Peter MArshal wrote:

"Neither Noront nor Cliffs has paid its trump cards yet."

SN, may I ask, in your opinion, what those "trump cards" may be ??

Things have cooled off a lot for Noront since that post was made in Nov 2009. We hear rumblings that the hedge fund is not happy with current management and changes are in the works. We are not sure how deep the changes will be...but that is the scuttle but...

However no matter how you slice it, at 2% nickel and good precious metal grades, eagle one has a significant value.

I was recently reading about Royal Nickel, headed by former Inco Chairman Scott Hand and they are planning to go into production in Amos Quebec with a grade of .27% nickel. Go figure. In the olden days Inco would send that to the tailings pile.

A Gov't announcement on infrastructure for the ROF is imminent and will likely be part of the runup to the election.

Additionally, Cliffs has been doing a lot of work behind the scenes to move their chromite project forward and this will also help get things moving.

KWG and Frank Smenk who are partners with Cliffs on the Big Daddy chromite deposit, have staked two possible rail routes to the Ring of Fire and are promoting these to the Ministry of Mines. If these routes are accepted and Ontario Northland builds a rail line on one of these routes it will give KWG a lot more bargaining power in its negaotiations with Cliffs. I believe Cliffs becomes the operator of that JV in March 2011 and it will be interesting to see what moves they make once they are in contol.

Spider Resources and Neil Novack were the first to identify minerals (VMS) in the ROF and now Jim Voisin and UC Resources have a 55% stake in the JV with Cliffs and KWG.

UC is the operator and they are currently drilling in the vicinity of those original copper discoveries to the east of Eagle One.

Sooner or later there will be other discoveries in this vicinity. I agree that it will take time to get the infrastructure in place but it will happen.

As Richard Nemis once said, the deposit (E1) is not going away and will always have value.

So in that sense, Eagle One is still a trump card for Noront. Cliffs trump card is obvious....they own 3 rich deposits of chromite. However it is entirely feasible that Xstrata could buy out Cliffs....they are a major producer of ferrochrome in S Africa.

You can rest assured that the Majors such as Vale, Hudson Bay, BHP, Rio Tinto and Xstrata are all watching and waiting for the right time to play their hand.

SN