“Garimpeiro” columnist Barry FitzGerald has covered the resources industry for 35 years. Now he’s sharing the benefits of his experience with Stockhead readers.

BHP’s president Australia Geraldine Slattery pulled no punches when addressing a packed Melbourne Mining Club luncheon recently.

The need for change in Australia’s labour laws and tax settings got a thorough workover, as was expected.

But there was a third area of concern where BHP wants to see change, with Slattery warning the resources industry’s competitive position is threatened.

It was to do with the need to streamline permitting to make it easier to deliver resources projects.

“Time to market matters,” Slattery said, adding inefficient regulation leads to project delays.

Other countries competing for resources investment dollars have recognised the need for change.

The US introduced an Energy Permitting Reform Act this year, and the incoming Trump administration is continuing the conversation about permitting reform, with drill baby, drill the catchcry.

Slattery noted that Canada has created a Federal permitting coordinator and has amended its Impact Assessment Act to accelerate decisions, and that Chile has made a better permitting system a focus of its legislative agenda.

‘’For Australia the principles should be clear: put in place a risk-based permitting system that ensures processing timelines are certain and outcomes are reliable,’’ Slattery said.

 

JBY on the fast track

Now Garimpeiro does not normally give over time to complaints from the big end of town. But in this case, BHP’s permitting grievances are shared by the small end of town.

Australia’s combination of legislative and regulatory hoops, along with green and indigenous legal challenges to permitting decisions, has become a headache for the entire industry.

That hit home at last week’s Resources Rising Stars conference when Andrew Dornan, executive director of James Bay Minerals (ASX:JBY), was singing the virtues of Nevada’s permitting system.

The company recently picked up the advanced Independence gold project in the state. It came with a foreign resource estimate of 1.18Moz of gold and 7.6Moz of silver, including a high-grade component of 796,200oz at 6.53g/t gold.

It is potential company making stuff, which is why the company’s share price has more than doubled since Independence was picked up. The stock was trading at 63c in Thursday’s market for a market cap of $62 million on a capital base expanded by a recent $6m placement.

There is lots of excitement around what is ahead for at Independence. The project neighbours the Phoenix gold operations owned by a Barrick/Newmont joint venture, with Phoenix one of four operations in the broader region that make up the biggest gold mining complex in the world.

 

Plenty to come

So there is lots to come from Independence as James Bay gets busy with the drill bit, with copper potential also part of the story. James Bay was the pick of the bunch for those surveyed by Garimpeiro after the conference.

But back to the issue of permitting. Dornan said as far as Independence was concerned, Nevada-style permitting is a “huge value asset for the company.”

Much of that has to do with the Independence ground already being covered by a plan of operations approval secured previously by Newmont.

It means any project development at Independence would be treated as an amendment to the broader plan of operations approval. A short 8-12 month process would follow at a cost of no more than $100,000.

“So once that project amendment is in place, we’re then approved to go and operate,” Dornan said.

It is the sort of flexibility and speed that has Nevada ranked first or second each year in the annual survey of the world’s best mining destinations by Canada’s Fraser Institute.

Western Australia and the Northern Territory rank highly too in the top 10. Then follows Queensland in the top 15, South Australia top 20, NSW top 30, and surprise, surprise, Victoria limps into the top 60 behind Angola.

It was ironic then that when BHP’s Slattery was lamenting Australia’s permitting shortcomings she was speaking in the Melbourne Town Hall, a grand old thing built on back of the economic boom delivered by the Victorian gold rush.

 

 

The views, information, or opinions expressed in  this article are solely those of the columnist and do not represent the views of Stockhead. Stockhead does not provide, endorse or otherwise assume responsibility for any financial product advice contained in this article.

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While James Bay Minerals is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.

Read MoreGold

You might be interested in