I wonder Cupcake why you made that posting. Did you just discover that we have substantial precious metals in cores at Eagle's Nest?
I have known this for close to two years and I presume that most folks on this forum were aware also.
Typical core has 500 to 700 dollars worth of mineralization per ton.
Of that 2/3 is from nickel.
Remaining third of value is almost equally divided between copper, platinum and palladium.
Take any two out of the remaining three and they pay for the extraction and processing of the ore, leaving the nickel and the remaining other metal as for free.
Not so long ago it was estimated that the processing of ore was to cost $120 per ton. With oil and other energy costs up that number is probably a bit higher.
Out of the 3, copper, platinum and palladium, copper contributes most value followed by platinum and close behind palladium.
If the cost of processing is higher then perhaps palladium may not contribute enough to pay the costs with one of the others. BUT note that along with energy costs going up, so have metal prices so one might be offset by the other.
To make a blunt and short comment, I still think that two of the metals should pay for operations, making Eagle's Nest ore very valuable per ton.
Combine that with the size of the known resource, about 20 million tons, and the ability of the market to absorb any quantity that we can produce per year, we have a great mine potential.
