The total acreage staked and in process of being registered as claims by Noront is huge. Of course there are costs involved with this staking and you have to expend money on a claim or lose it (not right away). Major companies rarely JV on 'moose pasture' even with mag survey results as they leave this to the juniors and will buy in if anything significant is found.

You can bet that RN didn't give away prime ground and hung onto additonal claims around the one's jv'd. This gets back the cost of staking and somebody else spends bucks looking for mineralization.

There are millions of acres in the James Bay lowlands with at least some chance of mineralization. With all the money to explore it could still end up with only six to 10 deposits worth developing being found.

Now mind you if the infrastruction for a mine can be covered with a few nickel discoveries then some of the base metal deposits that will be turned up could be profitable as well. Remember Noront was looking for zinc and that area likely has copper, uranium and even perhaps diamonds.