The Ministry of Mining accepted application from CODELCO to extend CEOL, page-48

I recently found this article about the creation of ENALI, and the authors put together a good summary of the lithium situation between codelco - corfo- cchen - ect

quote:
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The first legal regulation of the State of Chile regarding lithium was issued in 1976, when it was included as a substance of nuclear interest in the organic law of the Chilean Nuclear Energy Commission, CChEN. At that date, lithium had the character of a concessionable substance, as established by the Mining Code of 1932.
While Foote was developing the technical studies to evaluate the extraction of lithium in the Salar de Atacama, as a result of the Basic Agreement signed with the Corfo in 1975, the mining legislation on salt flats was adapted in order to make the development of a project possible. Thus, the amount of the mining patent that protects belongings constituted in salt flats was reduced to one third.

By Decree Law No. 2886 of 1979, by ceasing to be the potassium salts reserved for the State, the 32,768 OMA mining properties (163,840 hectares) in the Salar de Atacama were validated, resulting from the partial reduction of the OMA measurement 1 to 59,820, registered in the name of Corfo on page 408 No. 11 of 1977 and page 131 No. 6 of 1979, of the Registry of Properties of the El Loa Mining Conservator.
On the other hand, the same DL No. 2886 of 1979 modified Law No. 16,319 of 1965, which created the CChEN, establishing the State reserve on lithium as required by the national interest, considering its strategic nature due to its use in nuclear fusion. Exempted from this provision was the existing lithium in mining properties constituted or in the process of being constituted before January 1, 1979, a condition in which Corfo's mining property was found in the Salar de Atacama and those of Codelco in the Pedernales salt flats and Maricunga. Likewise, the aforementioned legal body granted the CChEN the power to authorize the exploitation of lithium.

Subsequently, the Political Constitution of 1980 did not include lithium as non-concessible wealth, but in 1982 the Constitutional Organic Law on mining concessions (No. 18,097) declared it as a substance not subject to mining concessions, without prejudice to mining concessions validly constituted with prior to the corresponding declaration of inadmissibility or importance for national security.
For the use of lithium according to the current legal regime, it is necessary to abide by the provisions of Article 19 No. 24 of the Political Constitution and Art. 8 of the Mining Code, which establish that the exploration and/or exploitation of substances classified as not subject to mining concession, may be executed directly by the State or by its companies, or through administrative concessions or special operating contracts to public-private associations in which the State participates as controller, just as Codelco does in its associations. with private parties, with the requirements and under the conditions that the President of the Republic establishes, for each case, by supreme decree.
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