Uranium explorer Energy and Minerals Australia (EMA) will restructure its management team after settling a four-year legal battle over its flagship Mulga Rock project in Western Australia.

EMA on Wednesday said it agreed to pay Yarri Mining Pty Ltd a total of $3 million to settle the dispute over tenements at the Mulga Rocks deposit.

The dispute centred on objections by Yarri Mining over project licences and allegations that EMA had not paid the full amount over the tenements at the Mulga project.

EMA decided to resolve the dispute ahead of another court case to be heard on Tuesday, EMA’s newly appointed chief executive Shane McBride told AAP.

“While we were very successful [in previous court cases], at the end of the day it was a commercial reality that it was better to settle than to continue to argue these things in court,” he said.

EMA shares were up 2.1 cents or 42 per cent to 7.1 cents at the close on Wednesday.

As part of the settlement, Yarri Mining was paid $1.5 million and will gain the other half once EMA gets government approval for two mining licences at the Mulga project.

EMA also used news of the settlement to announce it will be restructuring its management.

Mr McBride, who had been CFO since 2009, took over as CEO from retiring David Varcoe.

“The people on the board were appropriate while we had the legal action going, and now that has been resolved, it was an opportune time for those people to move on, and for us to get on advancing the [Mulga] project … without having to worry about legal action,” Mr McBride said.

Mr McBride said EMA would focus on completing resource calculations for the newly discovered ‘Princess Deposit’ at the Mulga project in the next two months.