St. Augustine Gold and Copper Ltd. of Canada said Tuesday it hopes to secure an environment permit on the Kingking copper-gold mine by the middle of 2014.

St. Augustine is the developer of the $2-billion copper-gold project in Compostela Valley, while local partner Nationwide Development Corp. holds the mineral production sharing agreement on the Kingking mine.

"We've had some initial meetings with the Environmental Management Bureau to get the process restarted and we've been doing some drilling at the site to get some information for geohazard survey, that's needed as part of the [environment impact study]," said St. Augustine country manager and director for environmental permitting Clyde Gillespie.

St. Augustine in 2012 submitted its EIS and the declaration of mine project feasibility to the EMB.

"EMB is the agency that would ultimately approve the EIS so we have been working closely with them," Gillespie said.

"We've submitted an initial draft of the EIS back in February 2012 and the EMB has conducted an initial review and has given us comments and on the partner issues that have held us up. And now we have an updated version that is almost ready to go," he added.

Gillespie said the company was conducting geotechnical drilling in the area at 10 to 30 meters deep.

SOURCE: http://manilastandardtoday.com/2014/02/12/kingking-company-confident-on-permit/