Richard Fifer

Madrid, September 2011

La Castilla del Oro Foundation,  presided by  Cristobal Colon in spain will develop a social and environmental labor very important to the area of Cerro del Andevalo –Andalusia-. Along these lines the concern about environment topics is born, in this case, we will touch upon the participation of the citizen in the geological patrimony.

622 LOCATIONS

With the electronic editing of the Andalusian Inventory of Georesources, a pioneer tool is at disposal in Spain for identification and diagnosis of geological patrimony. In its new version, it identifies, catalogues and values 662 locations, against the 588 locations catalogued seven years ago.

The revised inventory and jackets of the 662 catalogued items area already available for your consultation in an application in CD interactive format just as in its download format on the web page of Environmental Counseling (www.juntadeandalucia.es/medioambiente) and through Google Earth. The citizen can easily and intuitively access all this information and the application in this way, besides, it turns into a tool that can update immediately.

In the process of amplifying the inventory, the Counsel relied on numerous researchers and Andalusian professionals in the Geology and Earth Sciences fields that have valued each of these places according to criteria of scientific interest, including detailed descriptions about the quality, potentiality of active use and preservation of the most important meaningful milestones. Another important contribution is the increase of the locations of paleontological interest, most of all in those provinces in which deficits have been detected in relation to the type of georesources.

The decision made by the president of the Castilla del Oro Foundation in Panama, teacher Pascual Montanes, to search a region in Europe to serve as reference on rural tourism development “was right,” said the general director of Public Enterprises of the Extremadura Region in Spain, Jaime Ruiz Peña.

Such statements were made by Peña Ruiz after visiting Panama upon invitation from Castilla del Oro Foundation, after said organization took a group of Panamanian mayors and governors to Extremadura in order to learn about their tourism development model and replicate it in the isthmus’s rural communities.

“There are many similarities when it comes to highlighting and developing tourism and it was a special trip for me,” said Ruiz Pena, who was positively impressed by the monumental complex formed by forts St. Laurence and Portobelo, both declared as Humanity’s Heritage Sites by UNESCO, and which are still in the process of developing and exploiting their huge tourism potential.

The Governor of Colon Pedro Rios said that the visit of the Duke of Vergua Cristobal Colon of Carvajal generated very important expectative in this province and in the country and showed his confidence with this visit and the gentleman’s pact that was made to value and strengthen the historical heritage, we will learn much from them in the tourism and in the way of how to make tourism grow.

“We have to change the mentality, modality and they are the experts, we are in their hands, the agreements that we have made are to change history, history from now on begins to write itself” said the Colonense Governor.

On the other hand, María Elena Gonzalez Jurado, advisor of the National Institute of Culture observed that the visit of the Duke, president of the Foundation Castilla del Oro is very important and valuable because people like him are going to be able to contribute giving a boost to all the work, to everything they want to do knowing that people from royalty and quality are going to make the difference.

Madrid, September 2011

La Castilla del Oro Foundation led by Richard Fifer – Carles and presided by Cristobal Colon in Spain will develop a very important social and environmental labor in the area of Cerro del Andevalo –Huelva-. Along these lines, the concern about environment topics was born; in this case, we will touch upon the responsibility in the use of energy in the region’s agriculture.

The general director of public enterprises in the Autonomous Region of Extremadura in Spain, Jaime Ruiz Peña, was absolutely captivated after a tour of Panama, where he toured five provinces in  company of Castilla del Oro Foundation’s international president, the Duke of Veragua, Cristobal Colon de Carvajal.

Ruiz Peña, who visited several provinces in company of Castilla del Oro Foundation’s international president, the Duke of Veragua, Cristóbal Colón de Carvajal, said this is his first trip to the isthmus but not the last because Panama can be one of the most important tourist destinations in the region.

