From the Goldseek article.

While Eskay Creek was quite impressive, the Golden Triangle’s largest elephants are still in the ground. Towards the north are the massive Galore Creek and Schaft Creek projects. These projects, majority owned by Novagold and Teck Resources, hold two of the world’s largest undeveloped copper/gold deposits. Their combined resources of 22b+ pounds of copper and 21m+ ounces of gold, along with substantial byproducts of silver and other base metals, are astonishing.

It's pretty damn hard for Teck to really ignore this area.

In order to profitably mine large lower-grade polymetallic deposits, they typically need to operate on economies of scale (large-scale production). Once up and running proposed operations at such projects as KSM, Galore Creek, and Schaft Creek would indeed deliver high margins/profits, even at today’s metals prices. But getting them up and running is no easy task since large-scale mines come with large-scale price tags.

I find this interesting as the JV is currently looking into doing a smaller scale production. And then slowly expand it over the years.

According to the latest feasibility studies, the pre-production capex required to develop each KSM, Galore Creek, and Schaft would well exceed $3b. It would be difficult to raise this kind of capital when the commodities markets are hot. And in today’s environment, when commodities are highly out of favor, I suspect it would be nearly impossible.

SC capex is $3.2 billion. Not well exceed $3 billion.

Even so, Teck has close to $5 billion in liquidity. I'm sure they are able to raise capital if they choose to put it into construction.

That goes to my other question, wouldn't it be better for Teck to have a 25% partner who will put in $800 million for capex? Instead of financing it for them too?