Slight correction to that statement:
"Now you want to tell me this new plan which still needs to dig up the oxides to get to the sulfides will have the same C3 cost even after all this inflation and also factoring in the the oxide has to be hauled somewhere else and stockpiled and then rehandled later on unless they significantly increase the throughput of the SXEW plant which is more upfront capital?"
Mining contractors get paid to move dirt and then they charge you again to move it a second time, you don't realize the copper metal out of the oxides until its leached and SX EW plant has done its stuff, the timeframes for this are longer than digging up sulfides and putting them into a sulfide mill.
People can play all the accounting games they want and divide the project up into two artificial workstreams if they want, but its a lot of upfront capital and stripping and burning through money to get to the point of mining sulfides and making money at today's relatively high copper prices. Yes as
@PieChart says, inflation is real since 2020 and no - nothing is going to be cheaper than stuff priced out in 2020-2022 - whether it's capital construction costs or operating costs.
Just turning over some old oxide stockpiles with a digger and leaching a little extra Cu out of them isn't going to magically fund you a $200-$400M capex any which way you cut it, the capex is going to have to be raised by dilution or finance to do it and the physicals of the oxide and the pit mean a lot of digging for not much copper at the start of the restart. The fact that Aditya Birla took a lot of the goodies out of the sulfide orebody leaving a geotechnical mess for someone else to figure out, is just more downside and no upside for any potential financers or investors.
