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Eldorado Gold Corp. (TSX:ELD,NYSE:EGO) announced that it plans to make “significant changes” to its investment plans for Greece.
Eldorado Gold Corp. (TSX:ELD,NYSE:EGO) announced that it plans to make “significant changes” to its investment plans for Greece.
Specifically, the company will suspend construction and development activities at its Skouries project, and may have to suspend those activities at its Olympias project as well. Meanwhile, Eldorado will evaluate the benefits of drilling at the Stratoni mine, and will place the Perama Hill and Sapes projects on care and maintenance.
Paul N. Wright, president and CEO of Eldorado, commented:
Eldorado Gold has been, and remains, a committed, responsible and patient partner to the Greek government and to the people of the communities in which we operate. The projects have considerable potential with demonstrated economic and social benefits. At this time, we would instead prefer to be creating additional employment in Greece and advancing the construction and development of our Skouries and Olympias Projects in Halkidiki, as well as our assets in Thrace. However, we have a duty to all our stakeholders and the significant time and process risks created by Greece ‘s Ministry of Energy and Environment have left us with no choice but to reduce activities and personnel.
Since 2012, we have created approximately 2,000 direct jobs in the country and invested in excess of US$700 million towards development of the Skouries and Olympias projects – including tax payments in excess of €120 million to the Greek government. In Halkidiki, we have the support of the vast majority of the local stakeholders. Furthermore, we have had numerous decisions of the Council of State , Greece ‘s Supreme Court on administrative and environmental matters, confirming the integrity of our permits. However, since the beginning of 2015, the Ministry has adopted an openly confrontational attitude towards our business and investments, which has had a detrimental impact on our schedule and budget to develop our mineral assets in Halkidiki.
We have operated in good faith and Hellas Gold has complied with all of its contractual obligations, but given the adverse circumstances mentioned above, it is prudent to reduce our capital allocation to Greece at this time. We wish to recommence the suspended activities and our investment plans in Greece upon the timely issuance of the necessary permits and the establishment of a truly collaborative partnership, within the framework of the contractual obligations between Hellas Gold and the Greek State.
Click here to read the full Eldorado Gold Corp. (TSX:ELD,NYSE:EGO) press release.