Correct me if I'm wrong....isn't VZ in the process of cancelling concessions (a very positive step apparantly).  With respect to the capital available from oil in VZ...I'm a little confused...are they going to have the oil company mine the gold or just have them buy a bunch of shovels for the illegal miners when they kick the foreign mining experts out?  I can see stealing a refinery that has already been built by Gringo technical know how and work ethic....but if they kick KRY out all they'll end up with is a polluted tract of land that has gold in it. 

 "...Indeed, the very fact that defaulted concessions were cancelled may be a signal of an upcoming release of a mining code – and positive news. A similar cancellation happened in 2001 as a necessary step toward releasing the country’s current mining law a few months later."

For all its environmental and anti-imperialist bravado against mining, the government of Ecuador doesn’t find itself in the massively energy-rich situation of Venezuela – and as a country desperately in need of capital will not have the luxury of systematically kicking out a legion of foreign operators.