will the swiss lose their number 1 qld slot , page-77

"I think we know nothing is for certain Hooter "

There are 100,s of mineral deposits around the world with DFS studies to back them up waiting for long term metal prices to get to the point where they can be economically extracted on a decent risk V reward return basis for investors - the fact the Olympic has been shelved is obviously at the pointy end of those undeveloped deposits.

Then we have numerous mines around the world that are being put on care and maintenance because its costing more to extract them than they can sell the product - The Minmetals nickle mine in Tasmania that Zinifex bought from Allegiance was a brand new state or the art mine that only ran for a couple of years before the nickle price collapsed

There are numerous coal mines in central Qld that are meeting the same fate and even FMG sailed pretty close to the wind when the iron ore price collapsed last year.

most of CDU,s 270mt is low grade and relies heavily on Cobalt credits so much so taht IMO a lot more emphasis needs to be put an the actual CO price and extraction costs and recoveries to form the base case for say a 10mt p/a plant with a 30 year mine life


hOOt

Even the biggest of the big get it wrong -


SURPRISE HIT

News of Albanese's departure and the writedown, almost as large as the group's underlying profit in 2011, took the market by surprise, knocking Rio shares in early trade. At 1340 GMT the stock was 1.5 percent lower, having been down as much as 4.5 percent earlier in the day.

"I wasn't expecting the $14 billion writedown," said Tim Schroeders, a portfolio manager at Pengana Capital, which owns Rio Tinto shares. He said the departures pointed to a company under pressure to do a better job of managing its purse strings.

"I think it's clearly a case (that) the board's laid down the law in terms of stricter accountability than we had pre-(crisis)," he said.

Rio said the writedowns include a charge of around $3 billion relating to the Mozambique business - virtually its entire original price tag - as well as reductions in the carrying values of Rio's aluminium assets in the range of $10 billion to $11 billion.

Since Rio bought Alcan in 2007, aluminium prices have fallen by a quarter but costs have soared, squeezing margins.