PERTH (miningweekly.com) – Lithium-boron developer Global Geoscience has unveiled the development plans for the Rhyolite Ridge project, in Nevada, targeting a shorter permitting process.
The company told shareholders that the site layout for the Rhyolite Ridge project has been designed with a total surface disturbance footprint of less than one square mile, allowing the Federal Bureau of Land Management to consider the project for an Environmental Assessment, rather than an Environmental Impact Statement, which would be more time consuming.
The site layout includes the proposed openpit mine, process plant, haul roads, overburden storage, leach residue storage and salt storage, with Global pointing out that no evaporation ponds or tailings dams would be required.
MD Bernard Rowe said on Wednesday that the company’s prefeasibility study work to date has provided a clear path to developing the project into a major, low-cost producer of lithium and boron in an environmentally sustainable manner.
“We are prudently progressing Rhyolite Ridge towards production and remain on track to release the prefeasibility study outcomes in the third quarter of 2018,” he said.
Global is targeting a three-million- to four-million-tonne-a-year operation.
The necessary environmental baseline studies have been targeted for completion by the end of the third quarter this year, after which the company will submit a plan of operations to the Federal Bureau of Land Management, which will make a determination regarding the environmental assessment pathway for permitting and approvals.