Forest and Bird has lost the latest in a string of legal challenges and appeals against West Coast mine developer Bathurst Resources, which brings the two-year delayed project a step closer to beginning production.
While Bathurst's cash position has slipped alarmingly during the past year, recent capital raisings have boosted its cash position. However, its shares continue to languish around 17c, a far cry from their mid-2011 high of $1.70, more than double the listing price.
Bathurst has spent about $300 million preparing to develop parts of Denniston plateau, above Westport, for open-cast mining of export-quality hard coking coal.
Bathurst wants to ultimately extract one million tonnes of specialist coking coal annually, while Forest and Bird has argued the plateau has a unique and irreplaceable biodiversity.
However, the numerous legal challenges to consents given by two West Coast councils more than two years ago have restricted Bathurst's production to boutique mining of the existing Cascade mine it bought on the plateau, and small operations elsewhere in the lower South Island.
The Court of Appeal yesterday declined Forest and Bird's application for special leave to appeal the earlier High Court decision over the relevance of the adjacent Sullivan permit, operated by neighbour Solid Energy, in the context of Bathurst's resource consents for its Escarpment mine project.
Bathurst's shares, at a 13c year-low in June and 23c year-high in June, were up more than 11% yesterday, trading around 17c after the announcement.
Bathurst's managing director, Hamish Bohannan, said yesterday the outcome was another positive decision for Bathurst.
''We now look forward to receiving our final approvals to allow work to commence on the Escarpment project,'' he said in a market statement.
Forest and Bird lost a recent Supreme Court appeal to have global climate-change issues included in resource consent applications, and is awaiting an Environment Court decision on Escarpment resource consents, albeit the court has already said it will probably grant consents but with further conditions.
About 14 months ago, Bathurst had almost $54 million cash in hand, but that dwindled to $8 million by September this year.
However, it has been buoyed by $18.9 million from institutional investors, then a further $6 million raised from Australian shareholders.
