These things seem straighfoward enough to expect that AAU will...

These things seem straighfoward enough to expect that AAU will have already approached the Cuban goverment or other parties with something along the lines of what you have proposed. I suspect it was not agreed because either the risks are perceived as too high or the returns too low, leaving AAU to go to the share market for capital instead. It has taken many years for AAU to not yet get offtake agreements for LD or NS, which also supports this theory. There has also been enough drilling of LD to have already reached the DFS or BFS stage, but we aren't there yet.

The LD resource has too much arsenic for concentrate traders to pay much for it, so AAU needs to build a processing plant to turn it to gold and silver dorè instead. This means they will need to find more capital than I think they can raise without diluting shareholders severely. The NS resource, without further drilling, also appears not economic enough to attract external financing.

I've finally come to this conclusion after many years of believing Brian's very positive plans for the future and watching them be only partially executed. I think because Brian (Chaiman) and James (CEO) have been well paid to try to progress things, it really hasn't been that much of a risk to them if things didn't go well, so they continued to press on regardless. Many shareholders have paid the price. They are both in a position to put the company to administration some time in the future after being paid out a years salary as a redundancy. I'm not saying they will do that, but it is their safety net.

An alternative theory is that they have done the sums and can see that with further drilling it will all come together. NS cashflow will fund the establishment of LD and LD will provide the cashflow to explore and exploit the other assets the joint venture has, over many years, growing a substantial mining company, as Brian says. Key substantial shareholders might be planning to buy lots of shares in the current share offer to increase their level of ownership in the company. But I don't think that is what is really happening. I've been wrong before.