Suriname - Gold Mining
Gold mining has always taken place in the interior, where the weathered basement rocks emerges above the topsoil, or where it is economically feasible for smaller operations to access the gravel layers and other ore bodies containing gold. Today gold is once again a significant revenue earner in the country, but it is also the source of massive environmental degradation including the pollution of inland waterways by small-scale mining.
There is a boom in gold mining, but most of the extraction takes place in the informal sector. The government has trouble collecting taxes and royalties from the miners working in remote interior locations and the trend has been to encourage large-scale gold mining projects foreign companies would operate in the formal economy. One such project is an 100 million US Dollar investment in the Gros Rosebel mine, which is slated to produce about six to seven tons of gold per annum. The government will also be able to secure direct revenues from gold extraction through the formal sector.
The gold mining sector has both a formal and an informal component. The informal component is a highly unregulated, untaxed, small-scale service gold mining sector that takes place primarily in the southern and southeastern parts of the country. Because of a crackdown on illegal small-scale mining in French Guiana, this sector has seen an influx of Brazilians. This sector also has been linked to different social, health, environmental, and criminal issues. To date, the government has been unable bring this sector under its control.
The Government believed that unrecorded gold production from small-scale localized alluvial placer deposits in 2000 could be as high as 30,000 kg, although reported gold production was only about 300 kilograms (kg) by Canarc Resource Corp. of Canada. Many of the people mining these alluvial deposits were from Brazil. Nearly 40,000 Brazilians lived in Suriname with most coming into the country during the past several years in search of gold.
A new economic era dawned in Suriname with the discovery of gold in 1870s. Concession-owning companies replaced the plantations as the major players in the colonial economy. The extraction industry by its very nature requires the operator move on to any part of the country where the potential for mineral discoveries is good, or where forestry products can be harvested economically.
In the 1870s gold miners explored locations in the remote interior. Access was by rivers flowing through the rugged interior terrain consisting of rolling hills on the ancient Guiana Shield covered with tropical rain forest. The many cataracts and waterfalls in the interior rivers make navigation and the transportation of cargo a major challenge.
With the decline of the plantation economy almost complete, the country had a pressing need for new sources of State income. The determination to develop new economic opportunities was strong, and this meant incursions into the traditional settlement areas and those of the kin-based societies of the interior. At the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries the reconnection of the coastal area and the interior built up momentum.
First came the gold boom, which petered out rather quickly after a production peak of 1200 kilograms in 1912. During this short interlude, however, a 180-kilometer railroad was built linking Paramaribo to the gold fields along middle Suriname River, an area populated by Saramaka Maroons. With the incursions of gold mining companies into the territories of the kin-based societies around 1900, a process was set in motion that would see competition for natural resources grow stronger and stronger as the 20th century unfolded.
After the first gold rush in Suriname at the turn of the 19th century (1880–1910), Suriname’s gold was for many decades only exploited by small numbers of artisanal gold miners. This changed in the early 1990s, which marked the onset of the second gold rush in Suriname.
Various factors contributed to this second gold rush including rising gold prices, stabilization of the interior after 6 years of civil conflict, and increased poverty and worsened education opportunities for the Maroon population. In the Brokopondo area, a foreign company obtained exploration rights in a concession. This was seen as a sign by small-scale miners that there must be a large quantity of gold in this area, thus the miners came in greater numbers. The influx of Brazilian gold miners (garimpeiros) who were expelled from the mining areas in their own country also contributed to the gold rush.
The skyrocketing price of gold is helping the small-scale gold mining sector flourish. An estimated 13–15 thousand people are working as small-scale gold miners in Suriname; at least a similar number are working in support activities as cooks, bar and hotel owners, transport providers, sex workers, gofers, and in other jobs.12 Approximately three-fourths of the miners and mining service providers are Brazilian migrants. The remaining fourth consists primarily of Suriname Maroons. Suriname’s gold deposits are part of the Guiana Shield, a geological greenstone formation that covers 415,000 km2 of Brazil, the Guyanas, and Venezuela. In Suriname, this geological formation surfaces in the Eastern and Central part of the country.
In the formal gold mining sector Rosebel Gold Mine (RGM), a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Canadian firm IAMGOLD, remains the only operator. IAMGOLD reported that its earnings for the first quarter of 2009 rose to U.S. $155.48 million, with the Rosebel Gold Mine in Suriname accounting for almost 50% of those earnings (reportedly U.S. $67.48 million, an increase of U.S. $2 million compared to the same period last year). In 2008, the company commenced an expansion program estimated to cost approximately U.S. $40 million. This expansion will include a complete upgrade of its machinery and the installation of a second mill.
An investment in exploration also led to RGM increasing its reserves in 2008 by 20% (673,000 troy ounces). A joint venture between SURALCO and Newmont Mining Corporation established Surgold, potentially the second operator in Suriname. Initial exploratory research indicated possible reserves of up to 3 million troy ounces in the Nassau Plateau in southeast Suriname. Surgold commenced negotiations with the government for a production license in 2008, but a downward revision in the estimated reserves in the area put these negotiations on hold.
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