Agree with both you and Binwood about the future nature of...

Agree with both you and Binwood about the future nature of Succouth. It is always a great problem to have - lots of good targets Succouth, Yappsu, OTH and other regional ones PLUS the extensions to Nebo-Babel that are already adding to the potential there.

From memory I would add that WMC went underground with a resource of some 450Mt of 2.5+% Cu Eq with the full knowledge they hadn't drilled out the deposit. As an exaggeration, BHP got half the drill rigs in Australia together and spent several years drilling to a resource of around 10Bt at 1+% Cu Eq as quoted in this Porter Geoscience data.

There were originally (1980s) conceptual plans for an open pit mine and BHP considered OP as well but they got scuttled. Would have been a big hole at some 20-50 Km2, under 300+m of cover, with ore to ?1Km+, AND the Budget.

From a late 2017 SMH article: If link doesn't work OD resource 500yrs.pdf

The potential $US2.1 billion investment at Olympic dam, 45 per cent of which would relate to mine development, excludes study costs of $US240 million ($315 million). The mooted expansion will be closely watched by investors.

Morningstar resources analyst Mathew Hodge said the latest plan to expand Olympic Dam was vastly lower than a multi-billion dollar plan to expand it via an open-pit mine operation proposed a few years ago.

While this is a single monster deposit the range of possible developments that have been considered over the years gives an idea of the complexity that face companies with these mega projects. Not too surprising. Toss in Oak Dam and continued success there or some of the many other targets in the sphere of OD and one can imagine how tricky balancing budgets would be.
OZL's Carrapateena is around $1B for a dollar magnitude.

A staged development on the WMP is the likely route the JV will take IMO. Exactly what will be the result of many millions of $s in studies.

I imagine ramping up to the 10Mt at Nebo Babel for starters. While this is happening there will be ongoing extensional and infill work on NB which will take the near 400Mt of resource possibly higher and add significantly to the 110Mt indicated within this overall resource. Local high grade zone(s) may become the focus of UG development from pit(s).
CZI had an $8M commitment from OZL for regional exploration. I imagine the first $4M has been spent as it was one condition for the 51% which was met by October 2018. That would probably mean some of the stage 2 $4M remains as of Q1 19. Succouth/Yappsu/OTH or more regional will be a tough choice.