Just went through the article by Jody Porter (CBC Thunder Bay). This is a piece of shallow reporting, with statements made for sensationalism.

Just a few comments on the main points:

Chromium is valuable?: Yes it is, it's one of the startegic meterials for the USA, especially for the Defence industry. The US imports billlions of doallars worth of chromium. Miners can make excellent profits (see CLF plan for BT, and KWG plan for BD). The pay back periods are very short. In fact it's a lucrative business. That's why CLF got in the business in the first place.

Currently, the RoF has, BT, BL, BC, BD, BH, BB, with a total resource of hundreds of M tonnes of chromite (worth $60-100B). It is an impressive resource which can provide employment for thousands of workers for more than 25 years (some would say ~100 years).

There are only a few countries that export chromite to the rest of the world. North America is completely dependent on this off-shore source of a strategic material. There are many situations that could disrupt the supply: wars, changes in the political scenes in the exporting countries, rule changes, export restriction, energy cost, labour unrest, outbreak of diseases etc...Chromite from the RoF would provide the assurance that North America would not be held hostage by various situations.

"You can mine chromium by going to a waste dump in South Africa": People can certainly try, but at what cost and for what quantity? This kind of statement is for sensationalism, but it's a senseless statement. At best, it only reveals the level of credibility of the individual.

Key players: CLF is not in any position to continue with its proposed project which would cost over $3.3B. It is in turmoil with a Market Cap is about $1.5B. So, NOT and KWG are the two key and active players left in the RoF. It is true that these two small companies can not take on projects costing $Bs, but it is expected that other majors (much larger than CLF) would step in with this kind of lucrative project.

Making comments on a former Premier of Ontario's statement is not relevant for this current discussion. Perhaps, the writer ran out of ideas for the article.

goldhunter