These are some very good answers to this important question from other posters.

Having worked at Inco for many years here is my humble perspective.

1. Inco bought Voisey's bay for 2 reasons...to keep others from getting it/protect their market share and because it was a significant resource that could be mined from surface(Ovoid) and would be cheap to mine. The same logic will apply.

2. I agree there will be great demand for nickel in the future and the price will rise. This inspite of the fact that substitutes have been developed in the past few years (because the price was so high)

3. Eagle one has some nickel resource that could be mined from surface

4. There are already 2 nickel smelters in ontario...it would make sense to have this ore processed in Sudbury

5. If Vale Inco where to buy eagle 1 and set up a mine it would not necessarily mean more nickel on the open market. They will mine where it is cheapest to do so. Xstrata is currently opening a brand new mine in Sudbury called Nickel Rim. It will replace most of their older mines which will close.

6. Neither Vale nor Xstrata will be happy if someone else such as Juien Jin were to buy Eagle 1 and put it into production. So expect to see a lot of interest from them.

7. If there is any truth to Dundee's statements of 300-400m step outs and there are continuous intercepts that match hole 49 then we are looking at a brand new ball game. Talk is that this thing could be open at great depth. 1000m is not very deep when compared to most Sudbury mines. The grades are better than average. My point is that this will wake the sleeping giants. These giants will have no doubt about the need for another mine.

SN