Okay, you got me.

I used a South African site reference which you have proven contained poor information. If I had checked better sources, I would have learned that World resources exceed 12 billion tons of shipping-grade chromite, sufficient to meet conceivable demand for centuries. I believe I said 1.8 B tonnes.

I also learned that about 95% of chromium resources is geographically concentrated in southern Africa. I was wrong at stating 80%. Reserves and reserve base are geographically concentrated in Kazakhstan and southern Africa.

My point in this whole discussion is to say that Noront could have 1B tonnes of chromite in the ground, but it means squat if there if they cannot compete with countries like South Africa and Kazakhstan (please no Borat jokes here ...)

The current electrical shortage in S.A. that one poster mentioned on here earlier is excellent information showing why things may not be so rosy when it comes to production in S.A. That is excellent DD. This is the kind of information that helps to shore up support for Noront's success with this mineral. My point has and always will be that ore is not enough when it comes to a resource that is plentiful. Being competitive in terms of cost of mining and shipping to suppliers is what will bring long term value. I agree that reserves are not the whole story, as with the Oil example you provided. Fort Mac has a lot of reserves but they can only extract so much given the limited facilities and staff despite Oil being at record highs. The current price of Oil and shortage of oil has more to do with the cartel than anything else. But that is another story.

But if Saudi opened up their desert to produce all the oil we wanted and gave it away at low prices, Ft. Mac would be closed as soon as new refineries came on line. But Saudi is part of a cartel and as such have an impact on supply and thus the price. The same cannot be said of the chromite companies at the moment. I know of no cartel for chromite

Current pricing is indicative of manufacturing but the higher the price goes for Chromite, the more incentive there is for these large chromite reserve countries to ramp up production. The one thing we have going for us is that the US consumes 10% of the world's Chromite so the market is right beside us. Assuming that they would buy all 10% from the small mine in Montana and the rest from Noront, that would make for a good market, assuming that the price per tonne is cheaper than what the other countries are offering. North America is no stranger to buying from China rather than locally in order to save a buck and stay competitive globally. The same applies here.

What I would like to see, given the world's reserve of Chromite, is a feasibility study showing what it would cost to produce and ship a ton of shippable chromite at McFaulds as compared to the rest of the world. That is it. No hype. No bash.

Just looking for the facts before I jump up and down.

If I am way off base then I apologize. I want this to be worth a mint as well.

Here is the link for my new stats. It is based in the U.S. so it might have a bit of a US bias to it.

http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pu...

M1.