President Nayib Bukele: “God placed a gigantic treasure under our feet.”
Posted by Leslie Eastman
Back in 2017, El Salvador became the first country in the world to initiate economic suicide by prohibiting the potential development and utilization of its national resources.
Now, under the leadership of President Nayib Bukele, the nation is looking to reverse course.
The move by Bukele’s predecessor, former left-wing rebel Salvador Sanchez Ceren, reflected the growing rejection of mining by rural communities in central America, devastated by the industry’s adverse health and environmental effects.
Costa Rica and Honduras have both banned open-pit mining and Panama declared a moratorium on new mining concessions last year after mass protests over plans for a huge copper mine.
According to Bukele, El Salvador may be sitting on unmined gold reserves worth an estimated $3 trillion, approximately 8,800% of the nation’s current GDP.
In a series of posts on social media platform X, Bukele projected that the country potentially has “the largest gold deposits per square kilometer in the world.”
According to preliminary studies cited by the president, El Salvador’s gold reserves could be worth an astounding three trillion dollars – representing over 8,800% of the country’s current GDP. Bukele argues that mining just 4% of the country’s gold deposits could generate $131 billion, which would be equivalent to 380% of the current GDP.
Translation: GOD PLACED A GIGANTIC TREASURE UNDER OUR FEET: El Salvador potentially has the highest density gold deposits per km² in the world. Located in the Pacific Ring of Fire, one of the richest areas in mineral resources thanks to its volcanic activity.
But it isn’t just gold that is important. Studies have identified the presence of a wide range of critical metals and rare earth minerals: Cobalt, lithium, nickel, platinum, iridium, titanium, and germanium.
The good news: He has the votes to repeal the inane legislation.
On December 1, Bukele announced that, in addition to gold deposits, El Salvador’s territory hosts “metals of the fourth and fifth industrial revolutions,” news agency EFE reported. The president stated that studies have identified cobalt, lithium, nickel and “rare earth elements used for advanced electronics,” as well as platinum, iridium, tantalum, titanium, gallium and germanium, among others.
The president’s liberal, populist and reformist party, Nuevas Ideas, has the votes needed to repeal the mining ban at any time.
“We need to exploit our natural resources responsibly, as every country in the world does,” Bukele said. He cited examples such as Qatar, Israel, Canada and Switzerland, and reiterated that “there isn’t a single country that has done something as foolish as banning mining.”
Many of the reports cite gallium, a rare metal with a wider array of uses in electronics. But the kicker is that the metal is also needed for thin-film solar cells, wind power generators, and power converters for electric cars.
In other words, gallium is critical for green energy, a fact clearly under-appreciated by eco-activists who are unhappy with this potential policy reversal.
The timing of these discoveries and policy reversals could not be better. As China is now banning the import of rare earth minerals to this country, it would be wonderful to expand our supply chain.
Of course, the environmental activists are unhappy:
This week, Bukele doubled down on his proposal, and his critics quickly responded. They fear that reopening mining could contaminate water sources, especially given the amount of freshwater needed for mining operations and the risks posed by heavy metals used in the process.
“The president claims that ‘responsible mining’ can be done, but there is no evidence to support this claim,” Pedro Cabezas, a member of the Central American Alliance against Mining (ACAFREMIN), told Newsweek. “There are no examples of ‘responsible mining’ that haven’t caused serious impacts. The effects in El Salvador would be terrible,” he warned.
But Bukele makes a persuasive case that a richer country is a cleaner country.
“I understand the concern. El Salvador has 95% of its waters polluted. Imagine if we pollute them further; we’ll end up with 97%, 98% contamination. The reality is that when 95% of your rivers are polluted, you shouldn’t focus on saving the remaining 5%, but on recovering the 95% that was lost,” Bukele argued on Thursday. “If we had 95% of our rivers clean, then we could focus on maintaining the status quo.”
“The only thing we can do is invest billions of dollars to clean up the polluted waters. And to have those billions, we need resources that can easily be obtained from mining,” he added, according to Diario El Salvador.
I think Trump should make sure Bukele gets a front-row seat at his inauguration.
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This reminds me of Sri Lanka adopting “organic farming”. In justice, Vedanta Shiva should have had to explain to the mob why her Noble Cause was a failure.
The green activists seem to have no downside for their failures.
Interesting post. Pres. Bukele is absolutely right that only rich countries can afford to clean up existing pollution, because it is very costly to do so, and there has to be sufficient economic production beyond that cost to raise the standard of living.
Environmentalists hate that, of course. They hate mankind, and think we are some sort of exotic invader and net evil force on the planet.
He seems to be an anti-gang, anti-corruption, progressive hard-liner conservative, with some good ideas and certainly is right about his position that wealth generation enables a cleaner environment. Interesting times ahead.
As in, “May you live an interesting life!”?
Bukele is cordially hated by the Left as he has comprehensively dismantled their cherished belief that locking up criminals reduces crime. El Salvador is vastly safer and better since he imprisoned thousands of gang members in a specially-built mega-prison.
The vast majority of geoscientists doing mineral exploration never find a new mine.
There is many a slip twix the cup and the lip. That is, to convert estimates of regional mineral potential to productive, profitable mines is quite difficult.
Check the progress of El Salvador in 15 years or so. Geoff S
I won’t be here.
