IRR,

My thoughts are aligned with AXP's on this topic, though I'll be happy to see his response as well - I'll let him elaborate on his comment about the permitting statuses of the organizations that received the grant money, as I'm not all that familiar with where everyone else is along their project timelines.

Let's say we think the DOE does care about permitting being done before giving out their loans (I don't think they do, but I seem to be in the minority there). Thacker Pass is fully permitted at both the State and National level. I believe as part of the court proceedings the company gave the judge a commitment to let her know some amount of time prior to kicking off construction, but there's really no legal reason they couldn't give that heads up and get started (there are plenty of other reasons not to: financial risk tolerance, likely a concern that doing so would reflect negatively on them with the judge, concern that this would result in a temporary injuction getting filed against them). What I'm saying is that currenty no injunction has been granted by the court against them doing anything, so the status quo right now is full permits and ready to go.

The ATVM loan program is money being requested for a specific purpose, so when/if it is granted it is going to include provisions on how the money can be used. In our case that would be specifically for the Thacker Pass lithium mine. If the loan is granted and the court ruling indicates that more work needs to be done on the ROD, then we're looking to be a bit delayed in that money getting put to use, but that hasn't really got anything to do with whether they get approval for the loan or not. If the loan is granted and because of a particularly unfavorable court ruling or for any other reason LAC ends up deciding not to build the mine, they would simply pay back the loan as there is no longer anything they'd be allowed to spend that money on.

Best Regards,

Ganan