Chico; I emailed a question to Jim Sims this morning. This was his reply:
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"Hi, Pete. Good to hear from you.
"Regarding your question, virtually any significant change to a planned facility’s air emission would require an updated air permit. This is not at all uncommon in large projects. In our case, should we add rare earths, that would alter our air emissions profile to a degree that would almost certainly require an updated air permit from the State of Nebraska".
"That said, we have an existing air permit that allows for construction, and we could certainly proceed at the very least with the construction of any facilities that haven’t changed as a result of the addition of rare earths. At this point, that would be most of the project."
Thx,
Jim"
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Most of the project. This is actually a pretty positive reply and I thought I would share it. I do note that he does qualify "If we add Rare Earths to the project", which is reasonable pending an updated PEA that includes REESs in their product portfolio.
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(My email to Jim.)
The video of the London trip was very encouraging! Good deal! It appears that REEs are now part of the portfolio of metals products for NioCorp.
"Regarding the recent news release."
"...the promise of a more efficient process for recovering niobium and titanium...potentially help recover several rare earth elements..." (No, not definitive. Potential, noted.)
REE extraction/recovery was presented as a back-end add-on to existing extraction processing flow with minimal change to approved NE Air Permitting.
Without knowing any details, if the more efficient process is demonstrated and incorporated, this appears to require changes earlier in the extraction process. (Titanium/niobium) Here is the question. Will this require any substantial revision to the NE air permit with additional delay? )"
