OVERVIEW OF MINING REGULATION IN BRAZIL - Post one

As I have mentioned before, foreign investment in mining is legal in Brazil.  I'm starting a series of posts in order to explain how does that work.

Let's start from the basics:

The Brazilian Federal Constitution provides for several rules on Mining Law, which include the following:

(i)        The mineral resources, including the ones found underground, are property of the Union (article 20);

(ii)      The Union has the capacity to issue laws and rules on mineral deposits, mines, other mineral resources and metallurgy (article 22, XII);

(iii)     The ownership of mineral deposits, mines and other mineral resources differs from the ownership of the soil, for the purposes of exploitation and use, and concessionaires are granted the ownership of the output of the mining-extraction activity (article 176);

(iv)     The research and the mining-extraction of mineral resources only may be carried out by means of the issuance of an authorization or concession by the Union, considering the national interest, by Brazilian citizens or by companies chartered under the Brazilian laws and having their headquarters in the country, pursuant the law, which will establish the specific conditions when these activities take place in the border zone or on Indian lands (article 176, §1);

(v)       The authorization for the research shall always be granted for a determined period of time; the concession of mining-extraction is granted for an indeterminate period of time (article 176, §3

In future posts, I will add the details on how to legally explore mining activities in Brazil.