European Nickel (LON:ENK) sought to reassure investors Friday that the reissuance of forestry permits essential for its Çalda? project in Turkey should be straightforward following their anticipated revocation.
European Nickel is an emerging mid-tier nickel laterite producer. With over 1 million tonnes of nickel resources and assets in Turkey, the Philippines and Albania, European Nickel is targeting 50,000 tonnes of annual nickel production within five years. The Caldag project in Turkey is the Company's flagship asset intended to be the world's first commercial scale nickel laterite heap leach operation.
According to the Company, a new Mining Law should resolve a legal conflict which has already resulted in the revocation of one of the mining company's forestry permits and is expected to cause revocation of its other forestry permits, it said.
Due to a technical legal conflict under the current legislation between the Forestry Law and the mining regulations, the procedure for the issuance of new forestry permits to mining companies in Turkey since 11 June 2009 has been deemed unconstitutional. The Company's three forestry permits were approved by the Ministry on 3 April 2009....
The Company then stated:
Our best information to date is that we continue to have the support of the local and national government for both the reissuance of the forestry permit and for the Çalda? project as a whole," said managing director Simon Purkiss.
We continue to progress our project financing options and will be pursuing all available options to secure the issuance of the new permits."
Despite this statement, the stock was down 23% on the day to 6.5p.
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