland Islanders on the other hand await the arrival of the next big bonanza, largely oblivious to the drillers' plight or to gloomy predictions that such a development would make the long-standing sovereignty dispute between Argentina and Britain, even more difficult to resolve.
John Fowler (Mercopress) Stanley
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