RE:The Writing On The WallYou're right, a bit more info from FT now would be enlightning. The way I'm looking at it is as follows; the deadline for Canada's Critical Minerals Strategy discussion paper comments was four days ago; if you go to the respective government site you'll see this ...
The public consultation period for the discussion paper closed September 15, 2022. We are reviewing the feedback you provided to help us finalize Canada's Critical Minerals Strategy, which will be published at the end of 2022. https://www.canada.ca/en/campaign/critical-minerals-in-canada/canada-critical-minerals-strategy-discussion-paper.html So clearly it'll take some time for the government to consider all the feedback, although you would hope they've been doing this since the get go in June. Once the finalized strategy is known, it should be clearer as to what projects will be prioritized with regards to government funding. In the case of FT, finalizing NICO financing with whomever must be hinged to this federal government financing, so until that bit is known, mum's the word I suppose. Whether FT is privy to the final strategy/prioritization before it's publicly released, I don't have a clue. And whether the refinery can be finalized in the absence of this strategy or only with Alberta government support indications, I don't know. I might be wrong about all this, fair enough, but just trying to think it through logically.
What's apparent to me aside from the government assistance business is that there must be extremely heightened interest and potentially competition for FT's cobalt given 1. that the multiple EV / battery manufacturer's appear to be in a near panic mode to secure critical minerals in North America given the IRA of 2022 and 2. in the case of cobalt, FT seems to be one of the only, if not the only option in Canada, if you're looking for a near term source. Let's hope that the timing of all this works in our favour; I'm betting it will!