Playing some catch up on Carpathian Gold (CPN-T) today.
After its epic misadventure in Brazil gold mining - assets sold off to Yamana to the benefit of its creditor Macquarie - Carpathian, after the deal closes, emerges with ownership of its still significant gold-copper assets in Romania: the Rovina Valley project (RVP). At last count RVP had 406 million tonnes @ 0.53 g/t Au and 0.16% copper in measured and indicated resources in three porphyry deposits. That makes it one of the larger undeveloped gold-copper projects around.
For this, Carpathian will no doubt garner some attention this year as it tries to get the project packaged together with a full mining permit. For permitting is one of the key outstanding issues on the project and for the company. RVP ostensibly has its mining permit already which is an attractive feature for the junior. But then that was announced a year ago with the caveat it still needed approval of various government departments before being finalized.
This is what interested me today and I caught up with Carpathian Gold's interim CEO (since 2014), Guy Charette, to get a better sense of where the process stands. The point of the conversation was to understand why the mining license has yet to be finalized and what it will take to get it from here.
Slow as molasses. That was how Charette characterized progress on ministerial approvals the project still needs. It, from Charette's description, goes like this. The mining ministry approved the mining license, but other ministries must still sign of on it. Charette said he saw no major issues here, but that the bureaucracy in Romania moves at a snail's pace. Further, he blamed a change in government late last year - PM Ponta stepped down in the wake of protests - and the installation of a "technocratic" government since. "What slowed it down was the fall of the government," Charette said. The point being that with government in turmoil ministries are not particularly focused on pushing through approval of Carpathian's RVP project.
So it still remains unclear when Carpathian may get final approval. But, to seek some resolution, Charette said Carpathian has organized a meeting, to be held in April, with the government and mining interests (Carpathian included) to talk over the slow pace of approvals. Carpathian's country manager will be there. In this Charette said other mining companies in the country had similar issues and concerns as Carpathian. The hope - for investors - is that the government picks up the pace and/or signals a commitment to getting permitting done. A process that so far has dragged on for nearly a year.
