mining lease old pirate granted, page-8

Before any mining or disturbance can take place, they need an approved Mine Closure Plan as well as an approved Project Management Plan. This will involve the detailed plans for pits, tailings dams, mining rates, estimates of mine life, water management etc. The granting of the ML gives them the tenure they require to mine but not the permits. These can still take some time but they would have been working on these in parallel. They need to ensure that they submit a plan they intend to follow for a period of time because changes can be as difficult as getting permission (or even more difficult). This could be part of the logic of the recent dilution - do it right first time.
The time this will take is still under the control of the regulators but gives them (ABU plus financers) the confidence they can proceed with planning and design work.