midas, imo, i think ven has been mining LC pretty well the past few years (have you seen recent pictures?)....1000's of illegal miners have milked what they can, and are now running dry...the low grade (and there's a lot of it) will have to be processed on a modern commercial level......

i dont think any of this has a damn thing to do with environment, transnationals, etc...

i think it has to do with the fact that the corrupt officials in ven can no longer soak the illegal miners because the grades have been depleted and they now have to go to a more "professional" level of corruption....

all comes back to the same thing....i believe LC will be commercialized very quickly....but by whom?

i understand the MOC argument and the fact is that venezuelans are getting really po'd about "nationalizations"....that's good for us.

the down side is that hugo has never seemed to care about icsid or what the population thinks....also, i'm not real sure what kry brings to the table anymore?