Buried treasure, dreams of gold and threatened nature: is the future of this beautiful French region in the hands of a so-called adventurer and true businessman who wants to exploit mines?
During an exhibition at the National Museum of Natural History in Paris, a charismatic and extremely wealthy geologist discovers a gold nugget weighing more than three kilos, extracted from the French subsoil more than a century ago. Based solely on his intuition and an old local press article from the 19th century, the man then sets out on a quest for a new French Eldorado.
This is not the synopsis of the next Disney family adventure film or a future thriller series on Netflix, but rather the description of a gigantic mining prospecting project which could take place in one of the most most emblematic of France. In any case, this is the version that its promoters present to the public… and to investors.
The protagonist at the center of this intrigue, or rather at the forefront, is Keith Barron, a Canadian-British geologist based in Switzerland. The man built his fortune as much as his legend thanks to the discovery of a gigantic gold mine in Ecuador in the early 2000s, by studying old dusty and mysterious maps.
At the very least, that’s the story he likes to tell to those he talks to when raising funds for his mineral exploration company, Aurania Resources. Because this company, based in Canada but registered in Bermuda, has in fact submitted applications for mining research permits in less than 42 municipalities, covering 850 km² in Brittany.
However, this project will require a lot of money, and to obtain it, we must therefore tell good stories, even if it means embellishing them a little (or a lot), in order to make investors and speculators salivate. Lifting a corner of the veil of this beautiful narration, this is precisely what offers us the superb open access investigation of the media Splann!relayed by Médipart.
The association, based in Brittany, leads and publishes for free on its website surveys on subjects of general interest. Recently, it has particularly focused on the resurgence of geological exploration projects targeting the Breton subsoils and the Armorican massif, which particularly whet the appetite of the giants of the mining industry.
And which worries both residents and environmental defense associations, in the face of the ecological devastation that major mining projects always cause. Whether you like stories of adventurers and treasure hunting, those of businessmen and big money or whether you are simply concerned about the Breton territory, we highly recommend reading the very rich series of investigations by Splann!.