Britain’s Kodal Minerals (AIM: KOD.L) completed and lodged an Environmental and Social Impact Assessment or ESIA for its proposed Bougouni open-pit lithium mining and processing operation in Mali.
According to Kodal, the formal ESIA submission to the Direction Nationale de l’Assainissement et du Contrôle des Pollutions et des Nuisances or DNACPN, the governing administration for environmental matters in Mali, represents the first critical step in the process of obtaining a mining
The ESIA submission represents the first critical step in the process of obtaining a mining
licence
“The ESIA comprises an overarching project review and assessment as well as specialist environmental baseline studies, which have already commenced, and is combined with the community consultation process, which has been successfully completed,” the company’s CEO, Bernard Aylward, said in a media statement.
Following the ESIA submission, the DNACPN will send a delegation to the Bougouni site to conduct a standard validation visit, after which the delegation will attend a workshop session with the company to provide their feedback on the assessment.
Once this is done, the miner will have to submit an updated final ESIA and the DNACPN will have 45 days to process the approval.
According to Aylward, Kodal will now focus on completing a feasibility study that will also support its application to obtain a mining
Bougouni is located in southern Mali and has a mineral resource of 21.3Mt at 1.11% Li2O, with 11.6Mt at 1.13% Li2O in the indicated category and 9.7Mt at 1.08% Li2O in the inferred category.
“This Mineral Resource, which is comprised of only three of the ten prospects identified to date, places the Bougouni project in the top 15 projects globally,” Kodal’s website states.