Treasure Quest

Abstract

The article focuses on Pascua Lama, one of the world's largest remaining untapped gold deposits, located in the Andes Mountains, along the Argentine-Chilean border. For its owner, Toronto's Barrick Gold Corp., the trouble with Pascua Lama is that its massive reserves are buried beneath three Ice Age glaciers. Those, in turn, are watched over by an increasingly vocal and impassioned environmental movement that objects to the project. Opposition to the US$1.5-billion project reached a flashpoint when, according to reports, protesters in Santiago, Chile, clashed with police as they tried to present the government with a petition carrying 18,000 signatures. Battles with local environmentalists are nothing new for mining companies, but for Barrick the stakes at Pascua Lama are higher than most, since finding major gold deposits is proving increasingly difficult.