I came across this old report on what I am reasonably sure is...

I came across this old report on what I am reasonably sure is the James Bay project that Allkem owns 100%. The report was released in November 2009 but in some sections it relies on excerpts from even older analysis. An interesting enough document. One thing that was striking was that it was known for some time that the property had heaps of lithium. In particular, this quote from a 1989 report (on page 13): "Because of the very large dimensions involved,the potential reserves on this property could be in the order of 300 million tonnes ormore." A big warning is that this estimate was made before the Canadians had imposed reporting standards on mineral estimates but the point remains that even with 109mt as its current MRE at James Bay Allkem may only just be getting started there.

https://gq.mines.gouv.qc.ca/documents/examine/GM68237/GM68237.pdf

Meanwhile the James Bay project remains held up due to some whacko third-world bureaucratic nitpickers who think it is worthwhile delaying a decision by a number of months while they fart-arse around on whether a pile of rocks is at position A or a hundred metres from position A.

And it is not Allkem alone that is being held back. It also took Critical Elements five years to get its Rose lithium project permitted.

The other night I did some reading on Troilus Gold which is a TSX listed company starting to develop a gold project next to Sayona's Moblan project (to the south of Nemaska's Whabouchi lithium project). I think the boss bloke said that they submitted their applications about 7 or 8 months ago and they are hoping for the approvals to come through by the end of next year: that would be a spritely 2 years to be permitted. So going on a sample of one it seems that COMEX only gives the lithium developers a hard time. Wankers.