TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Potash project developer IC Potash (ICP) has received notice that the US Department of the Interior’s Bureau of Land Management (BLM) had published a record of decision (ROD) approving its plans to build and operate its sulphate of potash (SOP) Ochoa project, located in south-east New Mexico.

The Toronto-based project developer on Monday said that the signed ROD marked the final decision made by the BLM based on the analysis described in the final environmental-impact statement (EIS), allowing it to construct all mining and processing facilities.

“We are pleased with the favourable ROD from the BLM and are poised to move forward on implementation. We expect that the Ochoa project will be one of the largest SOP projects in the world.

“We also expect that it will satisfy the world’s unmet need for SOP. Recently, the premium in the price of SOP relative to regular potash has increased in all world markets,” president and CEO Sidney Himmel said.

He added that the next significant step in moving project development forward is to secure the $1.01-billion required to build the project, which is expected to be one of the world’s lowest-cost SOP producers when production starts in 2017.

Himmel said that he planned to work with the world’s largest resource banks and industry players to finance the project.

ICP reported that the preferred alternative identified in the ROD incorporated the same proposed mine area, mining methods, facilities, processing methods and water demands, well field and water pipeline, and lead-out facilities as proposed by the company, but included a smaller tailings stockpile, added monitoring and reclamation requirements, formalised coordination with stakeholders and a dispute resolution process.

The Ochoa project would have steady-state output at full capacity of about 714 400 t/y of SOP. The product mix would comprise 229 400 t of standard SOP, 385 000 t of granular SOP, and 100 000 t of soluble SOP.

The steady-state operating production cost had been pegged at about $195/t of SOP.

According to the project’s January feasibility study, it has an expected after-tax net present value of $612-million when using an after-tax discount rate of 10% and no debt.

The after-tax internal rate of return was estimated to be 16%, with a payback period of 5.4 years after start-up.