its slow on this blog so i thought i would post some relevant items i recently came across. i put **** around what i thought was most interesting and also use the below comments by friedland to try to understand how friedlands thinking might apply to noronts situation.

regards,

jsq

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Did you see the great interview with Vancouver-based mining magnate Robert Friedland in today's Financial Review? It's worth three dollars to read the interview (how's that for inflation?).

Friedland is talking up the Aussie float of Ivanhoe Australia Limited (ASX:IVA). He is a world class promoter and, depending on your perspective a visionary the likes of Andrew Forrest.

*******His strategy is simple. Buy a distressed asset. Front up the money to drill it like nobody's business. Demonstrate that it's worth a lot more than you paid for it. Then find a JV partner to front up the rest of the capital to make it a producer.**********

***********Robert Friedland is also a big fan of "polymetallic mineralisation," a kind of selling Peter's gold to pay for Paul's copper production. When you have a world-class polymetallic deposit, you can use the cash-flow generated from one metal to sustain, or at least off-set the production costs, in another. **********

(friedland then goes on to talk about one of his aussie projects)

Yet Robert Friedland is probably on to something. And he points out that these great new ore bodies of the mining world (charity calendar coming out soon) will replace many tired, old, bed-ridden mines at the end of their productive life. "Our view, and we talk to Rio (ASX: RIO) about this a lot, is around the year 2012 or 2013 we are going to have a crisis in copper because a lot of the great copper mines are like little old ladies lying in bed waiting to die."

Younger mines will have plenty of cost blow outs (see Ravensthorpe). They will have to endure volatility in underlying commodity prices. ******But they have one thing the older mines don't: a lot of ore in the ground. That's worth something, especially at today's shares prices.*********

Dan Denning
The Daily Reckoning Australia

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i wonder what friedland's conversations with the majors are pertaining to the future of nickel and chromium?

regards,

jsq