on the march ccu, page-10

The Mining Lease will be approved, it is just a matter of how many goes it takes.

I just looked at the DPI NSW site to double check what is required to approve the lease.

- Mining Operations Plan
This document outlines how the development is to proceed - including roles and responsibilities, mining areas, procedures, etc. It also outlines how the mine proposes to rehabilitate the site after mining has finished. Supporting documents will include things such as the EIS.

The mine then has to prepare Annual Environmental Management Reports which together with the MOP form the MREMP

The MREMP provides:

- a management tool for all operations within the mine;
- a means of identifying and managing the significant mining, rehabilitation and environmental aspects of the mining operation;
- a means of assessing environmental and rehabilitation performance;
- a basis for estimating rehabilitation requirements and the amount of security required by the Department;
- an efficient and systematic framework for interaction between government agencies.

http://www.dpi.nsw.gov.au/minerals/environment/mining/applying

Tailings and Water storages will also be assessed under the NSW DSC and if deemed to be high risk categories there needs to be a Tailings Dam Ops Manual as well.

So, the lease will be approved, but maybe not the first time, unless CCU get their first submission right. It usually is an iterative process.

I don't want to be the turd in anyone's martini but delays in resource estimates can also be due to dramatic downward revisions in a resource. EXM is a good example of this. The went from something like 1.3Moz AU to 300k due to an independant resource review.