One point that few have discussed is the timing of the various announcements.

The Hecla issue has been bubbling along for days and doesn't seem to be environmental at all.

There also have been conflicting reports of discontent about Rusoro, which may or may not have been resolved. The idea that the Russians, or anyone else will treat Venezuelan workers any better or give Ven a better deal seems to be a rather shaky premis.

The small miners seem to be determned to go back to the status quo, ripping up the earth in any manner they want and without any government oversight and damn the environment. They just want to make a living.

And on top of all of this the international arbitration on Las Cristinas is coming close and like all legal issues the outcome is uncertain.

Crystallex got the notice of denial of the environmental permit via the CVG early Wednesday morning citing the hoary old "sensitive environment" issues even though in fact much of the LC concession is already a polluted waste land due to prior illegal mining and mercury contamination. The best and cheapest way to clean it up is to allow KRY to mine and in turn require then to fix the earlier damage even though they are not responsible for it.

If this change of heart on the environmental issues was a top level policy, why wasn't there an official communication and release saying so.

GRZ obviously only got word late in the day and again apparently in an unofficial manner. It almost seems that after considering what they had done in regard to Las Cristinas and their stated reasons, somebody in MinAmb realised how inconsistent it looked to deny KRY on grounds that equally appled to Brisas which had already been approved. So to save face they announced the revocation of the environmental permit for GRZ that was approved a year earlier.

While I guess the government can do what it likes. If it is to avoid legal problems both locally and internationally there has to be a legal basis offered take away the permit it had granted only a year earlier without some due cause or deficiency on the part of Gold Reserve.

"We just changed our Mind" won't cut it anywhere, not even in Venezuela.

GRZ has always played it "by the book" in Venezuela so this action is going to be very hard to justify considering that it was the reversal of a firm decision made by the MinAmb under the present Chavez administration, and not the result of a decison of an earlier (possibly corrupt) government.

I am tending to the view that others have expressed that GRZ is "collateral damage" in this fiasco. Just how it will be resolved is going to be interesting and uncertain, but it certainly isn't over. Until we get a more definite higher level response with Chavez's name on it, GRZ is still in play and could still emerge intact or even strengthened in the longer term.

Nobody inside or outside of Venezuela will ever commence any major project if it is demonstrated that Chavez not only repudiates legal contracts made in the name of previous governments of Venezuela but that he also goes back on his own word in respect to contracts and permissions made by his own ministers and government without any due cause or consideration.

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