My theory on the delay is simple. There are legitimate staffing issues etc as stated in the NR. I don't think CUU has ever lied, but simply managed the truth as best they can.
There is only so much they can give away and they already know we take something as simple as a group picture for a charity and extrapolate ideas about potential meetings etc. (that was me.)
Theory
The RE2 in July 2011 was cut off at 0.2% Cu equivalent. Quite a few things were known about what was and was not economical from the resource perspective (not the fine details of a mine plan).
It wouldn't take much (price of steel was mentioned by management) to start challenging the rough model of the mine for RE2011. Add info from some drills. I think Elmer was hoping that some of the drills on the NE corner would be more mineralized as it is a lot of volume and needs to be removed anyways. A whole number of other bigger ticket items could start showing up as issues: for example maybe Ball plants cost 30% more this year than 2008.
So they had a big meeting and looked at a early draft or a run down on how things are looking and decided that 1) things were not sexy enough and 2) something big had to happen to have a better kick at the can i.e. update the RE with the good Paramount drills, and come at the mine plan a whole other way. Maybe with a different cutoff for the RE? A minor change in the Cu Eq cutoff has pretty big changes - look at the sensitivity analysis in the 2008 PFS. I dont' see TCK having a problem with this. Why spend money going further down a bad road. Let's gear up for the faster lane.
jmho
gotta go have a good weekend.
