By Gemma Q. Casas
Variety News Staff

THE cash-strapped government hired a mining consultant for $150,000 in preparation for its plan to sell Pagan’s volcanic ash.
Press Secretary Charles P. P. Reyes Jr. said Dr. John Wilson, a Harvard-educated mining engineer, will be paid through the proceeds of lease payments to the Department of Public Lands.
“DPL is paying,” said Reyes.
The administration introduced Wilson yesterday morning to the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Reyes said Wilson’s primary job is to determine the quantity and quality of pozzolan — a volcanic ash used as an additive in making hydraulic cement — that can be found in Pagan..
Reyes at the same time said the government doesn’t have the resources to undertake the mining project on Pagan and will ask private investors to submit bids.
“We want to do it systematically and intelligently,” he said.
Wilson recently retired as the Rocky Mountain Energy/Union Pacific Professor in Mining Engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla.
Prior to his appointment to the university, Wilson was the vice president and general manager of TransAfrican Mining Ltd., a Bermuda corporation with gold mining properties in West Africa.
According to documents submitted to the government, Wilson began his mining career back in 1954 as a coal miner in the Northeastern Coalfields of England.
He left his coal mining job in 1957 to earn his degree at the University of Durham in 1961.
In 1971, he earned his Ph. D in mining engineering at the University of Witwatersrand.
In 1972, he completed the program in management development at Harvard University’s business school.
Wilson’s technical expertise in mining has been utilized in Britain, the U.S., Australia, South Africa and Canada.
The litigation that the administration filed against local businessman John T. Sablan over his Pagan mining permit is pending in Superior Court.
On July 24, 2006, the governor vetoed Senate Bill 15-45 which would have reinstated Sablan’s mining permit.
After the Legislature overrode the veto. the Attorney General’s Office filed a complaint against JG Sablan and asked the court to declare the override unconstitutional.
Sablan earlier formed a partnership agreement with the California-based Bridgecreek, an international firm with stakes in various industries.
Bridgecreek agreed to invest up to $10 million to finance Sablan’s mining project.