As a PE I will say this again. Too many of us retail are worried about the optics of the BFS. The BFS was done to show one thing and one thing only that matters to a potential suiter ( any Major with a competent engineering staff ) and that is the worst case scenario and whether a mine is viable using the worst case. That's it. Thats all they care about. However, any buyout value will obviously not be based entirely on this BFS. It will be based on real world scenarios and models.
As for why we did not drill the 171M tons it is very obvious isn't it? We were working very closely with Teck and they OBVIOUSLY were satisfied with the data in hand that it was not necessary to drill. They WANTED to see other potential on the property. If they are contemplating a 100% buyout they WANTED to see more proof that the 1:1 correlation held in other areas.
IMHO, this was more valuable to them for us to spend the money instead of on the 171M tons ( which they will likely do when they get 100% control ). Now if Teck people wanted us to do this are we going to tell them - Yah right go to h*ll because we are going to do otherwise and spend the money here on the 171M tons and upgrade the resource. Do we need to create an adversarial relationship with them if they are trying to evaluate this district to offer us more money for it in a buyout?
Teck is more likely to be the buyer of this whole project and yes we need to play ball with them. So sorry to reveal this here but management is not catering to retail but to the most likely buyer Teck.
