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Gold/Mining/Energy : Canmine resources -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: dave brown who wrote (1784)	8/26/1999 10:12:00 PM
From: Marshhawk	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 2769

As noted, I am not an expert on shipping large quantities of material, but at 2.5% Ni, you have to ship 40 tonnes of ore to get 1 tonne of Ni right? Say Ni is worth $6600/tonne. What does it cost to load it on a ship and sent it up to Thunder Bay and then rail to Sudbury? Any guesses? How does that cost compare to building a new smelter. IF VB was a slam dunk (say they drilled and found a proveable reserve {is that the correct term?} of 100 mil tonnes Ni contained {which they would need to do to justify a capital investment of 4.3 bil}, would they then hold the project up for 2-3 years in a 100 mil pissing match with Tobin, especially after you factor out shipping costs. My understanding is that Argentia and VB are ice free most of year [correct me if wrong] so wouldn't that also be a cost savings vis a vis sitting on the ore at site for 6 months waiting for Seaway to open up? If there is 100 mil tonnes up there, why the pissing match? In regards to opportunity cost, I guess Dave's point is that you can go to the capital markets, draw down 4.3 bil, basically inventory your 4.3 bil asset and that sequence of events then has no cost to you, e.g. you can go back to the capital markets whenever you want to and borrow another 2 bil for another project. Also, if you went to the capital markets and raised 4.3 bil, and knew you couldn't use it for say 3 years, you could buy US govt 3 year treauries yielding say 5%. Let's see that's 600 million over 3 years, right? So how is putting 4.3 bil into an idle asset not a lost opportunity cost. Also Dave, explain to me how raising the question is a slander? And when you have the time, we are still waiting for you list of juniors with low costs and advanced projects.