My take on this?
1. Both E-W road and N-S road, plus the RR will be built
- E-W road is much cheaper and the all-season road are to serve the FN local communities who are support NOT for champion the road from Pickle Lake to Webequie Junction. The cost is much that much $180M split 4 ways? at $45M each. In addtion to serving the FN communities, this road could be used by CLF as well for transporting equipment and material up to their mine site. $45M is nothing for CLF $3.3B project (the N-S road alone has a projected cost of $600M). ClF does not want to wait until the last minutes to start transporting equipment to the RoF. They want to do that ASAP. NOT will need that road to transport heavy equipment and material up to their mine site as well...and later to truck the Ni out to the railhead. Ni is less bulky (and more expensive) than chromite, ao they can afford the cost of trucking. The number of trucks used would not be 100 monster trucks a day for the case of chromite. NOt has some plan for chromite as well, but it's for later. The opportune time would be when the RR is available.
NOT can even afford to go 2 ways for the $180M (i.e. $90M for its share of the cost). The other costs (95km winter road, powerline, pipelines) amounts to some $260M. this compared to $800M near-mine concentrator CLF is planning to build (this amount could be saved, at least initially, if the go for BD instead. In other words NOT Ni scale is much smaller than CLF chromite. It looks like NOT project will go first with the W-W road, while waiting for the N-S corridor to be sorted out.
2. N-S corridor: Eventually the RR will be build (it the only way to go for the bulky stuff). The road will be build as well along with the power and communication network up to RoF, and beyond perhaps to Victor Mine area an Attawapiskat, Moosonee, etc?
The road is needed to open up the North for cars (too risky mixing the cars and the 100 monster trucsk/day, especially at night and bad weather). This is also a service road for the RR, the power and communication network. Of course, equipment can be brought up to the North as well, but not for the steady convoy of monster trucks taking ore to Nakina staging area.
It's my take that NOT is ready to go ahead with its plan (E-W road) for Ni.
goldhunter
