To my way of thinking, it's ironic that Neil Novak is playing his winning hand with chromite.

He went to the James Bay Lowlands looking for diamonds. He was successful. However, he also found nickel and copper. Then he stumbled across chromite, PGEs, and a bunch of other "iums". 'Stumbled' probably is unfair because Neil is a good prospector.

He declares he's found "Big Daddy" which looks like the motherlode of chromite. But for quite a while everyone was wondering whether this stuff was even useful. After a little neural processing Neil and bunch of other smart dudes realize its really a "strategic" mineral.

During all of this, Noront has some difficulty but survives, and so does Neil. He's a respected VP at Noront, while acting as the CEO of Spider Resources. I've always thought that this was "curious". This relationship, however, has impacted Noront to the degree that it is now focused on chromite although it has a wonderful NiCu find at Eagle 1. Needless to say, I think his association with Dr. James Mungal has been very useful, and two-way.

Now for the winter drilling season, Neil basically shuts down his drill, gets some IBK money for flow through efforts aimed at producing a 43-101 re: "Big Daddy". He hires MICON engineering to do the 43-101. MICON is well respected and has world wide connections. Moreover, it knows chromite and PGEs.

Then comes the news release, which throws everyone into a tizzy. 78 million shares for 6 cents each. The dreaded private placement. WHY? I ask. Neil told me he had just enough money to do the 43-101 and no more drilling was in the plans.

So something had changed. And when something changes, my antennae go up.

I started processing what Neil had told me in my last conversation. He made it very clear to me that he was thinking "bidding war". He knew about Cliffs and KWG, but he was thinking beyond them.

Then I started getting phone calls from people giving me some info about what might be going on behind the private placement. No hard names. But the info indicated that those interested parties are much bigger than Cliffs.

But something was confounding me (not difficult to do). The terms "non-ferrous" and "ferrous" were coming up in the conversations. So the interested parties were being labelled.

I had to review the facts, and fill in blanks. I still have lots of blanks.

One is "Why is Noront so quiet?" Heck, they along with Spider and Freewest are sitting on what can rightly be called the world's largest and best chromite deposit. But Noront's 2009 focus is chromite. Right? Perhaps while us retail investors are chaffing due to their silence, they are already talking with majors.

Then my thoughts once again went back to MICON. A world recognized engineering firm that knows chromite & PGEs (ferrous & non-ferrous?) with contacts. Contacts to help Neil? Who knows.

So these are some of my humble conjectures at trying to fill in the blanks. Sorry if my style rankles anyone. And I don't have any names. I'm just trying to fill in the blanks.

Comments and discussion welcome.

Snug