The Senate has shelved a House bill that aims to suspend mining activities on Pagan following the Marianas Public Lands Authority\u2019s granting of a conditional mining permit to an investor, Azmar International.<\/p>\n
Senate President Joaquin G. Adriano, who has been supportive of Azmar\u2019s application, said the bill, which was introduced by House Speaker Benigno Fitial, would now be junked.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s useless now. It\u2019s not going to work. We\u2019re throwing it away,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Two months ago, the House unanimously passed the bill, which had aimed to suspend any new pozzolan mining activity on Mt. Pagan without a comprehensive study. The bill also called for the creation of a task force to oversee the assessment project, which may last for 90 days. <\/p>\n
Adriano said that MPLA\u2019s approval of Azmar\u2019s permit application, albeit conditional, was \u201cgood news.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s good news. It\u2019s good thing for MPLA to do that because investments are what we need here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said he thinks the 7 percent proposed royalty fee to the government is \u201creasonable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The MPLA board voted Tuesday to grant Azmar\u2019s request on the condition that it would be able to comply with certain requirements within 60 days.<\/p>\n
Primarily, the MPLA wants to see the financial strength of the company. Other requirements include the submission of Azmar\u2019s most recent articles of incorporation; names of its incorporators, officers and shareholders, and how much shares each of them holds; an audited financial statement; personal financial statements of the shareholders; initial capital for Pagan mining; names of investors; names of prospective buyers; and a letter of credit from a bank covered by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.<\/p>\n
Some authorities believe that there are some 200 million metric tons of high-grade pozzolan deposit on Pagan but MPLA said this has yet to be confirmed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Senate has shelved a House bill that aims to suspend mining activities on Pagan following the Marianas Public Lands Authority\u2019s granting of a conditional mining permit to an investor, Azmar International.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83403","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83403","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83403"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83403\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83403"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83403"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.saipantribune.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83403"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}