General Discussion AGY, page-16877

Absolutely, they did indeed ask for clarification on the hydrogeology. That isn't fictional. But, that's by the by. And of course, the timing is no coincidence.

But, it's not the reason we don't have the permit yet. Join the dots...

We applied for the permits around three years ago. When did they ask for hydrogeology data? Was it within 6-12 months of the permit application? If so, sure, it would be plausible to say that was the reason for the delay, or one of the major reasons. Was it more than two years after the application? ...see what's happening? The permit is outstanding for other reasons, clearly, and since it was outstanding at a time when hydrogeology concerns were being raised, they're going to ask for more data to satisfy the folks jumping around. If the delay was about hydrogeology, they wouldn't have sat around ignoring it for so long.

If we had the 2KTPA plant up and running 18 months ago, we'd have had the permit over a year ago. If people had been kicking up a fuss about something else, they'd have asked us for more data about that thing.

Let's face it, even in Australia permits are granted or not granted based on money, and we have no shortage of Australian examples where approvals don't match genuine environmental impacts. Enough money will prove whatever you want it to in Australia, or they'll pull some ridiculous environmental mitigation program to justify their impact (this is actually my field, I'm a qualified ecologist and I can assure you the amount of utter nonsense which gets pushed through is huge and the validity of environmental impact reports is as on point as a politician's honesty and integrity). Australia is one of the least corrupt countries in the world (not that I'm for a moment trying to downplay Australia's corruption, but other countries are much worse). What do you think will happen in Argentina? In terms of what gets done, it's s always about the money. In terms of the marketing, mining companies only care about people and the environment and 'broadening horizons'. Did you see Puna Mining's video someone put a link to? It was literally nothing but absolutely meaningless cliche and hyperbole about caring about people, the environment etc, with literally no basis for that and no mention or reference at all that it was a mining company or that it operates and exists for the purpose of generating income.

The narrative is always just a story for show. Puna Mining isn't going to make a promotional video saying "We are good at mining, we exist to make money, that's our mission", a politician isn't going to say "I'm here because it's my career, I'm going to do what's best for me", the media isn't going to say "We exaggerate to get better ratings and we are literally funded by partisan interests so we have no choice but to push their agendas", the car salesman isn't going to say "You could have haggled me down $5k but I'm glad you didn't, that payment protection plan I talked you into is garbage but I get a $500 commission for it and the engine is probably going to last a less time than you thought", etc etc, but everyone keeps believing the cover stories rather than following what people clearly have as their actual motives.