they were never serious

I saw the EXCO deal announced today and realized that they were never serious. Most of the EXCO Ground is EPM's with one little lease next to Ernest Henry that is as big as a postage stamp.
If you look at the numbers that EXCO put out in their DFS they needed the Uranium to make it work. That then caused big problems for the DERM (Dept of Enviro) because they exposed the amount of Uranium in the ore that attracts penalties from the smelter. Firstly it will be interesting where the hell Xstrata are going to smelt this dirty (high U) concentrate not to mention the high Arsenic Pyrite associated with it.
They wont be able to smelt at Mt Isa, too dirty, will have to go to China IMO. Paying EXCO $175m for EXCO's Cloncurry properties means they Basically had next to nothing. Bear in mind that Robert Friedland the Chairman of Ivanhoe and the largest shareholder in EXCO would have made the call to sell, no one else. He obviously thought it was a dog and said sell. It also goes to show how desperate Xstrata is for feed.
The word in Isa and the Curry in the industry is that WM told Xstrata to take a running jump if they werent to look at $1.5-$2Billion. I did manage to talk to WM today to pass on the news that Xstrata had paid $175m for EXCO's properties. His reply, was, "Thats about what id expect they would pay for a toy project".
He said , Im really busy Ike, anything else? BrBrBrBrBr.

Ikey Moses