Average costs for all inputs would be used. For example, the selling price is in US dollars which converted to Canadian is better today than 6 months ago and 1 year ago. I am sure there are guidelines on the use of reasonable averages but they certaintly could not use spot prices. If they did the document would be irrelevant in the following week.

The problem with fluctuating prices is you never know what the total effect is. Using your oil example, it would now be cheaper to run a mine with lower diesel costs, but does the synthetic market price fall with lower oil costs? Who knows.

Based on what we know, we have a high mragin to work with and having that on your product does wonders for fluctuating input costs because they absorb them so easily.If we can sell the graphite at $10K US it won't matter much whether the input costs are $1500/ton or $1200/ton or $1800/ton. Whereas a flake producer selling at $2,000/ton these input costs changes are critical.

You know, I was watching the movie Apollo 13 on the weekend and near the end and they say 'it all depends on the heat shields', then they are a full minute 'past due'. I kind of laughed and thought of Zen "it all depends on the PEA" and of course the 'one minute' in Apollo time is 6+ months in Zen time but the wait for them and for us is rather tense. Of course, it all worked out well in the end!!