Maybe the 15 days was reasonable. Presumably, Alderon could have been sharing the results of the feasibility study with Hebei beforehand. What you really need to do is to double-check Alderon's work and see if their assumptions are correct... this goes far beyond what is printed in the technical report that they file on SEDAR.
I think that the real reason for the delay is that Hebei may be having cold feet. Everybody else is cutting their expansion plans (e.g. Cliffs) due to the drastic drop in iron ore pricing. The mining industry tends to exhibit herd behaviour.
If Alderon was overcapitalized and could build the mine themselves, they should kick Hebei to the curb and therefore get rid of the option that they gave/sold to Hebei. Instead, they are effectively extending Hebei's option to invest in Alderon... it's sort of like giving away free money. If Hebei doesn't invest in Alderon, it's a vote of no confidence and might make it very difficult for Alderon to raise capital.
Dalton and Baker are on Alderon's board... I am sure they know what's going on. Altius is sitting on a lot of cash and has slowed down its repurchases and hasn't been buying Alderon stock.
2- In general, juniors will often extend options/warrants (and effectively give away free money to the options/warrant holders) because they badly need financing. Extending options/warrants has less fees than an underwriting or a rights offering. (Even a rights offering can be very expensive if you need somebody to backstop the warrants; on top of that, the brokers don't like it when you do a rights offering and won't pump your stock.)
3- To some degree, you need to be greedy when others are fearful. You want to buy when share prices are really low and fears are overblown. (Too bad Altius ran up and isn't as good a buy as it was before.)
