JDubski: "I expect this may mean we won't hear any major announcements regarding partners or financing for TP until these lawsuits are resolved."

I can't predict with any degree of certainty how this thing is going to play out and my opinion may be far away from reality, since the reality involves an adversarial legal process, however I see that the EIS has been accepted and the ROD has been released, so it would seem that the environmental organizations filing legal challenge are in the position of trying to get a reversal on an action already taken by the government as opposed to protesting against a decision that has not already been guided through the required legal process.  This would seem to put the environmentalists in a more difficult position in order to obtain what is, in effect, a reversal of something already approved.  That doesn't mean that they can't succeed, just that it makes their position more difficult.

____________________________________________________________________________

"The Reno-based Great Basin Resource Watch is a plaintiff in the lawsuit, along with the Western Mining Action Project, Western Watersheds Project, Basin and Range Watch, and Wildlands Defense.

John Hadder is executive director of Great Basin Resource Watch and said there are numerous reasons for the legal complaint, but in a broad sense, the complaint focuses on the Environmental Impact Statement.

“The environmental review is poorly done and is illegal in our view,” Hadder said by phone. “It appears as though the Bureau of Land Management is in violation of its own regulations, violation of its own resource management plan. We even told them, ‘hey,’ early on in the process, ‘you’re ignoring your own resource management plan,’ and they made no effort to make any changes.”

Hadder expressed concern that the EIS process mandated by the National Environmental Policy Act was conducted during the pandemic, which muted community participation in the process. He said the online scoping sessions were inadequate."

___________________________________________________________________________

As stated in the article, the complaint focuses on the Environmental Impact Statement. Mr. Hadder is taking the position that the existing EIS is "illegal" in his view.  His task would be to get the government to transmogrify their own view on the issue and adopt and share the view of Mr. Hadder, a daunting task indeed, but that is why God created attorneys, eh?

It would seem to be a very ironic situation for the Greenies to be in since on the one hand they are the proponents of ending fossil fuel use in order to save the planet and here, on the other hand, decrying the mining of one of the key materials required for them to achieve their stated goal in the first place, not that I actually believe fossil fuels should be eliminated ( I don't). 

At any rate, I wonder if the Environmentalist see the contradiction they are presenting and how is it that expect non-fossil fuel technology to advance forward without one of the key ingredients to the success of that supposed goal.

As mentioned, in the video whose link was supplied here by Lithium 2, Jon Evans had noted that governments have rapidly moved their peripheral interest in mining of essential raw materials from a peripheral interest recently to a core interest and it is because of that realignment of the perspective of our own government here in the U.S., including the present administration of President Biden, that I strongly suspect that the lawyers that rise from the miasma of the litigious swamp which presently inflicts itself on American daily life to the detriment of the large part of the citizenry therof, will in this particular scenario, be unsuccessful in their efforts to block the development of one of the world's premier lithium sources, one that is encompassed totally within the borders of the United States and independent from the viscissitudes that condemn overseas sources to a volatile and unpredictable risky supply chain for U.S. industries that require lithium in order to manufacture a vast array of lithium related products. National Security concerns are one of the key issues, a Goliath in effect, that environmental attorneys will have to slay in their effort to successfully seek a reversal of the ROD.  A reversal of the ROD would not serve the best interests of the United States in that perspective.

On the other hand, one should never say never and if we need proof of that then the Keystone Pipeline scenario should quickly remind us that anything is possible with the current administration. 

Time will tell.  Onward through the Fog and through the swamp of litigation.