Belize, particularly the Cayo District, is being explored for its store of precious metals, such as gold and silver, as well as lead and other associated metals—tin and zinc. How much of these metals are buried underneath the surface of the Chiquibul area in western Belize is uncertain, but a letter dated August 15, 1978, made available to our newspaper recently, suggests that there may be more “wealth untold” in The Jewel than Belizeans know.
The letter, more than three decades old, reveals that Dr. D. A. Andrews-Jones, Chief Geologist for Anschutz Minerals Corporation, a US company of the famous Phil Anschutz, who reportedly spent millions exploring for oil in Belize in the same era, had been exploring Belize for metals in the 70’s and 80’s.
Andrews-Jones wrote to H. C. Flowers, then Inspector of Mines for Belize, reporting that samples of rocks that had been obtained from the Smokey Branch area of the Chiquibul River, in Cayo, contained lead and silver, in some cases as high as 50 to 86% lead and up to 22 ounces per ton of silver.
Craig Moore, the current Inspector of Mines, in the Department of Geology and Petroleum, told Amandala today that the percentages of lead and silver quoted above “lends quite a bit of high interest.”
Moore said that the usual mineralization suite includes lead, tin, zinc, and silver.
Whether exploration and extraction make sense depends on the commodities market and gold prices, which dipped last year but are doing better now, Moore indicated, saying that current gold prices could spark a push for development of those minerals in Belize.
The Department has awarded exploration licenses to companies to look for lead, tin and zinc, none of which have been declared commercially viable to date for what he describes as a “high risk” venture.
Three companies have exploration licenses for Belize: Boiton Minerals (which holds multiple exploration licenses and one mining license), Orion Limited, and Caribbean Marble and Concrete Manufacturing Ltd., the youngest of the three.
Moore said that the Caribbean group, in Belize since 2008 doing mostly desktop research (such as a review of documents and rock samples available at the Department), is “very optimistic,” and the Department of Geology is awaiting their annual report, due by the end of January, to see how the company did with their 2009 research, looking especially at the Smokey Branch area previously mentioned.
The Chiquibul is the area of highest interest, Moore confirmed, indicating that information already exists from previous work done by companies, such as Anschutz, the most extensive to date.
Currently, exploration for minerals, said Moore, is only carried out on Crown lands and not private property.
The minerals (like the petroleum) are the property of the Government of Belize, though landowners are legally entitled to royalties, he explained.
Erin Ventures, the international partner of Boiton Minerals, says on its website that they have been extracting Belizean gold from the Ceiba Creek area, in a project area that also includes the Chiquibul River.
“Work to date suggests that the fan on the lower end of creek has the potential to continue to yield gold-bearing gravel,” it said.
The company also claims its “trail allows access to the area of several potentially gold-bearing gravel benches along the Chiquibul River.”
(Note: The Chiquibul River lies in an area of Cayo which has been ravaged with illegal incursions from Guatemalan farmers and xatéros, and remains in the half of Belize to which Guatemala has constantly staked a claim. Similarly, there have been reports from official sources in Belize of archaeological lootings.)