The Salazar Agreement did not demand more committment, just the illusion of committment. They could have chosen to work towards the 75% ownership, but given up at any time they lost interest in the project. They could have spent the $2.5M and decided they were not interested in the project any more.
I speculate that possible illusion would have a positive effect on our share price and also our attractiveness to other majors iunterested in a piece of the pie. If they walked away (functionally the same as shelving) we would have 100% of the property and virtually all of the Liard shares to sell at a later date when copper prices or shortages fast track copper mine development.
They could have taken 10 years to fiddle about and then dropped the project. There was no timeline. In the meantime we wouldn't have had any money and we wouldn't have had any other projects to occupy us.
As I understand it (admittedly not an expert), they had to declare their intended backin percentage within 120 days and then work towards backing in, with us as the operator directing the spending of the funds. I think with the mine intended to be built within a reasonable amount of time as per the Liard agreement (4 years, but I propose extendable due to the larger scope than expected), how could they delay?
If we held the Liard shares under the Salazar Agreement, we couldn't sell them. What is the value of holding the Liard shares instead of Teck holding them?
I think having functional control of the Liard board via majority ownership of the shares we could decide to enforce or relax timeline protections provided within the agreement. This is where our actual timeline or anti-mothball protections reside do they not? With Teck firmly in control they can release themselves of the timeline protection - at least i expect they can. I think due to this the Liard shares ownership was key - for control of the board. Later if things fell through with Teck, then there would be value to sell with the property, but not until that time.
This is just my take on this. No claim to be right, but I think reasonable?