not worth 25b usd

In case people don't realise it actually costs money to dig out the metal. Is something still worth 25b if it costs 26b to extract? Or if by the time it is extracted the metal is only worth 12.5b and it costs 13b to extract?

I remember someone here on HC made a quip, went something like there's enough iron in my backyard worth billions - if you go enough '000's of kilometres underground - do you want to buy it off me for an easy million?

So the question you should be asking is "how much will it cost to dig out the metal?" You'll need to find out how much it will cost to build all the associated infrastructure, then partition that over the mine life and add it to the day to day costs of the operation.

This depends on a large number of variables, such as, how close is the nearest water source? If it's in a particularly arid place, the costs of procuring a water supply will be heaps. How expensive is the electricity going to be? Ie grid power versus diesel/hydro etc power. Is there ready labour available. ie cost of building a new mini town versus not having to. What are the rock characteristics. If it's hard to mine then more expensive techniques will be needed. Metallurgy, is the ore easy to treat.

In short I don't think it's possible that we as "mum and dad" type investors can conceivably get an accurate figure of costs from sitting behind our PC's.

We can probably make some rough calls as to the economic viability of the project by looking at how many copper mines with grades of ~.5% are operating, but this won't take into account costs associated with setting up the operation, ie there could be a .5% copper mine out there that's survived during non mineral boom times, but it's not strictly comparable to PMH's deposit since PMH hasn't paid for the cost of setting up the operation. So it's a fairly inaccurate guesstimate.

Frankly I don't see how people here can be so confident that costs will be less than metals sales when not even the company, or mining experts, can tell you how much it will cost at this point in time . Please keep this idea in mind before pushing the idea to hardworking mums and dads that this is worth $25b.