Pacific Rim El Dorado gold mine to expand

In my last post, I described opposition to exploration by a gold-mining company in Chalatenango department. To the east of Chalatenango, however, are the more advanced activities of the Canadian gold mining company Pacific Rim at its El Dorado gold mine. I described opposition to that mine in an August post.

Pacific Rim announced today a significant expansion of its activities in connection with the El Dorado operation. Some of Pacific Rim's statements included:

Over the past year Pacific Rim has identified a number of new, high-priority exploration targets on the El Dorado project, in addition to its high-grade surface discovery at the nearby Santa Rita gold project....

Our goal is to double the 80,000 ounce per year production rate documented in this study....

Pacific Rim recently applied for and was granted new, significantly larger exploration licenses for the El Dorado project area. El Dorado had been protected by a 75 square kilometer exploration license. The Company has applied to convert a 12.75 square kilometer portion in the centre of this license area into an exploitation concession, which application is currently being processed by the El Salvadoran government. The remaining 62.25 square kilometers covered by the original exploration licenses has been expanded to 144 square kilometers in three exploration licenses, which were recently granted to the Company.

Using a rate of 30 tons of rock processed to yield one ounce of gold, 2.4 million tons of Salvadoran earth would be processed annually to meet the goal in this press release.