The worst case scenario is that we have to build our own railway...

The worst case scenario is that we have to build our own railway to Dampier or Cape Lambert or somewhere like that.
The cost of that is $2.5bn and another $2.5bn for port facilities. So $6bn should see us to +ve cash flow and 15mtpa. We are in the Pilbara, so there should be a good conversion rate from resource to reserve. No idea what it costs to convert all that resource into reserves. Surely we could do all the infill drilling in a year for less than $20m?

The reason I suspect we can't get on to the Rio railway is that the Australian competition authority has been told by your High Court to use a different test: not the monopoly test of "can a single railway do the job of supporting both customers (Rio and us) cheaper than each of us having our own railway" but a worse test of "could we duplicate Rio's rail and still make a profit". Sadly the latter is true so your Govt. is never going to declare the Hammersley line as an asset that should be available to all because it violates your restrictive practices laws. It appears not to when you apply he laxer test.

Yes, there may be another reason, and that is that Rio has been very clever automating its trains and saying it would suffer dis-economies of scale from having others on its line because the whole system is highly integrated, etc.

I think we just have to be optimistic the worst case will not arise. Everything is very fluid at the moment. We could have a higher opex cost and let somebody else finance and build the railway, and thus have a lower capex cost. At SDL they are going through all the same sort of considerations, but they are doing it more formerly by making the interested companies put offers in writing. Comparing all the the different combinations and offers is a nightmare, but our board is doing it by talking instead of putting everything out to tender (Recall GS said at the agm that it was like playing multiple games of chess at the same time). If SDL get their mine financed successfully (result will be known in about 8 weeks?) there maybe a some read-over into our share price. They are a 35 mtpa operation with $4.5 bn capex for phase 1 (phase 2 is irrelevant as phase 1 should finance phase 2), whereas we are a 15mtpa with anything between $1bn and $6bn requirement. I am sure a solution will come, but let's hope it is not a CR. A JV with an injection of capital of say $450m might be enough to get the whole thing moving. After that some debt financing maybe becomes possible. The $2.5bn port facilities that AQA required included the cost of dredging a new channel 20kms out to sea to allow big iron ore ship to dock. Surely we can share a channel with someone else? The ship movements aren't that frequent surely that you need multiple channels?

I think I am against a cr because as a non-resident, I am likely to be excluded (it costs extra to get permission for a cr in other territories?). So come on Mr Kennedy, let's have one of those good outcomes for shareholders!