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I understand Colin is not just an accountant but is legally trained as well. He should therefore be able to follow the proposed strategies of the London and Slovene lawyers acting for AST. That is important rather than just letting the lawyers get on with it without a legally trained CEO ensuring their strategy would be the most effective for AST.

Could JP have news on the environmental permit applied for by the main client? If that has been granted then that would show progress as they could then build their new processing plant. Such progress should give confidence to the SP for the eventual restarting of the main client. A timescale for the build of their new plant would further increase confidence. As it is all leading to the main client restarting.

Yes, if she felt the fault lay entirely with AST and the Slovene government were in the right she would have stated as much and backed out of it. That in itself gives more confidence to the AST legal case. It's all adding up.

That's another factor. Colin has been dealing with the whole Slovene government and commerce system for several years now. I would hope he knows the etiquette and customs by now. Maybe he's the one who knows best at this time and we on here and on Twitter are just floundering around?

Every country in Europe has it's own language. So English ends up generally being the language used in European commerce.

There is no doubt Colin is floundering though. Like there is now no doubt about the attitude of JL. There is some doubt still about the attitude of their PM and the government in general. Some want energy security (Infrastructure Minister), while others put a misguided priority on the environment (JL). Misguided as gas is far better than coal for energy production.

I am concerned that Colin is now playing the wait and hope game for the Slovene government to come around to granting the permits for their energy security. If so that is a dangerous game as AST are running out of money and JL knows it.

Maybe they don't get on well with their government contacts. They certainly seem to be ineffective.

You also have to remember the public psychology in Slovenia would still go back to the communist era where the government were always right, whatever they did. So Geonergo and Geoterm people may well be reluctant to challenge the government ministers.

I don't entirely disagree with you New_2. However Colin has his strengths in the financial side. He does need good advice in the oil and gas aspects, like Alwaysup has said. He also appears to be floundering in the Slovene politics aspects as well. I say appears as we don't know what is happening behind the scenes. It's mainly that many, like yourself, don't trust him to deal with that as well. All perfectly understandable under the circumstances with where we are.

Changing CEO would however be extremely dangerous at this stage. A new one would have to be very experienced in oil and gas and have good governmental contacts in Slovenia. Good contacts in the Slovene government who would have leverage over JL would be essential as that is where the hold up is. Who could that be? I have no idea and I suspect no one here would have either.

In your, not so humble, opinion New_2.

I believe the main Cobre client needed an environmental permit for their new processing plant. If that is confidential to the main client we may not get to know about it. But I would assume it would need to be issued before they could build their new plant and would be a necessary step of interest to us.

All buys so far. This has to move up soon.

When one person, no matter their authority, goes against all the legal, engineering and environmental expert advice to block the permits they are in a very vulnerable position. It would just take the Infrastructure Minister and the Slovene PM to put a stop to this nonsense as Jure Leben's position is tenuous at best and illegal at worst. I've seen him as dangerous to AST from the beginning when he took the role as Environment Minister and so it has transpired.

Because he can and he's against it. Normally a minister in the decision making process would defer to the experts in any government. But where they feel very strongly they will often interfere with the decision making process.

That's ok toiler. Some may not have seen the Alan Broome interview where he explains about the new process the main client is bringing in. If the permit for the main client needs to be issued before the plant is built then we need to know if it has been issued. Otherwise the delay for the main client restarting could be extensive. A new plant will take some months to build.

The abusive emails and police investigation are excuses to delay the issue of permits. The evidence of delays we have now seen over many years, for spurious reasons, are now quite clear. There was a time the reasons put forward for delays were plausible. They are not anymore and were tenuous even before. It is now over to the lawyers unless the Slovene government issue the permits within days. The lawyers need to know their Slovene and European law to construct a watertight case to get the permits issued and / or compensation.

So no news then.

I would have thought the main client may need the environmental permit before they started construction of a new plant? Or maybe the U.S.A. has a better system than a certain other country where AST is trying to get permits and the plant can be built ahead of the environmental permit being granted? If not then the delay could be extensive if they are still waiting for their environmental permit.

Any news on the Cobre main client getting their new processing plant built and their environmental permit for it?

EC, You keep asking how I 'know' stuff to be true or not true. Courts look at evidence and make decisions on the balance of probabilities a lot of the time. What is clear is that if JL had wanted the permits issued they would have been issued. The converse is also true. If he doesn't want them issued they would be delayed. That is what is happening.

There has been years of investigation by ARSO to deal with ensuring all of the rules and laws are applied correctly. In fact the court itself thrashed out all of the legal issues and eventually threw out the appellant for being 'vexatious'. It has been thoroughly investigated. Any further delay now is becoming malicious.

EC, The 'reasons' put forward for a delay by JL were investigation in to possible outside interference of ARSO (from the British Ambassador, the B.C.of C. and AST) and a police investigation of abusive emails by the police. Tenuous reasons at best. Colin has stated the investigation in to interference of ARSO has been concluded and has blamed process. The police in countries like Slovenia can take months to conclude investigations but abusive emails should not prevent the issuing of permits to a company unconnected with such emails.

The interference investigation report came out some weeks ago and Colin has been interviewed about it since then. JL is still not allowing ARSO to issue the permits. The applications for these had been fully complied with last October. Even the Infrastructure Minister is trying to get JL moving to issue the permits as Slovenia needs the gas for their energy security.

The total sum of all these facts lend me to believe that JL is against issuing the permits and has also shown himself to be in sympathy with the environmental activists. Do we need more evidence?

Most here have grasped the situation now. TPT seems to have a very optimistic view where optimism is not warranted.

I would add to EC's post that JL is now clearly opposing the issuing of permits. It wasn't necessarily clear earlier. It now is.