another milestone passed

Saturday 8 Feb, a key date in the history of ABU.

The EIS has now completed public exhibition and we can start to lock in some more solid timeframes.

Within the next week, NTEPA should have provided ABU with copies of all (hopefully not many) responses to the draft EIS.

Once received, ABU must respond to each of them in the form of a final EIS (supplement to draft EIS). This will be added to the draft EIS on the NTEPA website and then we will be able to gain a better idea of when the full ML is likely to be granted.

IMO, the receipt of the comments from public should bring to light any issues which the draft EIS failed to cover. I don't think there will be too many, but you never know.

As far as time frames go, the images below indicate the maximum times for each step in the process from here.

Obviously both NTEPA and federal Environment Dept can hold up the process if more information is required, however provided nothing is amiss, I think there is a reasonable chance that the ML will be granted within six weeks of the NTEPA preparation of final assessment report.

The most recent proposal to go through the NTEPA system that I can see was the Katherine to Gove gas pipeline. This project was significantly bigger and also involved far more environmentally sensitive areas and was approved in six weeks from NTEPA report.

Lets hope Darren and team have been spending the last month or so getting ready for the EIS response. Once that is out of the way, we can probably look forward to the gold in circuit figures and possibly some more discoveries in the region.