RE: Rns19 Dec 2020 19:20
Reading it again... "The full restart process, which was due to be completed this week, has suffered an interruption due to Covid-19 related restrictions placed on the mining permitting authority. As a result, the Mine Safety and Health Administration ("MSHA") operating plan won't be released before 21 December 2020, so Greenfield has now decided to delay the full restart of the POSP until 4 January 2021 to enable an efficient start up, avoiding the need for an almost immediate Christmas / New Year holiday period shut down." The above tells me that the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) had told Greenfield that they would apply the Operating Plan (to allow them to recommence mining I assume) in conjunction with the 'full restart' programme to ensure there would be no delays to the works commencing. Greenfield have started the 'full restart' process as scheduled but MSHA have now thrown a spanner in the works by saying that due to Covid-19 issues in their department there will be a delay to issuing the Operating Plan giving Greenfield the headache of 'What do we do? Do we wait and see if we get the Operating Plan on the 22nd and start up but then switch off again on the 23rd/24th for the festive break, or do we just stand everyone down and just do the full start up on the 4th January? Why has the MSHA operating Plan not been mentioned before? Probably because there was one in place when the plant was previously running so everybody including MSHA were not concerned with the Operating Plan being applied as it would be straight forward in terms of issuing it. MSHA however did not foresee Covid-19 giving them in-house staffing problems. So overall, a delay that was caused entirely by a third party and in the grand scheme of things non-damaging to the project