Remember this:

Another Galore Creek neighbor is the Schaft Creek project being developed by Copper Fox [CVE:CUU]. Schaft Creek is only 36km from Galore Creek, but it is on the BC side of the mountains, thus no tunnel or Alaskan environmentalists. The deposit is every bit as big as GC and they have a top notch CEO. The life of mine strip ratio is a much cleaner 0.7:1. The gold grades are higher and it also has molybdenum. The 2004 capital costs were $600MM. While the cost is sure to increase it will still be much less than GC. Copper Fox optioned the property from Teck Cominco in 2002, but Teck retained a back in right for up to 75%. Teck would have to contribute 4 times all prior expenditures and arrange financing after CUU delivers the feasibility study. A preliminary feasibility study and an updated resource estimate were ordered last month. At $2 copper and $500 gold the NPV is $1.2B discounted at 8%. So CUU has arguably a better project and a strong partner already in place. They will undoubtedly have to dilute shareholders to complete the FS, but then they get four times their expenditures to help pay for their 25% of capital costs. The entire market cap of Copper Fox is currently about $40MM. Twenty five percent of Galore Creek would run about $600MM.

If you just look at the ratio of capital cost to pounds the ratio remains the same except when you add in the waste. Our price ratio was effected by the waste. The strip ratio looks awefull and the added infastructure costs baloon the capex. I have it on good authority that at $300 million a year against $4 billion that no one would touch it. The returns just would not justify the investment. So we have shown the very worst case without respect to copper prices but as I said we balanced that against the improvements. With our buyout added in this would have to be improved. At nearly double copper and triple gold we look ok. Our saving grace is the shear size and potential. Those are harder to put a number on. Take 2.5 times 1/4 of the ROV plus potential against the capex. (Capex rises with buyout.) To be safe, minus $500 million a year from the returns. Next, graph the results.

If you take the potential to be a doubling of the total pounds the buyout rises dramatically. So if they laugh to the negative side then I say they do not have confidence and will have to drill to prove it to themselves. I think we have up to 4 times the total pounds but I only credit 30% in my calculations as economic. I do that because we are talking many decades to prove it.