Not even the Chinese will mine gold in Venezuela at present, nobody will. Pretty much the same with oil. Hugo totally F'd up the country with all his antics and nationalizations.

Belanger has said many times that the Chinese are talking to GRZ (and I expect also to Crystallex) to work on negotiating some kind of deal to get the drilling information and at least in the case of GRZ to ask them to take a small interest to keep them involved so that the data can be used by the Chinese. The Chinese are not risk takers, they are very good businessmen (recall the oil that Hugo gave them for like $5 a barrel and they sold it in LA and Hugo was surprised).

There will be no gold mining, and no new oil investment either, until Hugo is cold and things change to protect investment. Until then nobody really seems to care about anything that comes out of Venezuela -- they screwed themselves now they have to learn to live with drastically falling import revenues and skyrocketing social expenditures.

Ramirez is just a joke, like the rest of the current occupants of the Venezuelan clown car that they call a government.

IMO whoever the next president is, he will be held responsible for the bad days ahead, despite the fact that it is primarily Hugo's fault. Hugo will probably be revered in a Leninesque fashion that might not make sense to us, but will to the poor masses down there.

With the current filings, I'm more optimistic with getting out of this with a least a buck, and maybe closer to two, than I have been in a long time.