Good afternoon. My name is Ernest, and I'll be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to Welcome everyone to The B2Gold First Quarter 2022 Financial Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, please press star, then the number two. Thank you. Clive Johnson, you may begin your conference.
Thanks, operator. Welcome, everyone, to the conference call today. As the operator said, we're here to talk about the first quarter results for 2022. The news release we put out is quite inclusive. We're gonna go give you a little summary of some of the highlights of that, update you on a few things, and then we'll open up quite quickly here for your questions. We're pleased with the quarter. We had a significant beat, especially when vs our budget on operating costs, all-in sustaining costs and earnings, cash flow and earnings. Very good quarter, and we can talk a little bit more about what that means in the context of going forward. We're very pleased with that. Once again, I think some.
Many of you realize the challenges that the industry is facing in terms of sort of high, you know, inflationary pressures, et cetera. We'll continue to remain committed to doing our thing and focusing on where we can, avoiding the full impact of higher costs where we can. We can talk about that a little bit more. In terms of the focus, obviously continue to be a profitable, responsible gold miner for us to go forward. We have extremely strong financial position, as you know, with a tremendous cash balance, virtually no debt and paying the highest dividend. I see Barrick just came out today even with their bonus dividend, they're still behind us. I think we're at 3.8% yield today.
Which is the highest of the gold producers. We're also very committed to continue to grow the company. We want to find a balance between dividending, rewarding our shareholders for our great performance and their support, but also being able to continue to grow the company. We have great access to cash through $600 million loan credit facility from our banks that has the ability to go to $800 million, completely drawn at this time. Just quickly looking forward, some of our priorities, and I'll pass it on to Mike. The priorities in terms of growth are we're closing in on a feasibility study at Gramalote, and we've talked about that. That's quite detailed in the news release.
Where Anaconda is becoming a real focus for us, as you've seen, we're now able to talk about the new resource in Anaconda, not only in the satellite, but we're starting to get some very good news that's below in the sulfides, just 20 km away from the Fekola Mill. We're gonna start talking more, and Will will update you on that. We have the potential for, we think, depending on exploration results, as they continue to be what we've seen, and it gets larger, the potential to build a second mill up in Anaconda. This will become a Fekola Complex, which we could have significant gold production from two mills and not just a future mill. I'll touch on that and give you a little more color on that.
Exploration has always been a big part of our world and a part of our success since we started this company 15 years ago. We have some very exciting opportunities, not only around the existing mines where we've had great success in turning inferred into indicated, finding new reserves, but also new targets in addition to existing targets, extending them on our properties. We've had a great success, track record of success of exploration at existing properties. We're still very global in our view and our belief that the cheapest ounces will always be the ones you find. We have some exciting exploration projects and a total budget of about $65 million this year, about 60%-65% of that would be on brownfields exploration, and the rest is to look at some grassroots targets.
Some exciting results came out today from Aurion, our partner in Finland, with the operator. We've been doing the drilling and I think we can hear them ask you questions on that. Sounds like the exploration group is pretty excited about early days, but excited about the potential given the discovery that they've made and given our, not only our proximity being right on the boundary, but the kind of results we're starting to see. There's a lot more holes to come there. We're drilling in interesting places like Uzbekistan and others, always looking for new discoveries. The M&A front, we will continue to look. We've looked at a couple of things quite seriously in recent times but haven't been able to reach an agreement. We continue to look.
I think time is on our side in the sense of looking at getting the Gramalote study out and seeing if that's a go. Also getting Anaconda in focus over the next number of months. Maybe seeing our stock, which has been underperforming, seeing the share price start to come up, as we continue to prove the value of the projects we have, our ability to operate them, and also, as we unlock the value of our growth projects and potentially exploration. Appreciate it. Go ahead. Go ahead. Good. Okay, operator, Did everybody get all that? Yeah. No. Yeah. Yeah. All that? Yeah. Okay. That was Siri just to shut up. It's okay. Okay.
I'll pass it over to Mike now, and Mike can give you a run through the financial results.
