Gold mining company AngloGold Ashanti CEO Alberto Calderon has confirmed an 18- to 24-month delay in the permitting process for its Quebradona copper project, in Colombia.

The environmental agency, ANLA, last week officially notified AngloGold Ashanti of its decision to “archive” the environmental licence application for Quebradona, stating that it did not have enough information to take a substantive decision.

AngloGold said on Monday that it would appeal the archiving decision to secure further details on the specific additional information needed for a determination. Based on the outcome of the appeal, the group would prepare a new environmental licence application for the copper project.

Calderon said AngloGold was comfortable that all the technical uncertainties could be addressed. “. . .  there are no showstoppers, but it will delay the process by about 18 to 24 months,” he said in a conference call.

Quebradona is one of the world’s preeminent copper projects, expected to treat about 6.2-million tonnes a year of ore, producing three-billion pounds of copper and 1.5-million ounces of gold and 21-million ounces of silver over about 23 years.

“The project remains an attractive long-life, high-grade, low-cost project, which introduces copper and silver production into the portfolio,” the South Africa-based gold miner noted.

The project also enjoyed strong support from a range of stakeholders, including local communities, the company added.

Meanwhile, Calderon noted that the Quebradona delay would not impact on the Gramalote project, also in Colombia. AngloGold owns the project in a joint venture with Canada’s B2Gold, which is the operator of the venture.

Earlier this year, AngloGold and B2Gold pushed out the Gramalote feasibility study to the second quarter of 2022 to allow for more drilling and further optimisation. A mineral resource update would be published in early 2022.

B2Gold CEO Clive Johnson said last week that the Gramalote feasibility should be delivered by the second half of next year and reported positive results from the engineering review so far.