I can’t upvote that.
I can because I will be with him or close to it.
That seems to be true of many of us commenting here.
Actually, unless you have ‘received your ticket’, one NEVER knows… which is why, at 89, I am still ‘planning’ to be here… and I hope WUWT is too.
Unfortunately Steve, the way the world political situation is evolving none of us can say with certainty we will be around in 15 years time and that goes for those in their teenage years too!
I’ll be 90.
Me two. Steve, just renew your membership and you
will be hear.
What will the sound be?
Hopefully you will be. If not, rest assured, you’re going to be voting still
“you’re going to be voting still”
But for the Democrats, not the Republicans.
Did you also mean voting “still”?
As we read this post we wonder how the country could ban mining but consider this. In 1994 congress, pushed by Clinton, stopped funding patenting of mineral claims that was established in the 1872 mining law. The patent process allows a mineral developer to gain title to the developed land after completing all the requirements. The result has been the death of small mining ventures and a huge negative impact on the US economy. I am hoping the Trump administration will change single sentence in the funding bill for the BLM that has continued unchanged every year since it was initiated.
Have you passed your ‘concerns’ on to the best ‘recipients’? Just curious.
It amounts to a buffet of choices to lure more hapless investors “in on the deal”.
I suspect there’s plenty of blame all around. Governments which smell tax money, and bureaucrats and politicians who smell bribes, outweigh the interests of peasants who have no money. Judges smell bribes and know who signs their paychecks. So I don’t doubt a lot of peasants were and are being screwed by miners both foreign and domestic.
Then the eco-freaks come along and smell all that money to be made defending the peasants from government thieves and cronies, and of course they don’t care about the peasants either. Instead of trying to get the peasants some share of the money to be made, they just ban it all, so no one comes out ahead except the eco-freaks.
As for Bukele’s claims, I have zero doubt he’s exaggerating by an order or two of magnitude. The peasants will still get screwed. The bureaucrats and cronies will still rake in the bribes.
And in 7 years, or 10 or 20 years, the pendulum will swing back, again.
Tend to agree, the length of time it takes to develop a mining project will cover the next 20 years of different governments.
Long time mining guy here. It takes a long time to go from mineral in the ground to production and I wish El Salvador well. Need some serious geologists and capable mining people to truly evaluate these statements. This is the right track as evidenced by the success of other Latin American countries that have moved up the social and economic ladder due to mineral resource extraction. See Chile and Peru.
rocdoc, tom, you are right on the money. As much as I like the PM,
this claim is extreme. At the current price of Au, it would represent
about 1.2 BILLION ounces of gold !!! Over a century, it would require
annual production of 10 million ounces per year. The largest current
producer is Red China, with 13 million oz per year.
Current Au spot price = $2650.oo
I should add dat total Au production, since the time of man,
is 212,582 tons. A metric ton contains 32,151 troy ounces, thus
6.8 billion ozs of gold have been mined.
The PM mine is too fertile.
Yes . We wish them well and maybe $10 bill gold would be a great windfall
Interesting that this article would pop up proximate to the announcement that the Biden junta has sufficiently antagonized China to where China is implementing measures to ban/restrict/complicate REM exports to the former United States.
Sadly, getting commercial production deliveries of REM into the supply change is not simply flipping a switch.
This guy looks to be on the right track.
Exactly what is the nature and source of this alleged pollution?
Much of the pollution is simply due to the lack of infrastructure for dealing with human rubbish and sewage, so most of it ends up in the rivers. Last year, I visited the reservoir on the Rio Lempa in El Salvador, and it is a fantastic haven for birdlife, of which we saw dozens of species: however, the water in the lake is heavily polluted, with all sorts of things floating on it, including masses of plastic, and the shores are just like rubbish tips in places. Despite this, locals fish and swim in it, because they have nothing else. If there was sufficient money available, proper waste disposal and sewage processing facilities could be constructed and things would improve.
It takes lots of cash to build water and wastewater plants.
They can try to borrow it or dig for it.
It is actually quite easy to work out what sort of chance this mining idea has of succeeding: Just check how vehemently the greens oppose it. Greens only oppose things that work or could work to improve peopke’s lives. The better something is for people, the more vehemently greens oppose it. ……. Yup, this mining idea can work.
Trouble with that the previous mining industry screwed the locals in the country,
Round up all these environtards and put them to work mining.
Don’t do that, we need them to flip burgers!
Most Leftards can’t even do that.
Why do that? The vast majority of miners I have worked with have been excellent and very much can do people.
Plenty of unskilled labor needed. 10 years hard labor will be educational for them, might even turn them into actual, useful citizens. Doubt it, but might.
There is hundreds of trillions of dollars worth of gold in the ocean as well.
Over three decades in mining. two of those dealing with projects, has taught me that the road from ultra high level estimates to operating mines is long, expensive and nearly always ends in tears.
Having a government interested in helping to develop resources is only the first step, To develop working mines will require governments over many decades agreeing to the development push.
They will have to change the countries name from El Salvador to Eldorado
El Duker, brillante !!
El Dorado is not so far away in the mountains outside Bogota, Colombia. I’ve been there, and seen the gold hoard of artifacts discovered there at the Colombian Central Bank. They have some spectacular items.
https://www.banrepcultural.org/bogota/museo-del-oro