LatinNews Daily - 25 September 2018

* Panama’s supreme court (CSJ) has ruled in favour of an appeal presented ten years ago by a local environmental NGO, Centro de Incidencia Ambiental (Ciam), against a contract signed in February 1997 by the state with mining company Minera Petaquilla, (owned by Canada’s Petaquilla Minerals at the time) for the extraction of gold and copper in Donoso district, Colón province. Ciam – whose executive director Sonia Montenegro hailed the ruling as historic - argued that the contract violated various articles of Panama's constitution related to human rights and the environment. Following the signing of the contract for the project in 1997, a new concession development plan was laid out in 2005, dividing its implementation into gold and copper phases. As the Canadian government notes, the first phase would involve the development and operation of a commercial gold mine (El Molejón) which started producing in 2009/2010 but was abruptly shut down in 2014. The second phase – the development and operation of a large-scale open pit copper mine (Cobre Panama), which is now owned by Canada’s First Quantum Minerals - is now under construction and is expected to be in production before the end of the year.

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