I didn't pay close attention to the math earlier, since numbers in the tens of billions tend to automatically make me think there is something odd about the numbers.
When you say "halved the price of nickel" was there first a reduction to account for the fact that nickel is only a small percentage of the volume of the ore? I can't remember our numbers off the top of my head, but I think we're at maybe 1.5% Ni? So if you were to start with 22 billion pounds of ore, you'd have to multiply by 0.015 first, to give the proper amount of nickel in the ore. In other words, 330 million pounds of nickel are contained in 22 billion pounds of ore if the percentage is around 1.5%.
Also, you may as well take a further major cut to that number because it costs money to extract and process the ore.
I think that basing any analysis on inferred or indicated or proven reserves is dangerous. Find the most conservative of those numbers and then determine the amount of metal, and then multiply by the projected contribution margin per pound, which will take estimated fixed and variable costs into account.
On a positive note, other metals (PGM's in particular) might be added as a credit, but most of those potential metals need to be looked at individually. Can on-site processing be used to recover those metals, or would we have to look at additional capital/infrastructure costs?
Sorry, not trying to be negative here, just trying to inject a bit of realism. I encourage attempts to put a prospective value on resources, even if I disagree with a valuation approach.