I went to the Sydney conference today, had a chat to Elisha at the booth & watched the company presentation.
As per the last time I saw Elisha present I was impressed by her delivery & confidence.
Couple of things came out to me from the preso & the booth discussions.
First is that the traditional owners had signed off on the ERD prior to it's lodgement with the EPA & are fully behind the company & the mining proposal.
Second is that the company has an agreed term sheet with the traditional owners on their remuneration from the project & while this has yet to be approved by the traditional owners full board, is a good step along the way.
I also gained the impression the company is quietly confident that we have entered stage 4 of the assessment process & that the EPA are preparing their report & recommendations.
However, the EPA website has not yet changed the project status from stage 3 but the company feels this is imminent.
STAGE 4: EPA report on the assessment of a proposal
At the completion of the assessment, the EPA prepares a report and recommendations for the Minister for Environment. The assessment report sets out what the EPA considers are the key environmental factors identified in the course of the assessment, the EPA’s recommendations as to whether or not the proposal may be implemented and the conditions and procedures to which implementation should be subject.
Where the proposal is a strategic proposal, the EPA will recommend whether or not the future proposals, identified in the strategic proposal, may be implemented.
The EPA’s report and recommendations are made publicly available on the EPA’s website.
Any person may lodge an appeal with the Minister against the content and recommendations in an assessment report.
The other thing I picked up is that there will be no public review of the ERD prior to the EPA's recommendations but there is & will be a public review of the EPA recommendations on the proposal & this only applies to the content & process as noted above.
I also quizzed them on the lack of news coming out & they assured me there are lots of meaningful discussions going on behind the scenes regarding various aspects of the project but, as nothing concrete has been agreed or proposed as yet, there is nothing the company has, or can say, about those discussions at the moment.
I must say that left me quite bouyant about the near future.
