I spoke w/ Hayes Dent on Friday in regard to Silverado's Project. I did not reveal that I was a curious shareholder, but did tell him that I am in commercial finance, which I am. I work w/ banks and funds that will fund a project as large as $150Mil, so it was worth discussing. Here is what he shared w/ me:

1. Silverado's total project cost on the NEW operational production facility is up to $450Mil. This blew me away after reading about the $26Mil cost from the prior plan.

2. This huge cost is what is stalling things right now. They need to make some headway on piecing together the funds through debt/equity in order to get the government funding interested. If this whole process were on timeline of 1 to 10, 10 being totally complete, it sounds like they are on 1.5...in my opinion.

3. Their agreement w/ the Red Hills Ecoplex is fine, but I did learn that other energy plants have stalled in this process. Being an election year, I have to believe that banks / investors are waiting to see what's going on.

To sum up, it sounds like they are still in the very early stages of this plant, but serious about it. In the interim, it would be nice to see the Nolan property start cranking out some cash to carry things. It would also be nice to see the company be more 'open' about the process in MS.

Any thoughts on this? I'd like to hear other folks' opinions given the estimated timeline we're looking at.