Let's start with a quote from the PA..
"Opportunities to further improve the economics of the PA, include resource growth at Eagle's Nest and grade increases resulting from recent infill drilling. The Company is also encouraged that the PA demonstrates that the Eagle's Nest Ni-Cu-PGM discovery can bear the full costs of infrastructure development if necessary."
So....consider this.....the full cost has of infrastructure development has already been accounted for in the first 11 million tons from the eagle's nest deposit alone. This updated resource estimate is gravy....and there is more yet where that comes from...still open
Then...consider this....Cliffs participation in infrastructure development, government participation in infrastructure development... = reduced capital costs to Noront
And this as well....What is stopping Noront from mining chrome once the infrastructure is in place....as well as other deposits.....like JJJ, thunderbird, AT-12, or eagle two for that matter..not to mention Noronts vast land holdings in the area.......so there's the potential to allocate a portion of the capital costs to some of these or other yet unknown deposits as well
Then there's improvements to the initial plans with respect to costs. I think the initial plan was a worst case scenario and will over time be improved upon.
So, what we end up with is an initial NPV of about $540 million + about $250 million for current metal prices + about 9 millioin ton increase in resource value, which would have little effect on increasing initial capital costs + potential to increase the resource significantly +potential for lowered costs due to Cliffs and Government participation in infrastructure costs + lowered ininital capital costs allocated to the eagle's nest due to potential to allocate some of those costs to other deposits + improvements to initial worst case scenario = in the $$billions
Just a back of the napkin calculation