Thanks, Clive, and morning, everyone. Just run briefly through the operating results and some of the sort of key financial results that we've reported for the quarter. Firstly, on the revenue side, revenue of $366 million, and that reflects the sale of 195,000 ounces at an average realized price of $1,874 per ounce. High gold price during the quarter and sales were about 7,000 ounces higher than budget, which really mirrors the higher production that we saw in the quarter than budgeted. Speaking of production, the total consolidated production, including our share of Calibre's results, was 209,000 ounces, and we saw higher than budgeted production at each of our three mines.
Fekola was 102,000 ounces, so just 1,000 slightly above budget and slightly above budget. That was mainly due to higher than budgeted processed grade and offset by lower than budgeted processed tons. The processed tons were lower as a result of a reduction in the saprolite processed. That was because as a precautionary measure to protect ourselves against some of the potential supply chain problems that we saw arising in Mali from ECOWAS sanctions earlier in the quarter. We prioritized the processing of higher grade fresh ore in the period to reduce reagent consumption. That was a temporary measure. I would say the sanctions continue there, but our supply chain was normalized and we built up regular levels of reagent and fuel at site now.
As a result of that, saprolite ore was reintroduced back into the circuit at the end of February and processing is ongoing as budgeted. Remind you as well, Fekola's gold production is expected to be significantly weighted to the second half of the year as we had guided when we put out our budgeted numbers. That's because the second half is really when we reach the higher grade portion of phase XI in the Fekola pit, and we have the new Cardinal production stream fully online. Mining from Cardinal started later last year, but we get it fully online through the course of this year. Masbate, 60,000 ounces in the period, that was 6,000 ounces ahead of budget, so quite a beat there, mainly due to higher process grade in the period.
Grade, which was above budget, because we mined additional unbudgeted higher grade areas within the planned mine areas. In addition, as part, you know, as a function of shorter haulage periods and haulage optimizations related to the expansion of the tailings facility, we were able to see increased mining rates which contributed to the mining of higher than budgeted higher grade ore in the period. That's a temporary issue, I think as we were working on the tailings, the TSF. That puts us with a 6,000 ounce beat in the period. Otjikoto, 35,000 ounces, 2,000 ounces over budget. That's really, it's kind of the same story for Otjikoto. It's usually slightly ahead of all factors, grade recoveries and mined ore.
Again, Otjikoto is scheduled to be weighted to the second half of the year like Fekola, and that's because that's when we get to the higher grade portion of phase III of the Otjikoto pit, and also in the second half of the year is when the Wolfshag underground mine really ramps up. Okay. To talk a bit about costs related to that production. This, I'm talking here cash costs. These are all on a per ounce produced basis. Consolidated cash costs for the Q were $699. That was almost $100, $94 less than budget. That's primarily a function of lower than budgeted stripping in some areas, lower than budgeted fuel at Fekola. That was partially offset by higher than budgeted fuel costs at Masbate and Otjikoto.
I'll touch on each of those now individually. Fekola, $624 per ounce produced, that's $157 lower than budget. That's primarily a function of slightly higher than budgeted production, as I mentioned before, and then lower than budgeted mining, processing, and site general costs. Those costs were lower than budget, largely due to lower than budgeted fuel prices realized in the period. Just to remind everyone, I think we've talked about in previous calls, in Mali, the fuel prices are set in advance by the state, and therefore you're always going to have some timing delay between costs that you might see in the broader fuel market and at the pump and then what we realize on that site.
We also had lower than budgeted volumes of fuel and consumables that we utilized in the period because we mined and processed lower overall tons than budgeted. Mined tons were lower than budgeted due to, again, a temporary change in mine sequencing to accommodate that temporary change in saprolite processing. Reminder to everyone as well on the power side, the solar plant at Fekola, which we got up and running last year, is running very nicely. Actually, over 20% of the power that we generated in the first quarter of 2022 was solar. That's been a great investment, I think, for current operations and as we look forward. Masbate's cash cost per ounce produced, $710 per ounce. That was $50 per ounce lower than budget.
