They take the 75% and decides to shelve it for a while - where does that leave us (CUU) in regards to "enhancing" our 25%?
I think this question has been dealt with before. They cannot shelve it because under the agreement with Salazaar they will be under a time constraint to get the mine up and running within 4yrs. They have to act within the spirit of the original agreement even if a new time constraint ( let's say 5yrs is renegotiated ) to get a mine up and running.
Some lead items take up to 3 or 4 years so they have to start ordering these items asap. Imho, as a PE, I don't thing this option is going to be chosen by Teck. Most likely they will need at least another 2 years to fine tune SC to make a "real production decision" based on better recoveries, revised mine plan and BFS. That means more drilling to define the Paramount zone where better grades were found at a shallower depth, ugrade the 171m tons, and find other cost cutting measures etc. So add 2 years plus 5 to build and we are looking at 2020 for the actual mine to be in production. No way will they meet a time constraint of even 5 years.
