Hi Geoprof,

For the record, I am the one that discussed the production cost as the key factor for Inco to pay so much for voisy's Bay. So the lowest cost producer will almost always win, that we can agree on. As long as he is well capitalized, if he is producing it cheaper than the other guy, in the long run, he will be the surviver. From very good sources, I have been told that our grades are as high as anywhere in the world. The lone exception was India but they are dealing with small tonnage and not a big player in this arena. Even Bushveld's grade is lower than ours. Bushveld's average thickness is confirmed to be between 1-2 meters only. We are looking at minimum over 20 meters that can potentially be mined in an open pit. I have been told that the labour cost issue is a non issue. We will dig this up, put in a truck and send to a very environment friendly smelter that will process it for us. The strategic location that was dicussed was Thunderbay. They have capacity to access to lots of electrical power which is key to smelting chromium-too bad for Bushveld that South Africa's Electrical grid is so unstable. ThunderBay has access to world wide shipping via waterway. They are a strategic location to ship to the US. Speaking of the US, they are still the biggest manufacturer of steel, especially refractory metals which have a high need for Chromium. Now, when you think of all this together, who do you think will be the lowest cost producer? I believe that without a doubt we will have the lowest production cost and the lowest shipping cost and turn could the chromium mining world upside down. Now, I also believe Xstrata will not let this happen. Xstrata makes too much money off Chromium in the US and will want to protect their market in a big way. Their name have come up very often in my conversations with sources and I believe it is because they are already at the table making offers. These discussions of course are top secret and no one will prove them until we get a NR saying Xstrata has bought into Noront but trust me, these discussions are going on and as the Chromium and the nickel get proven up, they will only get more aggressive in their negotiations.

As for Eagle 3 aka AT12, we already now they have a nickel copper occurence and they have proved this with both the first two holes...just like Eagle 1. However, Eagle 1 had holes 3 and 4 go amiss. We are still waiting for release of hole #3 info. Of course the rumors are rich with a wonderful hit on this hole. This hole does not need to be 7% nickel to be great news for noront. A decent length hole with 1-2% nickel will add greatly to our resources and will keep confirming that we are looking at the next great mining camp in Canada. We are very early in this process. Something to keep in mind is that Sudbury has been mining nickel for over 100 years and they are still finding new deposits. Confirming that AT12 is another viable nickel occurence, 10 km away from Eagle 1 will greatly increase the blue sky effect. Keep looking at the hit-miss ratio in the ROF...it is off the chart, and most was done with AeroTem which we now know is no where as accurate as VTEM.

Sorry to ramble on...had a well deserved night with the boys and the corona was cold!!

Cheers to all,

Glorieux