"It appears that there is lots and lots of time because technically the stock has no momentum."

.... until something material changes that, which is how the story goes.

"The SP is down because of the real/perceived time till production"

That is one perspective, however, players make their money all the way up and all the way down. Study any stock chart and it's easy to see how often money is being made. If we had to wait for for production to accrue value in a stock, the chart would show a straight line down to the low until they announced the mine was ready to open.