I found that a bit difficult to understand but within the Salazar Agreement "Expenditures" (capital E) are defined in paragraph 1.2(a) and the same term (Capital E Expenditures) are used in the 20%,40%, 75% earn back sections of section 8.3.
That seems a bit hard to understand. Just a 20% Teck earn-in will be the $85.3M we've spent over the last 10ish years exploring/documenting just the SC project itself. At the least, I figure, it might take 3 years for the JV to spend that kind of money exploring at full tilt. That is roughly spending at 3x's the past rate which would require expanding camp I would think. Spending 4x's that figure (75% earn-in) might then take a decade or more.
Teck would be in a position of exploring its butt off for years regardless whether there was reason to explore or not. Meanwhile someone has to be building the mine. Could that requirement force Teck to spend money drilling barren rock in order to fulfill its spending obligations towards earning in or handing over cash in lieu? I don't really believe that but ya wonder.
We probably have the potential to absorb the full $341.2 M (75% earn-in) in exploration across all of our remaining targets and further investigation at the SC mine itself but it would take quite a number of years. It would almost be simpler and maybe cheaper and quicker for Teck to build the mine as we had thought before for that earn-in cash.
How odd that those clauses would be written toward exploration and not building the mine contemplated in the FS as many of us had figured that earn-in cash would be used for.
