".,What is the big deal about a little all weather road to the ROF .It should be a drop in the bucket compared to those projects back in the 30,s"

Exactly. These are all words designed for posturing and clouding up the real situation. It is similar to when a certain CEO talked about NOT swamp land and how there would be many difficulties to overcome in getting to the mining stage. (That talk seems to have disappeared now......remember K's words "are you watching...".) The main difficulty is in people and their differences and how much pie they want out of the deal. We've put men on the moon, gone to every corner of this planet, given away hundreds of billions of dollars to dying auto manufactures and financial institutions none of which are worthy investments at this point... and a little 2 billion dollar road and rail over a few hundred Km to yield hundreds of billions of dollars of material for decades to come is undoable because people in the south aren't interested in it?. I ask you.... do you notice a subtle lack of sense in this? It is very crafty though how they manipulate the thinking of citizens and investors so that their fear factor manifests all manner of doubts as they buy the "logic" of those that "know". It's the old contrarian move....head North when everyone says you should go south. When the voices are touting one thing, you know you need to start considering other options, theories, possibilities.