Letter of advice Question 1 Exploration Licence 1234 (EL 1234) was first granted to Paramount Exploration Company (PEC) on 12 February 2002 over an area of 1600 hectares. PEC carried out prospecting...

Letter of advice
Question 1
Exploration Licence 1234 (EL 1234) was first granted to Paramount Exploration Company (PEC) on 12 February 2002 over an area of 1600 hectares. PEC carried out prospecting operation over EL 1234 for approximately 5 years before discovering a large gold reserve in the south eastern corner of the EL area.
PEC intends to lodge an application for development consent in the near future to enable it to carry out gold mining within EL 1234. However, during the exploration phase PEC has realised that there are significant gold reserves immediately adjacent to the south east corner of EL 1234 which would allow it to build a bigger and better mine (Giant Mine). For this reason, PEC would also like to get a mining lease over this additional area of land to carry out mining operations.
PEC has specifically requested advice regarding:
1 the process for obtaining a mining lease over the additional area outside of EL 1234;
2 factors that the decision making will take into account in granting a tenement for this additional area; and
3 whether PEC should apply for an assessment lease until development consent is granted for the Giant Mine, and if so what are the advantages and disadvantages of doing so.