Sir, if you are going to quote news releases, please try to get all the news releases to paint an entire picture instead of only a small snippet... You posted,

"Looking back at the Eagle's nest preliminary assessment, the initial capital investment is estimated at approx. $600-625 million. Of course this number could be lower based on more government inestment, cost sharing, etc. but for now will use this number."

You sir, are correct. BUT, if you were to go back and pore over all the news releases, there is also a template from the last President of this company that had things very well in hand before being taken out by our present day hooligans... Mr. Nemis stated in the news release dated July 4th, 2008 (page 8 on your press release shortcut on the left) that,

"The realization of very high Ni grades (6.5% to 7.0%) in the massive sulphide zone allows Noront to consider the possibility of first shipping unprocessed ore to a southern based concentrator/smelter complex. The construction of an on site concentrator for the disseminated mineralization would be accomplished out of operating cash flow under this scenario. This concept would be considered in an early preliminary economic assessment with minimal capital costs and an early production date, subject to all necessary consents, approvals, permits and land use requirements. While Noront would need to complete a feasibility study, prior to undertaking this direct shipping approach, management of Noront anticipates there would likely be potentially minimal impact to the environment and the mine development would provide road access to several local native communities currently with air access only."

Now, I have screamed at the top of my lungs for years to just get the blazes going already and get the permits in place, make a winter road and blast the 300,000 PLUS tons of ore grading 6.5 - 7% out of the ground from Eagle 1, Level A, ship it to the smelter and use THAT money to get the rest of whatever you want to build well under way to being payed for by the revenue already made from SOLD ORE!!!, provided that the current management and BOD don't give themselves huge raises again from all the hard work "THEY" did by getting this done...

So, forget how BIG this is for now!!! Permit and get the winter roads in and PRODUCE already... The way this company is going, it is going to take longer to go their way and prove up enough ore to sell to a major (not to mention dilution...) at a lower price than if they had just started permitting and blasting as soon as they could. I'll bet if they had started doing what I had suggested, WHEN I HAD SUGGESTED IT, instead of the statement from Mr. Hansen that they HAD to define how large this was BEFORE they could consider mining it........... We would probably have the permits in place already to go, follow the "elephant's trunk" down to the "elephant's body" and just keep trucking out high grade nickel,platinum,paladium iridium etc. until we all passed away!!! But NO, we had to go out and DEFINE EVERYTHING before we could even consider starting the permitting thereby putting us TWO STINKIN' YEARS BEHIND SCHEDULE for permitting!!!!!

Enough. I am going to have a stroke...............................................................

Blast it, truck it out, make your 5-600,000,000 dollars from direct shipping and THEN start making decisions what you want to do with the rest of it.

NUF SAID

Herb :-{