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Wealth Minerals Ollague Salar Selected by Chilean Government to be Among the First Group of Six Salars Considered for Lithium Production Licenses
Vancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 30, 2024) - Wealth Minerals Ltd. (T...
About this update from Wealth Minerals Ltd.
[{"type":"text","content":"Wealth Minerals Ollague Salar Selected by Chilean Government to be Among the First Group of Six Salars Considered for Lithium Production LicensesVancouver, British Columbia--(Newsfile Corp. - September 30, 2024) - Wealth Minerals Ltd. (TSXV: WML) (OTCQB: WMLLF) (SSE: WMLCL) (FSE: EJZN) (the \"Company\" or \"Wealth\") announces the Company will apply for a CEOL for the Kuska Project - located in the Ollagüe Salar.The Government of Chile has announced today that the Strategic Council of the Lithium and Salt Flats Committee (\"Strategic Council\") has approved, for private investors, a first group of locations for the development of lithium projects in Chile. The Ollagüe Salar is one of these six locations that have been selected, based on its conditions for the feasibility of a lithium operation. According to the Government's publication, the six locations selected in this first group share key conditions, such as having strong interest from developing parties as collected in the recent RFI process conducted by the Ministry of Mining, favorable geological characteristics and sound environmental conditions for the awarding of a Special Lithium Operation Contract (\"CEOL\") and the execution of lithium projects. The Strategic Council publication also indicated that the Mining Ministry would only grant one CEOL in each location.The Government has announced that the award of CEOLs will be a competitive tender process. However, the first six locations announced by the Strategic Council will be subject to a simplified CEOL allocation process, which will consider the experience of the applicant in any part of the lithium production value chain, its financial strength to develop the proposed project and its holding of at least 80% of the mining concession in the respective area (referred to in Government material as a \"polygon\" which has yet to be defined). More specific rules for this simplified process will be published by the Mining Ministry in the upcoming weeks so that applicants can submit CEOL requests before the end of the year. In parallel, the Mining Ministry will run indigenous consultation processes in the six selected locations and provide certain CEOL draft templates to the applicant, which could be signed if both the Government and the applicant are in agreement as soon as the respective indigenous consulta...