I have a feeling that it will be the production decision... Another 20 million in the bank...
Teck has up to $60 million to spend in pre-production, and they are nowhere near that figure yet. They don't have to spend it of course, but I suspect they have a lot more to do before the production decision, and that's why the $60 million was agreed to in the first place.
For example, in the FS, pre-production work also includes this sort of thing:
Since it is not feasible to doze all of the access roads during the initial three years of pre-production, the dozing will be divided into two distinct areas and time periods. During the initial three-year pre-production phase, the south nose will be shaped to allow mining in the south phases to commence about half way through the final pre-production year.
The pre-production work on a mine can be counted as exploration expenses and can be deducted from their taxes. There is a lot of bull-dozing and channel cutting that would all be considered pre-production work.
I don't know how the terminology is comparable to the "production decision" in the Teck/CUU Agreement, but I think that Teck could essentially hold off making the production decision for a long, long time and that it makes no sense at all for them to announce they have made it now.
