Does reactive Castilla? Company renews permits from the Municipality of Copiapo
Municipal Works Department recently approved applications for MPX, the company in charge of the thermoelectric, to maintain existing authorizations for plant and port Castilla. The firm explains that their plans in Chile are intact
The Castilla Thermal Power Plant Project, owned by the Brazilian company MPX Energia, is not dead.
In recent months, and stealth, the company has continued to make progress in the necessary steps to make possible this initiative because it is an investment of U.S. $ 4,500 million. The latest milestone occurred in March, when the Copiapo Municipal Works Department (DOM) approved the permits for Castilla and Puerto Castilla projects, requested through REX Investment Company SA, a subsidiary of the company linked to businessman Eike Batista. It is rather than an administrative procedure, but the company has great value because it confirms their interest to materialize this project in Chile at once.
According to the explanation from the DOM of Copiapo, the first municipal permits were ordered in June 2011, but these had expired. Therefore, a year later, the company, again before entering these projects, which were approved.
The idea is to keep current permits for the construction of Castilla. Of course, the viability of the power plant will depend on re-entry, and to approve the generation project and port before the Environmental Review Commission, a body that shall review the initiative as a whole, after the Supreme Court declared, in 2012, the illegality of the assessment procedure.
Therefore, say the company, is that once these authorizations expire, which last one year, they will re-enter, to keep the option open. The municipality clarifies that this does not mean that the project can be re-build, because for that other permissions are needed.
The issue took effect locally, after the councilors for Copiapo, Analyze Veliz (PS) and Rosa Ahumada (PC), denounced that the communal government, headed by Mayor Maglio Ciccardini has not had any interest in reviewing the permits or modify the use of soil in the area where the plant is to deploy. What the mayors are seeking is to prohibit to install polluting industries there, something that according to the current arrangement, it is possible to do. In a presentation, a councilor named as Nueva Castilla and Nuevo Puerto Castilla to these requests, although MPX clarifies that are exactly the same initiatives known. This is compounded by the fact that the Court of Appeals overturned last week, the decision of the Committee of Ministers in relation to another plant that was intended to install in the area, and that is Punta Alcalde, of Endesa. It doubted that plant and forced to look at other alternatives, which has precisely Castilla.
Asked by PULSO, Chile’s representatives of the Brazilian company assured that has not abandoned the idea of investing in Chile, to thereby maintaining analyzing different alternatives of project and evaluating the best time to return to the fray with Castilla.
“MPX confirms its intention to develop energy projects in Chile and for that it will continue taking the necessary steps that will allow them to carry out the projects as far as making decisions to invest in them, “said the company officially. Although for that yet no dates involved.
In relation to the procedure abovementioned, MPX said “the construction drafts of the Castilla project were originally approved in 2011 and subsequently renewed in March 2013 given the intention of the company to maintain the validity of the same”.
Source: Pulso
