GOVERNMENT APPROVES CONTROVERSIAL MINING PROJECT
By Anna Saghabalian

Radio Liberty, Czech Rep.
Nov 1 2007

Dismissing strong objections from environmentalists, the government
gave on Thursday the final go-ahead for the development of a massive
copper and molybdenum field in northern Armenia which will lead to
the destruction of 357 hectares of rich forest.

The Teghut deposit close to the Georgian border is estimated to contain
1.6 million tons of copper and about 100,000 tons of molybdenum. The
Armenian Copper Program, a large mining enterprise that extracts
and smelts ore from other parts of the northern Lori region, plans
to spend more than $200 million on turning the deposit into a huge
mine. The Liechtenstein-based company secured the Armenian Environment
Ministry’s mandatory approval of the project earlier this year.

The ministry gave the clearance despite strong resistance from Armenian
environment protection groups. The latter argue that the resulting
destruction of 128,000 trees would wreak further havoc on Armenia’s
forests that have already shrunk dramatically since the early 1990s.

ACP admits the heavy environmental cost of its plans but says it
will be more than offset by 1,400 new jobs which it has pledged to
create in the unemployment-stricken depressed area. The company has
also pledged to build new schools and make other investments in the
local infrastructure.

The government accepted these arguments, formally approving land
allocations needed for the start of open-pit operations at Teghut.

ACP already began preparations for the those operations this summer.

Minister of Trade and Economic Development Nerses Yeritsian said
after a weekly cabinet meeting that the government also took into
consideration the opinion of local governments who are in favor of the
project. "We have held detailed discussions with them and unanimously
arrived at the conclusion that the benefits and revenues which the
country will receive from those investments will substantially outweigh
the environmental and other costs," Yeritsian told reporters.

Yeritsian said that estimates of the resulting environmental damage
are grossly exaggerated and are "not the result of serious scientific
analysis." He also argued that ACP undertook to finance the planting
of tens of thousands of new trees elsewhere in Lori.

Non-ferrous metals and ores are currently Armenia’s main export
products. The local mining sector is dominated by ACP and the
German-owned Zangezur Copper-Molybdenum Plant operating in the
southeastern Syunik region.