Why would Teck do that?

Teck's time is far more valuable than trying to "screw" your partner in CUU.

Just because we all have the assumption that Teck is going to buy out CUU before any decision and the wisest choice is to withhold optimization results JUST so they don't have to pay CUU a premium?

It's simple. SC is a good enough project for Teck to back in and begin their work on. If they were not quite satisfied, I don't think the would've bothered in striking a JV deal with us. (look at catalyst copper).

IMO, Teck will want to get these studies done asap so they have a very high certainty of how to mine this asset, then they will look into the economic aspects of the projects. File their EA at the same time.

Then they get into a position to whether they want to put it in production or not.

Why would they waste their time to do 99% of the work? Spend all that money just to screw some small junior partner.