Funnily enough today they announced that there would be a further delay for permitting for this mine so that the US Fish & Wildlife Service could review the application yet again.

The Fish people are going to restart reviews on 8 endangered species in the area. They have been working on permits for 7 years. This could cause them to have to go back and revise mitigation efforts for the area.

Augusta is also running out of funds. They are supposedly spending about $2M per month, and have $12M in loans and cash. They can last 6 months, but the review itself can take 135 days and then if they need to pull together the revised mitigation (which seems highly likely at the least) they are going to need money and that will make them sell for less.

I would guess that they have been undervalued given their struggles. However, they don't have an automatic pass on the EA application and there is a degree of risk there. The mine is planned on federal, state and private lands.

I think Teck is very concerned about the environmental hurdles and that might account for them walking away from a lot of other opportunities. I don't know if they'll make us wait for the EA permit, but if they do that will add a lot of value.