The Canadian multinational Pan Global Resources is going to search for gold in almost 2,800 hectares in the municipalities of Belmez and Villanueva del Rey, in the Guadiato region of Córdoba. In its exploration it includes silver, tin, copper, lead, iron sulfur during the next three years, when it obtains the last permits that remain to be obtained from the Junta de Andalucía.
The company promoting the investigation, Minera Águila, based in Huelva and a subsidiary of Pan Global Resources (as can be verified through the Insight View commercial tool), is already searching in two other municipalities of the Sierra de Córdoba, Villanueva de Córdoba and Cardeña, in the Valle de los Pedroches, deposits of gold, silver and copper, although on a considerably smaller surface, 4,889.26 hectares, after requesting the Junta de Andalucía a first three-year extension of this research permit.
Pan Global Resources is a firm incorporated in Vancouver in 2006 but with mining exploration activities in Spain for future exploitation. It has the projects called Águila (the one in Córdoba) and another more advanced one called Escacena in Huelva, for the search for gold, as well as pyrite, copper, zinc, silver and tin. Huelva has historically been in Spain the place of large mining operations with international capital, such as in the Río Tinto mines.
The Canadian company does not yet show income from its exploration activity in Spain. In its accounts, it indicates that in the last year it has had expenses of more than one million euros in exploration. In addition, it highlights on its website that in November 2021 it received permission to exploit part of the Huelva deposit. On August 9, they reported 13 successful drillings in the area called La Romana, of the Escacena project in Huelva. Since July, this North American company has the engineer Juan García Valledor as General Manager in Spain.
The case of Cordoba
In the case of Belmez and Villanueva del Rey, the research program is planned to be carried out on 93 mining grids, 2,791.61 hectares, the purpose of which “is none other than to obtain sufficient geological information to confirm the existence of sufficient resources within the requested permits”, according to the project to which Efe has had access.
The company has nine research permits under the name of La Parrilla on 529 mining grids, 491 already granted in both municipalities, although they will operate on 93 of them, in a territory that two thirds of it is located in Villanueva del Rey.
The mayor of Belmez, José Porras (PSOE), knows about the project, as he confesses to Efe, “only by hearsay” because no one has contacted them. He acknowledges that “it is true that there are several companies that try to investigate the old mining operations in the area, because from Prehistory up to now there are many mining operations that stopped being exploited a long time ago, the methods and means used in those times are not the current ones and you can delve deeper into the type of material and ore that is in the area”.
For the Belmezano alderman, “the first thing is that the company has to contact us because it has to request an urban compatibility report for the operation.”
Nor does the mayor of Villanueva del Rey, Andrés Morales (PSOE), know anything about the company, for whom “anything that is for the future sounds interesting”, but who hopes that it is a serious project, given the economic situation in the area , “and not castles in the air”, as those that are usually raised, he emphasizes.
“With the development of the research plan, the aim is to gradually reduce and concentrate the areas of interest within a period of three years until defining geological resources of sufficient quality and quantity so that they can become exploitable reserves through the development of an eventual exploitation minerals”, indicates the technical project.
For this, Minera Águila plans a total investment of 902,000 euros, of which 102,000 are expected to be allocated in the first year, 309,000 in the second and 491,000 in the third, to which is added the global restoration budget, which the regional permit that missing and that has been calculated for the execution of eleven surveys, once the places have been determined, over three years, and has been estimated at 12,650 euros.
little prospecting
The action is justified in that “in the past there has been very little detailed prospecting in this area for copper and gold” and that “most of the work has focused on the investigation of lead and silver.”
To this end, a first phase is planned to collect “all the geological information of interest available in the region, such as geology, resources, types of deposits and mineralization, volumes of expected reserves, geometric characteristics and metallogenic maps, among others, as well as the information that exists on the mining history of the study area, such as the mining operations that have existed in the sector, the exploitation methods, the volumes of production and the causes of its closure, and advance in the study of the images through remote sensing.
Remote sensing, as defined by the document itself, is the technique of acquiring, processing and interpreting images and associated data that record the behavior of the ground in the face of incident electromagnetic energy and is a mining exploration for which airplanes and satellites are used.
Reconnaissance and surveys
In the second phase of exploration, a field reconnaissance of specific areas will be carried out using indirect prospecting methods, such as geochemistry and geophysics that allow inferred parameters to be obtained from the physicochemical properties of the materials, in addition to detailed geological mapping.
“The interpretation of the results will allow the planning of a research campaign through boreholes with which to confirm the results in those areas of greatest exploratory interest,” the document points out.
In this phase, it is planned to carry out between two and three surveys throughout the second year of development of the Research Plan, while there will be between six and eight in the third year of work, in a third phase in which surveys will be undertaken in the “detected anomalies” that “are considered likely to reflect the presence of metallic and/or precious mineral deposits of interest”.
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