ActuallyRead Rio's statement here. Its instructive in its lack of an understanding of the process.
From Rio's post;
"Nesbutt
Your an idiot - you already know what the terms and conditions are generally going to be to get a permit. There will be different senarios developed based on those terms and conditions. The feasibility develops the guidelines and scope of the permit by being able to develop the preferred altenative desired by the company. The feasibility also typically reviews the environmental and starts the baseline requirement for the permitting. If you do not do this as part of the feasibility, you end up waiting years for date.
The feasibility also outlines the processing senario and the starts the general engineering needed to identify expected discharges, expected waste requirements, expected tails requirements, and other environmental details. The typical feasibility outlines all of this stuff so that the permit writting can start and the detailed engineering begun.
You are an idiot if you think the feasibility has nothing to do with the permit.
Give me a rah rah rah and go back to making drill roads.
Rah Rah Rah"
You will note that Rio seems to think that the scoping phase of feasibility work is the FFS. You will also note that he seems to think that things he has possibly read in an early scoping or pre-feasibility report are what is used in the EIS. I thijnk that may be a common flaw in people who are not involved in or very knowledgable about the minerals industry.
A good company starts scoping issues that will eventually lead into both the EIS and into the FFS from day one on a hill. From the first any good exploration report will note facts about the area as well as the deposit? Does it have good access or will access be required. Is there a populatin center near at hand and people who have the skills needed to mine? What restrictions exist for exploration and later mining? A good report should have that information as well as geology and rock samples.
If the area looks reasonible and if the rocks looks good meeting with local regulators and meeting with local opinion makers prior to spending a lot of money on driling is also part of early scoping.
Then once you drill and it looks like it just might be an ore deposit or at least a fair resource, starting a seperate report cycle for environmental scoping, to define the issues and develop the base line is required. The wisest firms hire an environmental coordinator as well as picking up an outside scoping team and he will split his time between setting up good community relations and making sure the environmental team has what it needs. Their job is to give him a list of the areas he will need to acquire data in for having a baseline of data ready for the EIS process. Since there are plenty of exploration EAs and reclaimation of exploration work to be done, its pretty much a full time job for the Coordinator.
Once it looks like a resource is full defined and there is a need to move further up the fook chain, engineers begin the scoping of the mine plan, which will include coordination with the exploration staff and also working with the environmental coordinatior. All three groups will be truning out reports and updates to reports until they finally feel they have enough on hand to churn out a pre-feasibility. (For industrial minerals you can add in a marketing team that will also have to work with all other parties.) The PFS may ber done in house or sent to an outside consultancy, but by the time they have it well documented, it is sufficient to use as the basis for preparing the EIS. There will be various reports, from bugs and bunnies to archeology, to surface and groundwater, engineering studies, power studies, waste water treatment studies, manpower studies, reserve calculations, metalurgy, all on hand for use as back up to the PFS.
With that data in hand, the company goes to the Federal Agency and files a IPOO and then the Feds start their scoping of issues and try to see if there are any gaps in the reports that the company has prepared and what adjunct data they are going to want. They will not start their analysis leading to the DEIS until they have all the information and any additional reports complete. At that point the JRP team will start to build their list of alternatives.
You will note that no FFS has been undertaken at this point and that once the DEIS is out the last thing required is the process of taking input and picking an alternative in the FEIS followed by the ROD to tell one and all which pick was made.
To prepare the FFS, the company needs to tighten up its economic information. Prices for plant start to look like shopping lists for piece of gear. Transportation studies for how the concentrate will be shipped and that cost are costed out. Refiners and smelters get contacted for recieving schedules. Where the PFS uses lots of rules of thumb, the FFS has to have a nice tight budget. And not one bit of that budget information is required in the preparation of an EIS.
A good FFS is an 8 inch or better multi volume set that is backed up by a book case full of documents and reports. With it will be a couple of inches of EIS and its back up documents and reports. Those will include things dating back to the first scoping on the property.
So, FCO is at the stage in the process where they have a Mine Plan, all of the environmental background documents and data and reports, a finished DEIS, a reserve base and geological study, metalurgy studies and all the elements needed to prepare what will be needed for the FFS.
Now Rio tells you that there is 'no' feasibility study, infering that no FFS has been written. That is true but it has extensive PFS reportage and all the documents they need to finish the FFS.
On the other hand, Rio tells you that with no feasibility there can be no permit, acting as though the Scoping and PFS were not sufficient to prepare an EIS and even though a DEIS is done.
The only thing I can think from this is that Rio has never seen a mine from exploration to this point in the process and that the only documents he has ever seen are completed FEIS and FFS. Either that or he is jerking our chain. You guys pick.