La Rioja enters the fight for mining income and blocks access to the largest copper and gold project in the country

The thing is Provincial Judge María Greta Deckerat the request of the State Prosecutor’s Office of La Rioja, Last week he ordered the suspension of the project for 30 days and the blocking of traffic of machinery through the Guandacol corridor.

That town is located just crossing the border between San Juan and La Rioja on Route 40. From there a 200-kilometer path opens through Provincial Route 506, which crosses to the west the province governed by the Peronist Ricardo Quintela, with a good relationship with Cristina Kirchner. After traveling through La Rioja, the route re-enters San Juan to the Batidero camp, at 4,000 meters above sea level.

Vicuña, a project that will attract investments by the Australian BHP and the Canadian Lundin Mining for US$7.1 billion between 2027 and 2030, which will escalate to US$18 billion During the next decade, it will be located entirely in San Juan, although for the moment it needs the Rioja infrastructure for access.

The problem arose because, as expected, Vicuña will pay – when it begins operations – mining royalties of 3% to San Juan and will leave employment and development of local suppliers there, to a much greater extent than in La Rioja.

However, Vicuña has a local employment program in Guandacol and Villa Unión for more than 160 workers, including personnel who prepare food and some heavy machinery operators.

The project requested an Environmental Impact Declaration (DIA) from La Rioja last year to carry out works in that town and the maintenance of provincial route 506 and maintains that the province has not yet responded.

Instead, the governor Ricardo Quintela and sources from his team, in dialogue with Clarionexpressed that Vicuña should request environmental impact approval for the entire project and not just for the use of the routes, since both copper, gold and silver deposits are located in the vicinity of their province.

They even question the boundary agreements signed by the governors of La Rioja and San Juan in 1968, without which Josemaría would remain on the Rioja side. The former provincial governor and later president Carlos Menem had tried to repeal that agreement.

In short, It is a fight for mining income and local participation of workers and suppliers in a province with little generation of private employment. In addition, La Rioja remains in default with international creditors and today it does not attract the large mining multinationals, as San Juan, Catamarca, Salta and Jujuy did in recent years.

Vicuña has environmental approval from San Juan, which is the territory where the Josemaría and Filo del Sol deposits are located, and considers that it is sufficient, according to current regulations.

In order to avoid having to go through La Rioja and shorten roads from the capital of San Juan in the future, the consortium is putting out to tender the construction of the 220-kilometer “Northern Corridor”, which will require an investment in infrastructure of close to 200 million dollars.

According to its economic presentations, Vicuña will provide the country with export income close to US$6 billion per year in the next decade, equivalent to everything that Argentine mining sold abroad in 2025.