Major and second tier producers do not spend money on exploring as we might like to see them do.  They buy into another company's discovery to advance it, or they expand in and around known producers.  Hay Mountain is a "greenfield" project, meaning it lacks the factual information that would lead a major or second tier producer to risk exploration capital on it. 

Greenfields (aka blind targets) are not attractive to such investors.  That's just the way the sector has evolved in the last decades.

Look at it this way.  Thanks to movies almost everyone understands what a "wildcat" oil driller is.  Major and second tier oil producers are not "wildcat" oil drillers.  They will sink new wells in known-to-be-productive areas, and adjoining prospects with supportive evidence, but they do not drill in entirely new areas.  They let speculators do that.

All of LBSR's holdings are exploration prospects/speculations, not exploration investments (excepting, perhaps, Silverbell which is not available for work at this point).

Besides, management, exectutives and board members at producing companies are far more risk averse than many seem to think.  They like their jobs, their retirement programs, and don't want to "rock the boat" by backing something outside the norm.

The simple fact is, if and when LBSR gets a serious expression of interest from a producer, it will be after some level of drilling is preformed, not before.

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By the way, copper is at a new 25-month high this morning.

VP in AZ