Photo by: Bloombeg
PERTH (miningweekly.com) – The share price of Alkane Resources responded positively on Tuesday after the federal Department of Environment gave the go-ahead for the development of the Dubbo zirconia project, in New South Wales.
The Department of Environment had assessed the project’s impact on the pink-tailed work lizard (PTWL), a threatened species in the region.
The approval incorporated a number of conditions, including a maximum limit of ground clearance of the defined extent of the PTWL habitat, the submission of a mine site PTWL management plan, a biodiversity offset management plan and securing of the lands identified as the offset area as a biodiversity offset by legal instrument.
Alkane pointed out on Tuesday that a comprehensive PTWL management plan had been submitted as part of the environmental-impact statement to the state government.
State development consent was granted in May and, by June, the project had received development consent from the Planning and Assessment Commission.
The project was expected to extract 19.5-million tonnes of rare metals and rare-earth ores from an opencut mine, over a 20-year mine life, at a rate of one-million tonnes a year.
Alkane was also proposing to establish a processing facility to produce 75 000 t/y of concentrate, which would be transported to either Port Botany or Newcastle for export.
Alkane’s shares were trading at a high of 23c a share on Tuesday, up from 21.5c a share.