Known as “Valongo”, the project initially included the municipality of the same name, but due to unspecified “problems” the company has reduced the prospecting and research area, explained Rui Fernandes, representative of the Canadian mining company in the public clarification sessions in Penafiel.

In total, according to Rui Fernandes, there will be 15 sessions distributed among the parishes and the headquarters of the three municipalities involved.

The project was in public consultation between November 13 and December 27, 2023, and had 27 participations, including opinions from the four municipalities, the Ministry of Agriculture and Food and the Northern Regional Coordination and Development Commission.

Regarding the reservations presented in several of the opinions, namely by the municipalities, he explained that “prospecting and research is not exploration, but rather trying underground to find out what exists, as well as whether its exploration is profitable”.

“Once the [prospecting and research] contract is signed, in the first phase what we will do is study the area, using the fact that the company has more sophisticated equipment than that used by previous companies that carried out exploration”, he added.

From paper to reality, Rui Fernandes estimates that prospecting will not begin before June 2025, the time he predicts will take between the delivery of the final report that follows the clarification sessions and the expected approval by the Secretariat of State and the General Directorate of Energy and Geology (DGEG), which will culminate in the signing of the contract authorising the trip into the field.

In the sessions, he said, it will be explained: “what they are going to do, who the company is, the object of the study, the study area in each parish and each municipality, the guarantees they can have from the company”.

“The work plan includes three years of prospecting plus two years of extension, that is, five years to study the area. Assuming that everything goes well, the next step will be to deliver a final report to DGEG. If it is accepted and wants to continue, as this depends on each government's mining policies, we will request an environmental impact study that could take two years”, said Rui Fernandes.

10 years before the exploration

According to the company representative, “in the best case scenario and considering the possibility of there being a piece of that area that is profitable, it will take more than 10 years to start exploration”.

Regarding the reservations presented by the municipalities in the public consultation, he stated that “they are due to being poorly informed about what prospecting and research and exploration are, which leads them to think that exploration starts the next day, and they ask questions that are extemporaneous.”

“There is a very wide range of opinions, but I continue to say that municipalities put the cart before the horse. The municipalities are making a big deal out of nothing, as they neither understand nor are prepared to understand the work that will be done and whoever asked for their opinion did not explain anything”, criticised the speaker.

In the prior consultation carried out with the municipalities, only Penafiel admitted issuing a favourable opinion, “as long as all good practice recommendations for prospecting and research work are safeguarded”, while Paredes invoked “technical information issued by the Urban Planning and Management Division and the Pelouro da Cultura” to justify the “unfavourable opinion” and Gondomar announced that it would maintain the “unfavourable opinion” until it was presented with the “respective Mining Plan that allows the impact of the concession to be inferred in the first instance”.

In Valongo, the decision was in the same direction, with the city council understanding that “it is not justified to assign new research prospecting rights to a territory where the theme of mining exploration of the aforementioned mineral deposits is framed by the municipality and is perceived by the population as part of the heritage cultural, namely archaeological”.

In response to the opinion of the Ministry of Agriculture and Food which, in addition to the warnings made due to the intervention area partly affecting the National Agricultural Reserve, drew attention to the fact that the project's study area “intersects its entire extension to the Vinhos Verdes Demarcated Region”, Rui Fernandes declared: “he gave an opinion for exploration and not for prospecting”.