The president of the Portuguese Association of the Mineral Resources Industry (Assimagra) warned that Portugal has not opened new mines for half a century, which he considers to be limiting the use of the sector’s potential.
In an interview with Lusa, Miguel Goulão stated that the extractive industry “is one of the activities that brings the most added value to the Portuguese economy”, stressing that the country “has everything for the sector to work, but it doesn’t work because new projects are not licensed”.
According to data from the association, the five mines currently operating in Portugal employed around 2,040 workers in 2024, a number that has been falling since 2022, a situation that the official attributes to the lack of new investments.
“We have some mines of European and even global dimension, but all other projects are micro. We need to add dimension to our mining projects, and this can only be achieved with predictability”, he said.
Miguel Goulão stressed that “Portugal has not opened a new mine for 40 or 50 years” and that “companies do not invest without guarantees of stability and a long-term policy”. “There is no one who would make an investment of this nature if they are not absolutely certain that they will be able to exploit the resource in a stable manner,” he stated.
For the president of the association, the country has “everything for the sector to work”, but “it doesn’t work because they don’t license us”. “They don’t give us the ability to access the territory. A factory can be installed anywhere, but a resource can only be exploited where it exists”he noted.
In this sense, Assimagra defends that the sector passes from the supervision of the Ministry of the Environment to that of the Economy. “We can only have the entire value chain seriously worked on if the sector is in the Economy”, he said, remembering that “the extractive industry is in the Environment and it is difficult to speed up processes”.
Miguel Goulão also considers that “it is necessary to create a national geological reserve”, similar to an agricultural or ecological reserve. “We protect ecology and agricultural land, but we do not protect the subsoil, which is what truly has economic value”, he said.
The leader also highlighted the sector’s role in territorial cohesion and the creation of qualified jobs. “We are a sector that pays well above average and, by paying above average, we are able to retain labor”, he stated.
“Our sector can bring about a paradigm shift, because it has large and capital-intensive companies behind it, capable of generating employment and development where other sectors cannot reach”, he concluded.
Asked about the Government’s announcement, at the end of 2024, of new tenders for the exploration of metallic minerals, Miguel Goulão prefers to wait and see.
“An advertisement is an advertisement. Now, this competition needs to be carried out. What we defend is that competitions should be more open, more transparent, and it seems that we are moving in that direction”, he commented.
PEDRO SARMENTO COSTA
Lithium: critics don’t know what they’re talking about
In the same interview, Miguel Goulão also addresses the lack of political will regarding lithium, a vital natural resource in the energy transition but which has raised great controversy among the population.
“Critics who say that Portuguese reserves are small or too expensive have no scientific basis to determine whether there is enough lithium or what the costs of this exploration are”, considers Miguel Goulão.
According to the official, the first surveys increased “the initially identified capacity by 200%” which pointed to the “possibility of extracting lithium for around 500 thousand cars [elétricos]”, which demonstrates “that there truly is potential” for the country to be a strategic supplier to Europe.
The person in charge was referring to the recent announcement by Savannah Resouces that ongoing prospecting had confirmed “larger quantities” of lithium in the Barroso mine, in Boticas, reinforcing its position as the largest reserve of lithium spodumene in Europe.
This open-pit lithium mine in Boticas, which has generated several demonstrations and legal proceedings, obtained an Environmental Impact Statement (DIA) conditional on 2023, with the British company expecting to start production in 2027.
For Miguel Goulão, the public discussion about lithium is often carried out “without knowing the territory” and with prejudices. “Without carrying out surveys and research, it is impossible to know what the territory has in terms of potential”he said, highlighting that the projects “have the capacity to go far beyond a mere business” and “transform desertified territories”.
The president of the association that represents mineral resource companies considered that “people cannot settle in the interior if there are no viable economic projects that can adequately remunerate people”. “Our sector has this capacity, to be in the territory where no other economic activity can be”, he stated.
Recognizing that the sector’s intervention “has impacts on the territory”, Miguel Goulão argued that these “can be minimized during the exploration process and eliminated at the end”, returning the territory “to the populations, much more qualified”. He gave as examples the Estufa Fria and Parque Eduardo VII, in Lisbon, “both former stone extraction spaces”, to show “that it is possible to extract economic value and then return the improved territory”.
“Portugal has had many opportunities and has lost almost all of them in attracting investment for mining projects”he lamented, criticizing “the attitude of those who don’t even allow people to see the territory”.
“In Portugal, there is no financial capacity to support projects of this nature and size if there is no political will,” he added. “Serious political will is needed to help carry out projects of this nature and dimension”, he said.
“Countries are worth their territories, the value they can extract from them. And we remain hostage to an exhausted economic model”, he lamented.