Kalium Lakes has received a licence from the Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety (DMIRS) to construct and operate a 78km gas pipeline to the Beyondie Sulphate Of Potash Project (BSOPP) in Western Australia.
The approved pipeline will be for the conveyance of petroleum, and for associated purposes, along the authorised route to the 100 per cent owned BSOPP in the East Pilbara region.
The formal grant of a licence allows Kalium Lakes, as part of the BSOPP Front End Engineering and Design (FEED) process, to continue to assess the option of constructing the pipeline for Stage 1 in place of trucked gas bullets.
Construction of the lateral gas pipeline, to connect to the Goldfields Gas Pipeline at a cost of $29 million, would result in a reduction in operating cost of approximately $31–34 per tonne.
The gas pipeline forms part of the formal Investment Proposal that is being prepared for submission to the Australian Government’s Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility (NAIF).
Kalium Lakes Managing Director, Brett Hazelden, said, “The grant of this licence confirms that we now have the flexibility to include the gas pipeline in the mix of construction variables, in order to optimise the best configuration of the processing plant.”
Kalium Lakes is continuing to assist NAIF with its required due diligence investigations regarding participation in the debt facilities to fund the project capital expenditure necessary to develop the Beyondie SOP Project.
NAIF is a major long-term initiative of the Australian Government. NAIF provides access to up to $5 billion of finance, which may be on concessional terms to support infrastructure development that generates public benefit for northern Australia. It also seeks to encourage and complement private sector investment to further that objective.