We really need to do some economics on Magpie.

1) TiO2 is very common. Physical processes separate this stuff and in many parts of the world one can basically go in with a barge and separate the heavy sand from lighter sand and there you go. I'm not going into details because the important thing is not about a snow job. The thing is we need to know $dollars per ton and what the competition does and how much they have.

What I have so far seem to have found is that 80% TiO2 and better, already processed and in bags FOB piers in say Australia is worth between $550 and $700 per metric ton between 2006 and the end of 2007. Source - USGS summary. Please verify.

2) CR is NOT GOOD. A different paper which I lost seemed to talk about special processes needed to remove the chrome down to 0.4%.

3) The grades we are looking at seem to tell me we may have an iron mine. In contrast I tried to look at the labrador Iron Mines LTD. and Iron Ore Company of Canada.

Lim website: Labrador Iron Mines: Labradorironmines.ca

IOCC website: Iron Ore Company of Canada: ironore.ca

BTW. the Agroacom parsing of this is broekn and shows shear incompetence. A good example is I have to write the HTML here but in a private message to Old Joe I can't. Old Joe will be laughing so hard! Also BTW Iron Ore's website is well on the way of being borken. But this is not my issue. If anyone cares I posted my shingle years ago and I do charge for repairs and advice in how to avoid these blunders.

I have not been able to find the information relating to ore specifics. There was a nice picture on the front of IOCC's 2007 annual report and it looks like the trucks are hauling Hematite.

One issue I note is that IOCC says they have at least 25 years and possible more than 40 years supply.

If Magpie is going to become a mine then economics are required and investment is required after that. I don't know if this proves positive in either area.

One thing that I am struck by are announcements coming from the oil patch. More projects are being shelved and delayed. People can find a weekly summary written by Tom Whipple here: Association for the Study of Peak Oil: www.aspo-usa.com (upper right hand side: PDF)

Issue is if the capital is not available for oil projects with oil just recently coming off record highs... then consider some things. We have had scares in the past which were political and sometimes the weather gives us jitters. ASPO is talking about geology and apparently Geology doesn't give us jitters however the religion (small "r") we call economics does make us quake in our shoes (well - most of us).

We can't do anything about the geology folks. While we are shutting down energy projects we need to accept that if the projections of the petroleum geologists behind ASPO for instance are correct, then just a few years down the road we get at least a triple whammy:

a) major fields in decline all over the place.

b) capital expenditures were chopped in 2008.

c) years of warnings have been and are being ignored.

The experts I know have been saying we need to move at break neck speed into synthetics at least 10 years before we reach peak oil production.

I figure we are blowing our grace period.

Yet the thing is that if capital isn't available for Suncor then what of McFauld's lake?

What of Magpie?

If any of the link I posted do not work then its not my fault. I put them in correctly and had to triple check. The guess who parser is not working folks! The fixes are rather easy. Well - good thing is the damage is just a minor embarrassment and all people will need to do is cut and paste.