I think the major positive here is that now we have the support...

I think the major positive here is that now we have the support of the Russians, we will not need to go back to the market for cash for some time. In the current market cash is king and we have enough to ride out the bumps over the next few years. Other comparable projects that do not have the cash, will either be gobbled up at a very cheap price, severly dilute their equity through very cheap capital raising or go bust.

This combined with the fact SRK are going to be at the very low end of the cost curve makes it stand out from the crowd in my opinion. I think commodity prices will continue to come off over the next few years, but they will still remain high in a historical context. Sure emerging markets will be hit by a drop in exports, but they have accumulated huge fx reserves in the past decade and have limited debt which will provide a buffer to their growth. The urbanisation story still has a long way to run and although IO prices will not be as high as they are at the moment i believe they will stay above the $50 mark at which the economics of SRK's project are still excellent (the same can not be said for a lot of similar projects in Aus).