the factors that you outline are costs. Risky costs are accounted for by adding a margin for unexpected bad news. As more information presents itself, the costs will become more certain and those margins will decrease...

The main thrust of my argument is that any takeover company is still getting a whack of resources .. and the value of those resources is the current market price. Which seems to be contrary to the opinion of the original poster. It also very material in some of the arguments that he put forth.

If the futures market was more robust: say there were contracts for 30 years (the fact that it isn't makes this argument more difficult to conceptualize in practice, but it is backed by financial theroy)... A takeover company could decide how much it would mine each year for the next 30 years and sell those contracts (thereby locking in the price of its future production at time 0 - riskfree!). Then all it has to do is look at the costs - to decide if it is a worthwhile venture. By buying the mine, you bought nickel (like on the exchange) - and a bunch of costs.

This is much different than other businesses, whereby revenue streams are based on production. The difference is that the revenues from the mine can be looked at on a risk-free basis, where in a traditional manufacturing business there are lots of risks related to your product and the related revenue streams must be discounted at a much higer rate (which lowers their value).