That was really, again, result of higher than budgeted production, partially offset by higher than budgeted mining and processing costs, which again, were driven by a little bit higher than budgeted diesel and HFO costs at Masbate for the period. Otjikoto cash cost per ounce produced, $770. That was $35 less than budget, slightly lower than budget, and again, a result of higher than budget production and our operating costs were pretty much in line with budget. Those operating costs, they saw some increase in fuel prices, but that was offset by a weaker Namibian dollar. If you might recall, last year, we actually, we saw Namibian dollar strengthen, so it actually, it increased our costs slightly. This period so far, we've seen the dollar weaken.
We budgeted at 14.5. Then maybe NAD to USD for the period, and we saw it come in somewhere over 15. It's probably a benefit in the period of a couple of million bucks in foreign exchange gains. Touch briefly on all-in. It's really the same story as the cash costs. Consolidated all-in sustaining costs, including our share of Calibre, was at $1,036 per ounce sold. That was $318 overall lower than budget. It's a function of those almost $100 less on the cash operating cost side. Higher than budgeted gold ounces sold, as I mentioned earlier, and lower sustaining CapEx. During the period, we were $33 million lower than budget on the CapEx side.
That part of that came from the temporary change in sequencing at Fekola, so we had lower stripping in the period. We also had some lower stripping costs at Otjikoto in the period, and then just the timing of some fleet purchases and rebuilds. You put all those together, we were $33 million lower than budget for the period. We think these are timing issues, and we expect to see those reverse later in the year. Just a couple of comments on guidance. Firstly, just to remind everyone I've mentioned already in this call, we are weighted pretty substantially 40% in the first half, 60% second half for production. We're maintaining our production guidance. We were 8,000 ounces ahead for the quarter.
We're saying we're still on our overall guidance for the year, so our consolidated guidance is 990,000-1,050,000 ounces for the year. We haven't changed our reguide on the cost side. We reiterate our annual cost guidance. Now, we have seen as I run through here, you know, a very good first quarter where we beat budget on the costs and all-in sustaining cost side. I think we can expect that could benefit the first half of the year as well. However, on the other side, we are seeing some cost inflation, particularly with some fuel increases I've mentioned already. There's also the CapEx timing issues that I mentioned as well, so we're gonna see those reverse.
I think, you know, we've seen some cost volatility in the market. We're gonna continue to watch it and, you know, we'll look at it again in the second quarter. In the meantime, we've just maintained our annual cost guidance and also our annual production guidance. A couple of general comments maybe just on the operations as we've just run through them. We're still a big focus in Mali. In early February, we put out an updated mineral resource estimate for the Cardinal zone. In that we had indicated resources, 400,000 ounces, and then we had an updated inferred resource of 740,000 ounces.
Also subsequent to the end of March, we completed the acquisition of the Bakolobi permit, and that allowed us to consolidate that whole land package from Fekola all the way up to Bantako, an area of over 200 sq km. Anaconda remains a big focus. We got $17 million, as Clive mentioned, on the exploration site, $17 million budgeted on exploration for Anaconda, for this year. Got a lot of five drill rigs on and active there. In late March, we put out an updated resource for Anaconda. Reminder to you that Anaconda includes Menankoto permit and the Bantako North permit, and that resource had initial indicated as mineral resources of 1.1 million ounces and inferred resources of 2.3 million ounces.
A lot of upside in Mali, and we've budgeted $33 million to start developing the Anaconda area. That has potential, I think with a view to phase one separate mining that could start as early as late this year. Could add 80,000-100,000 ounces per year to our production profile, which isn't in our budget right now. Cardinal is in our budget, but Anaconda is not. I think Will is maybe gonna talk a bit more about this after my comments. There's also a phase two scoping study that we're starting to look at. We actually are gonna look at, well, beyond just separately trucking to the Fekola Mill, what we might do in terms of standalone mill at Anaconda. Then at Otjikoto, we continue to develop the Wolfshag Underground mine.
First development ore production is expected by the end of the first half of 2022, and then, as I said, we kinda move into full tilt production there at Fekola Underground in the second half of the year. A couple of comments on the income statement, some of the other operating results and just gains on derivative instruments. We reported $19 million in gains for the period. That $13 million, they all relates to fuel. $13 million was unrealized, and $6 million was realized. But just so that you've got it in your minds, our fuel book, our hedge book at the end of the quarter was $29 million in the money. So about two-thirds of that will benefit 2022, and we flow those benefits through the all-in sustaining cost number as they're realized.
