On the one hand, we have a company that made a very clear statement in its December 20th news release:
“After continued dialogue and technical evaluation, SEMARNAT confirmed operations at the San Jose Mine are conducted in accordance with all environmental obligations under the EIA. Following confirmation of compliance, SEMARNAT reassessed Fortuna’s application and granted the extension on the existing EIA terms.“
On the other, we have a community around the San José mine in Oaxaca Mexico, up in arms about the way in which FSM mistreats communities and the environment. Its position caused the suspension of FSM’s environmental permitting and yesterday, January 19th, they held a press conference at which, among several other complaints, insisted the company is lying and does not have its EIA permit. Here’s an excerpt from the longer quote, published here yesterday:
“…the mining company… continues in commercial operation even though it does not have its environmental permits, and then dares to emit false declarations saying that Mexico’s State authorities have approved its permits. This is not true, there is no official document to back up this information from the mining company.”
These two positions are clearly not compatible. What’s more, back on January 5th we noted two oddities about this case. Firstly, that locals in San José de Progreso have been demanding comment from Mexico’s SEMARNAT environmental authority ever since FSM came out with its NR, all to no avail. Secondly, Oaxaca’s regional parliament that day passed a resolution demanding that SEMARNAT cancel the mine permits and also accusing three national level politicians of “…lobbying in favour of the mining company “for their personal benefit”” (quote/unquote), which implies exactly what you think it implies. Therefore, we can state:
- We know where FSM stands. The company says it has its permits and is operating under the law.
- We know where the community around the San José mine stands. They say FSM does not have its permits and is operating against the law.
- But we don’t know where SEMARNAT stands.
That last point is the strangest, as it would only take one simple statement from Mexico’s environmental authority and the whole issue would go away. What’s more, SEMARNAT has now been asked for such a statement for a full month, not only by the protesting locals but also by Oaxaca’s regional parliament. With three national level politicians involved and apparently lobbying for FSM “for their personal benefit” in the mix, the opacity of the SEMARNAT position is both mysterious and somewhat suspicious. It would surely be in the best interests of all concerned for SEMARNAT to confirm it has granted FSM its relevant permits and lift the cloud over the company operations and be clear, “all concerned” most definitely includes shareholders of Fortuna Silver; a simple glance at the stock price shows it has failed to recover from the hit it took back in November when the original permit suspension was announced:
Inquiring minds, etc…
Would the issue go away for Semarnat if they confirmed what happened with the permit? If they said that no permit was issued, that would be it. However, if they confirmed a permit, then that would cause massive public outrage.
Their behaviour to me indicates that there is a permit, and that they’ve extended the permits without publicizing.
This is a hot-button issue in Oaxaca, it’s not going away just by being ignored. So SEMARNAT is obliged to make some sort of announcement one way or another and the locals with their presser yesterday want to force the issue. My best guess is that they’ll confirm the renewal. But mine is only that, a guess. It’s all very weird.
Once SEMARNAT speaks, we’ll see what happens next.
[…] people who bought Fortuna Silver (FSM) when the company announced (or perhaps better said “claimed“) it had received its San José permit are now underwater on their position. Every buyer who […]