I didn't get the impression that there was any infighting. In fact Doug said that KRY and GRZ hadn't talked at all and that the recent meeting with MIBAM that GRZ was asked to attend was just to sound out GRZ's attitude to the suggestion of a joint project. Of course as usual nothing concrete was put forward by MIBAM and there was no agenda proposed for further talks.

It has always been true that GRZ believed it was better to extract the copper than it would be to leave it in the tailings but they needed the copper to make their economics work at the high rates of mining they proposed.

It does seem clear that at least some officials in MIBAM would like to see the copper extracted but then that was true years ago and they still approved KRY's mining plan for a gold only project, so obviously the copper issue wasn't deemed to be a deal breaker.

A more significant issue in my opinion was the fact that a combined project would have higher reserves and higher recoveries than two individual mines and also the environmental footprint would be 40% less in area.