Santana Minerals applied for and was granted a suspension yesterday of the process to gain consents for its giant goldmine in Bendigo.
The suspension was granted by the fast-track hearing panel, although the application is open for the panel to keep working on other things while the suspension is in place. The suspension starts at 11.59pm today.
The number of days for the suspension was not listed.
In a note to the Australian stock exchange, Santana said it had decided to volunteer a pause period to enable the provision of additional data, reports and time to workshop conditions with the regulators, all in support of the application, while remaining in the Fast-track Approvals Act statutory timeframe.
The company has requested the hearing panel, its advisers and the Environmental Protection Authority continue work on the application throughout.
Santana Minerals chief executive Damian Spring told the Otago Daily Times the focus was not on an arbitrary number of days.
‘‘It’s providing the panel with the comprehensive information it has requested while work continues in parallel.
‘‘Everyone’s objective is the same: to reach a robust decision as efficiently as possible. This approach helps achieve that because the work continues even while the statutory clock is paused.’’
The panel issued a formal request for further information (RFI) to Santana Minerals yesterday.
Mr Spring, in the comment for the stock exchange, said this was a voluntary move by the company, following the expert-conferencing phase, to ensure the expert panel assessing the application had all the information and data they would be likely to need to arrive at their decision.
Once it studied the RFI, Santana Minerals would assess the timing of its response.
The panel spent two weeks earlier this month having hearings with counsel and various specialists over contentious subjects within the project.
The deadline for the final decision was October 29.
With the suspension, the first of its kind, in the Santana process, the deadline will shift further back depending on how long it is.
Panel chairman Matthew Muir raised the issue of the ever-looming deadline at the hearing last week, raising doubt it could be met.
