One scenario that I think is possible is that the Federal Government steps in and provides a strategic loan guarantee to Zenyatta. This could be in the range of $250 to $500 million and would allow the company to completely derisk a mine development. Lets face it with Cliffs as a stakeholder Zenyatta has all the talent they need to build a mine and process facilities. Why not?

Now before you go all Republican on me and say Ron you must be a commie, lets look at what that means and by the way the government has recently done this to help develop the lower Churchhill Falls project with the government of NF to distribute electricity and has done similar things for CO2 capture to help the Oil industry.

Risk goes to Zero, the Canadain and likely the US governments are guaranteed of two things: 1) this asset does not go to a foreign company that they do not approve of right from the get go and 2) they get the supply they need (at market prices) for military use plus high tech industries in North America get the material first before Asia.

What do we get you ask as shareholders?

1) Derisked mine of what may be the best natural graphite on the planet
2) Increased share price, because everyone likes a sure thing esp. the greedy bankers
3) immediate price rise to account for the fact that the graphite is recognized as special and the reduced risk.

With a loan guarantee in hand, I don't see any reason not to be processing graphite in 2 years, but hey I am no miner so lets say 3.

With this scenario I think we could be looking a share price that dwarfs even our wildest expectations, but I will let the NPV experts go to work on that with a side order of sensitivity analysis on the graphite price please.

Why would the Feds bother? Well maybe they have already started their due diligence with a grant from NRC-IRAP and one from NSERC. Did you know the people who work in those organizations have secret clearance and the top managers have higher clearance.

Just some food for thought while you're waiting for the Canadian boys to win the gold medal on Sunday.