There seems to be two potential projects for the RoF. One is CLF chromite mines BT/BD and the other is NOT Nickel/Chromite mines.

- CLF: Has a plan to mine BT and/or BD. We don't really know the final answer, but it would be no big deal for CLF to replace BT by BD in their scheme. The infrastructure would not change much, but if BD is mined first then CLF does not need to spend $800M for the near-mine concentrator (required for BT because of lower ore quality). CLF is in favour of a N-S road which has a total price tag of about $600M (cost-sharing of course). But there are several issues: CLF access to the transportation corridor which has been staked by KWG; the volume of heavy trucks that would be require to travel/share the road with public vehicles; the damage that would certainly be done to the road due to the heavy load; plus the fact that CLF has indicated its liking for the RR as well, since this would be the most cost-effective way for bulk transportation.

- NOT: has Ni and Chromite (quite a good high-grade deposit). It has a PEA that describe the potential for a stand-alone Ni, Cu and precious metals. It has proposed a pipeline to transport the Ni concetrate to Weberquie Jct and and an E-W all season road from Webequie Jct to Pickle Lake. The total cost for the road is about $195M (cost-sharing) including the winter road portion from Webequie Jct to the mine site. The advantages of NOT proposal are as follows.

1. A lot cheaper than CLF N-S road ($195M compared to $600M) since the E-W road does not need to cross 3 large rivers.

2. The 4 FNs have indicated their support and considering to participate directly in the venture. These communities are isolated and the only transportation link is by air.

3. Both Prov and Fed want to score political brownie points by providing funding to develop Ont Far North. Cummunities like Attawapiskat do need transportation link to the south. Also, it would be nice to complete the portion to the north (later) through De Beers Victor mine toward Moosonee). This would be an excellent transportation corridor for mining exploration and development of the northern communities.

4. Let's leave aside the Chromite aside for now, since this is the bulky stuff to transport by road and would require a large number of trucks. The bulky stuff can be transported later by rail. NOt plan calls for Ni concentrate of 10% to be trucked out from Webequie Jct. With this higher concentration the tonnage would be reduced significantly (say 10%/1.7% = factor of 6). So, for 1M tonnes ore/year of 3000 tonnes ore/day processing at the mine, the concetrate at the other end of the pipe (after de-watering and drying) would be something like 3000/6 = 500 tonnes of 10% Ni concetrate/day. Assuming a 40 t truck (I am not a trucking expert, so this is you need to jump in to modify the results, you can use a smaller/larger trucks depending on the load limits on the road) then we would have 500/40 =12 trucks/day or 12/12 hours per day = 1 truck/hr, which seems to be reasonable, unless I made huge error in my math.

5. The plant design with most of the facilities are located underground (warner than above). tailings will be used as back-fill material, and the pipline to carry slurry is submerged. These are all good points for an environmental protection review (including potential interference with wildlife crossing).

6. With chromite it would be another story. Due to the bulk, NOT may want to develop Chromite later and have it shipped by rail.

In my opinion the NOT case is compelling and have a good chance to proceed way ahead of CLF. With Baosteel in its corner (and the new entity, RCF, just unveiled itself as a majority shareholder) there would be little problem for NOT to get the project financed. They can even absorb the $195M total cost of the road (chump change compared to the total cost of the project).

There is a strong possibilty that NOT will be swallowed up in a TO, leaving us retail shareholders crying hopefully all the way to the bank.

Geez, what an optimist!

goldhunter