The oxide ore is neither here nor there in terms of the cost of digging up dirt. The strip ratio, even going back to the '22 nifty restart study (which included the oxide ore) is somewhere around 6:1 (that is off the top of my head, without the figures in front of me). I think CYM gave MEC the costing assumption, but they probably don't differ a lot from the '22 restart study. It would be worth comparing.
Of course, the oxide will get processed through the SX-EW at some stage. What miner in this day and age would just send it to waste dump? We have a long way to go to get a definitive integrated business plan. $30m pa EBITA from the existing heap leach over say two years prior to producing copper concentrate from sulphide is not going to cover the operational loss from the first couple of years of mining.
I agree we are talking about a minimum of $400M project before taking into account other matters such as debt and con notes.