Then about 1/3 will come in in 2023. I'll comment as well, you know, historically, we've said for fuel, we hedge up to 50% of one year's needs and 25% of the next year's. We're not quite at those levels at the minute. We're about 35% of 2022's needs and about 17% of 2023. That's because we are realizing the benefit of those hedges. With some of the fuel pricing that we've seen that's higher, not as keen to jump into the market, put new hedges on. We're constantly watching it, and we'll jump in if we see like a dip in prices or something that looks like a good opportunity. On a net income basis, $90 million net income for the period.
That was an EPS of $0.08 per share for attributable to shareholders of the company. Then on an adjusted net income basis, $65 million or $0.06 per share. Let's talk a little bit about the cash flow. Again, solid cash flow generating period. A reminder as well, because we're saying we're weighted so much to the second half of the year, we definitely see the majority of our cash flow, the greater part of our cash flows come in the second half of 2022. Even with that said, cash from operating activities in the first quarter was $107 million or $0.10 per share. I know a bunch of the analysts look at it on operating cash flow before changes in working capital.
If you look at that number, it's $152 million for the period or $0.14 per share. We've maintained our guidance on operating cash flow for the year. This is net operating cash flow, $625 million. You know, we have seen some higher prices that we realized in Q1, as I've talked about, in terms of selling price for gold. But we're also seeing some slowdown in VAT recoveries at several sites, as you'd expect, as governments fight their way through the post-COVID period. I think overall, we've maintained our operating cash flow guidance at $625 million for the year. On the financing side, $42 million went out in dividends. This quarter, we've maintained our dividend at $0.04 per share.
As Clive said, that's providing one of the highest yields out there in the gold sector. Cash taxes, for those that are interested in such things, we haven't changed it. Clive will probably talk in detail about this because he loves talking about cash taxes. We've maintained it at $290 million, same as we guided at the start of the year. On the investing side, $77 million or $78 million, cash outflow from investing. That's quite a bit lower. That's about almost $70 million under budget for the period. We're sustaining CapEx at $40 million, which was $33 million lower than budget for the reasons I mentioned earlier. On the non-sustaining side, we're about $35 million lower than budget.
That related to the timing of fleet rebuilds, fleet purchases, underground development at Wolfshag, just the timing of some of the payments related to that, and then some of the timing of exploration activities. We do expect those to be timing issues, and we do expect to see them reverse later in the year. Gramalote, we continue to work towards getting the feasibility study done, which, you know, we should know the results of that by the end of or the first half of the year, and with the feasibility study to come in Q3. That left, as Clive said, very healthy cash position, $648 million at the end of the quarter, with $600 million undrawn in the revolver. I think that concludes the comments I was going to make on the financial side.
Okay. Think back, great summary. Thanks. Over to Will to talk about a few operational updates or actually particularly on the Anaconda.
Yeah. I definitely wanted to spend just a little bit of time talking about the regional Mali development and what it all means. I think there's a lot of questions and maybe misunderstandings on what we've got going on there. I'm gonna kind of work my way through it, hopefully in a logical fashion, remembering that we have increased the mill to produce 9 million tons per annum, which really is kind of the basis of all the beginning stuff. At 9 million tons per annum, we've always talked about our ability to process an additional 15%, separate material. Currently, what is included in the Fekola life of mine plan is only the Fekola open pit and the Cardinal deposit, the early Cardinal deposit reserve.
We have since then, as you know, freed up the Menankoto license, the Bantako license, and consolidated by getting the Bakolobi license. Basically, we have the entire belt from Fekola all the way north to Bantako North. What that allows us to do is to have some optionality in where we're going with this. We have previously announced, and we're discussing with the government right now, the potential to truck from Anaconda, which consists of Menankoto and Bantako, or maybe potentially separating those and doing them individually. Both of those studies are complete. Both of those studies have environmental and social impact assessments ready to go. It's just a question now of which way we want to go.
