Just for discussion purposes, I think the likely way this mining area will be developed is through a major buying out the minors. It will take cash in the order of 100's of millions for each of 1) Road/Rail Access 2) mine developement 3) mill and concentrator works. A company like Tech Comminco reportedly has in excess of a billion dollars in cash. Xstata is huge and has cash or access to cash to make developement happen. The large companies don't do a lot of their own exploration any more and are quite content to let the juniors scare up the developement money through PP's and take the risks. The juniors are getting pretty good at it, have smaller beaurcracies to get things mobilized as well as  funded and have great expertise and talent. The majors are hovering waiting for the work to be done.

The game here is to be the first to prove up a mineable ore body and maximize value before someone takes you out. There are so many players in the Ring of Fire that there may be two mine developements by majors but Noront is ahead of the pack by a large margin and is clearly in the drivers seat. Nemis comment that NOT will control 80% of the ROF is in my opinion his goal  to provide that maximum value to a major, limit the viability to one big developement and have the major companies in a bidding war.