This tour was organized by the Castilla del Oro Foundation, an organization under the direction of  engineer Richard Fifer Carles that promotes projects that aim to empower tourism in rural communities in the country. Ruiz Peña reported that upon arrival to Panama, Colon’s governor took him to St. Laurence fort and became fascinated with these structures: “I discovered the incredible power that tourism product has.”

The discovery of the tomb of Santiago Apostol, was a milestone for Christianity, said the international president of the Castilla del Oro Foundation, the Duke of Veragua, Cristóbal Colon de Carvajal, in an act in which he presented an image of this saint to the church of Nata de los Caballeros.

During his speech in the presentation ceremony which took place in the city of Penonome, the Duke of Veragua mentioned the historic influence that this saint has over all Europe, since it evangelized the Spanish people, during the medieval times.

It said that after a long time without knowing where the remains of the grave of the saint were located, it was found in Santiago de Compostela, which became a milestone for Christianity and made this city a pilgrimage place for all the faithful of Europe.

The presentation ceremony was led by the Bishop of the diocese of Cocle, Bishop Urias Ashley, who blessed the holy image of Santiago Apostol, patron saint of Spain, donated by the Castilla del Oro Foundation, an organization created by the engineer Richard Fifer-Carles.

As part of the responsibility of the Department of Environment and Hidrology t of the Petaquilla Gold S.A., Company, the units have developed a technique of “Integrated Management of Solid Wastes” program in which they would recycle materials like paper, plastic and the decomposition of organic material, in order to minimize the environmental risks that may be caused meanwhile the project is going on.

Due to the importance of keeping and preserving the ecosystem, the Petaquilla Gold S.A. Company, led by the Businessman Richard Fifer-Carles, is governed by an internal environmental legislation and a protocol to dispose all type of oil and lubricants due to the huge amount of machinery that is used in the project, for which there must be measurers of prevention of environmental risk at the event that is presented in the work field.

Vielka de Hernández – Petaquilla Foundation delivers school supplies and games to the children of Donoso – Colon

April 2011

Integrated learning for children is accompanied by didactic material and promotes intellectual learning, as well as physical and psychological development, which is why it is necessary to combine theory and practice for a complete development of the child.  Petaquilla Foundation, led by Richard Fifer-Carles, with the intention to provoke the sustainable development of the Castilla del Oro region, considers of vital importance the good development of the future executors of the country’s progress.  In this line, they support the school and kindergarten’s initiatives of the region, in this case in Donoso (Colon).

The increase registered in the mining activity has caused the authorities to update the old laws that ruled the activity, proposing modifications to the Mineral Resources Code in order to apply more rigid environmental standards, increase the royalties paid to the government, and encourage foreign investment in this buoyant sector.

This was stated by the international consultant in economical geology, Steward Redwood, in an article titled “The sun comes up over mining in Panama”, published in the magazine Planeta, edited by the Mining Chamber of Panama (CAMIPA), where he emphasized that Petaquilla Gold S.A. started producing gold commercially as of January 2010.

Currently, gold is positioned as the main exportation item, and as the Sindicato de Industriales de Panama (SIP) pointed out, its impact is felt in the neighboring communities and in Penonome City, capital of the Cocle province, which registered the largest growth in the interior of the country.

Some of the main concerns related to the exploitation of mining projects, is what will happen in the areas they operate once the extraction is over? How will they revert the environmental impact? And, what activities will the residents of the surrounding areas resort to?

Under the vision of Eng. Richard Fifer Carles, Petaquilla Gold SA, thought their subsidiary Panama Desarrollo de Infraestructura (PDI), started a project to guarantee the use of the by-products generated by the gold extraction.

The general manager of PDI, Jose Luis Dieguez, explained that the goal is to guarantee that all the products and byproducts of gold have an exit; and in this case, it is to set up a plant in the area where the mine is functioning to make blocks and tiles.  Dieguez explained they have performed market studies to determine the potential this activity may have, which could go on ten or fifteen years after the mining project has ended.