Duncan04...not sure you are looking at the operating costs for Ecobalt correctly...the credit of $8.89 is for the by products of nickel and gold, which COB doesnt have (small)...not sure why you would also take the $8.89 off the COB operating cost?? doesnt seem to make sense to me. maybe I am missing something....
The other thing is that the grade of ECobalt project is about 5x greater than COB at 0.5% with big creditsfor nickel and gold....all of this tends to make it a much better and lower cost producer.
I agree its a very different looking proposition but it is much further along the development timeline and it is much lower operating cost due to the high grade and byproduct credits.
Cost of production will matter a lot depending on when all of these mines make it into production at which time I would estimate the Cobalt price would probably halve to around $30k/tonne...the current price reflects an unusual situation of supply/demand that wont persist in the long run...any project using $60k/tonne as an estimate to survive on will not survive.
remember Cobalt is a small metal market dominated by large integrated producers who will start to high grade their projects toward cobalt.
COB Price at posting:
33.8¢ Sentiment: Hold Disclosure: Held
