RE: back out provision
And even though there is a small possibility that Xtrata would back out, that shouldn't be that big a deal for Sabina, clearly what they want to focus on for the next couple years is look for more gold at Back River.
You know, if they have $170 mil cash right now and add $50 mil from the Xtrata deal, I wonder if Sabina figures they may have enough cash both to complete their exploration plans on Back River and also to develop a gold mine?
One thing I wonder: The agreement to be worked out in the future to allow access to Xtrata's infrastructure on "commercial terms". Not sure what this will look like but my hope would be this: The roads and port that Xtrata will presumably need to build- those will predominately be needed for Hackett. The much larger tonnage of Hackett compared to Back River will presumably mean a lot more mining machinery needs to be brought in for Hackett than Back River. And Hackett will be shipping ore concentrate while Back River will presumably just be shipping out gold.
If the infrastructure cost-sharing agreement is based on proportionate use of the infrastructure, then Sabina should only be on the hook for a small fraction of the infrastructure cost.
I would have been pleased if the agreement were simply that Xtrata pays for building the stuff and Sabina contributes toward maintenance cost in exchange for access to the infrastructure, but whatever. Sabina mgt are intelligent and I don't think they are going to agree to something that's a bad deal for them.