"The pending infrastructure announcement would likely be the cause of this sudden accumulation, but who else but CLF would know just where the discussions are at the moment?"

C'mon K that would be insider trading and CLF wouldn't do that! :)

On the other hand it doesn't need to be CLF. It could be any number of companies who see it as a reasonable risk to get in now on the cheap and whose efforts in other places are meeting with much more difficulty than they would have here. Think Africa. They were around smelling NOT before CLF even looked north.