TORONTO (miningweekly.com) – Explorer Strateco Resources on Tuesday said Quebec Sustainable Development, Environment, Wildlife and Parks Minister Yves-Francois Blanchet had served it with a notice indicating that he planned to "refuse to issue the permit for the Matoush underground exploration project" owing to "a lack of sufficient social acceptability".

The notice gave Strateco 60 days in which to appeal the Minister’s intended refusal to issue the requested permit.

The company in January filed a court order to force the Quebec government to make a decision on its exploration project in the province’s Otish Mountains.

On March 28, two months after Strateco filed the petition for mandamus, the Minister announced that no permits would be issued for uranium exploration and mining projects in Quebec until the Office of Public Hearings on the Environment, known by its French acronym Bape, had submitted its report on Quebec's uranium industry.

The Minister specified, at the time, that the temporary moratorium, which could last for as long as 18 months or more, was applicable to Strateco.

Strateco promptly reacted to what it termed an “illegal, abusive decision” taken by the Minister.

The company also said it had appeared before the Superior Court on June 13 and 14, to request a safeguard order from the end of the month to ensure the possibility of the project succeeding until the proceedings, which were scheduled for late in 2014, could be heard.

Strateco had already obtained its federal authorisations and Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission (CNSC) permit for the Matoush advanced underground exploration programme. Since the start of the Matoush project, Quebec's Environment Minister had issued 22 different permits to Strateco to advance the project, in which the company had already invested $123-million.

Strateco said its legal advisers were examining the impact and reach of this new development on the legal proceedings currently under way.

During the first three months of the year, Strateco had booked an $87-million impairment charge, as the Matoush uranium project remained in limbo following the province’s March moratorium on uranium exploration and mining.

The Quebec Minister's announcement of a moratorium, followed ongoing legal proceedings aimed at forcing the provincial government to make a decision on the company’s flagship Matoush project, which is located on The James Bay Cree Nation’s Eeyou Istchee reserve, on the east shore of James Bay.

Last year, after two years of public hearings, the James Bay Cree Nation enacted a permanent moratorium on uranium exploration, mining, milling and waste emplacement on their territory.

Despite this moratorium, federal regulators, including the CNCS, allowed Strateco’s Matoush uranium project to proceed within this Cree territory. Nevertheless, before this project was given the go-ahead to proceed, provincial authorisation was also required, for which Strateco had already been waiting for two years.