Your humble scribe receives mail this morning from reader ‘GA’, a nice lady who has agreed to let me reproduce this part on the blog:
“…do you think the GAL news affects Dalradian? They use explosives don’t they? Do Northern Ireland not like Canadian miners and are stopping them with this?“
For the record GA is currently a holder of DNA.to stock and I’m not. Answer: To begin, DNA uses explosive to a certain extent in its current exploration phase, but they’ll really need explosives a lot if/when the mine goes into production. As for the question my best guess, after reading the last couple of NRs from GAL.v carefully, is that there’s more than meets the eye about the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) decision not to play ball with GAL.v and its Omagh mine. There are two things that stick out:
1) There may be specific problems between the mining company and the police (or locals) and this is a way they’ve found of putting the kibosh on the project. If so, DNA isn’t likely to suffer in the same way.
2) There’s a payment issue which seems to revolve around the failure to close on the “cost-recovery agreement” (i.e the police want the mine to pay for their time). The way GAL.v frame it, stating that other mines don’t have to pay so why should they, suggests this may be a new policy at the PSNI. If so then yes, this could well become an issue further down the line for DNA.
Either way, it certainly doesn’t help the political risk perception of working in Northern Ireland. All that and Brexit, too.