We've also talked about the need to optimize the entire belt. We additionally have a study going with Whittle Consulting, where we're going to take a look at what is the best way to process or what is the most economic way to process ore from all of the various sources. That study has been kicked off. That study will be done by the end of this year. That also will play into our sequencing going forward. What we're really talking about is currently the potential to have a phase I where we truck. I will tell you that, as Mike indicated, we have a budget of $33 million to get that going. We have started ordering equipment. That's come through the approval right now.
We're in the process of ordering equipment. I will tell you that we're in the process of designing the road from that area. We certainly believe that can be done by the end of this year. It's just a question of which is the best way to optimize it. On top of that, everyone is aware, I think, that we're looking at the potential to create a standalone complex up to the north to be kind of a regional mill. In that particular case, we would be looking at can we consolidate some of our ore based on our existing resources and exploration success to create a second mill, maybe have something like a Fekola Complex in that area. That also is being looked at.
I guess maybe the last thing that I think people forget about is that we do have the very real potential for underground at Fekola. We have started studies, preliminary studies, looking at, you know, what happens down plunge of the Fekola deposit to the north. While it's still open to the north. There is a resource there that we're starting to put a mine plan on, and there's no doubt that the economics, at least preliminarily, look very good. That study is also ongoing in 2022. In short order, what do we have going on? We've got the phase I study, which will be delivered to the government shortly. A phase II study, kind of at the scoping level to determine how big does the mill have to be. We're optimizing the entire district.
That's due out by the end of the year. At a scoping level, we're looking at underground. Those are all the things that are happening within the regional Mali development.
Will, maybe I think it's worth updating people a little bit. A lot of talk these days, we've discussed some of the inflationary pressures that the industry is seeing. Maybe can you just talk a little bit and give us an update for the folks, the analysts on logistics and how we've been able to see our way through this obviously challenging time for the industry and how we see that going forward between sanctions in Mali and between other things, between the supply issues. Just maybe walk us through a little bit about that.
Yeah, it's actually a pretty interesting history if you think about it. Let's actually step back because these were questions we were having in 2021. We had the COVID-19 pandemic. At that point, that really allowed us, or really required us to take a look at all of our supply chain and figure out what was the best way forward. During that time, we looked at plan A, plan B, plan C, plan D, and really optimized our supply chains. If you remember, there was a coup in Mali. That really didn't even impact us because we'd already kinda optimized. There came the sanctions in Mali, which kind of shut off some of our supply routes.
Because we'd had a good look at could we bring stuff in through Guinea or through Mauritania, while it certainly made us pay attention to where things are coming from, it didn't really impact us. Then, you know, that Mike briefly hit upon it. When the sanctions came in, we, you know, it was one of those things we had to have a good hard look at. We did assume the worst case that potentially we couldn't get something in a timely fashion. We did change our mining sequence in Q1 and the material we were milling. We quickly realized that our success was that we were gonna be able to bring everything in, so we went back to normal operations.
The last one, which people talk about sometimes is how is the war in Ukraine with Russia really impacting us. We used to get our explosives out of Russia. We're now getting those out of South Africa. We're seeing that we've been able to adjust right down the line to all the various components that make up the supply chain. Well, I won't say that it is flawless and seamless. On the outside, it all looks great, but it is something that every day that we have to pay attention to.
Okay. Thanks, Will. Before we open for questions, I just, there may be a question on this, but I just wanted to cover a couple of things off the Mali situation. We continue to have excellent relations with the government and locally and federally. Every government we've seen in Mali for decades and current government that we expect going forward understands the critical importance of gold mining in Mali, and then foreign investment to accomplish that, working with Mali partners, whether it be private or government. Obviously, we're excited about the potential of Anaconda in the very short term, trucking ore down to separate ore to increase production through the mill.
Ultimately, is there the potential for we can have just a little exploration, give us the results needed to look at building a second mill, as Will calls it, the Fekola Complex. You know, there's the potential to produce, wave your arms a bit, approaching 1 million ounces a year from there, subject to further drilling and subject to building an additional mill. That's a pretty exciting opportunity. We're clearly happy in mining in Mali, and I think there's still a lot of misunderstanding about what that means, which is why Randgold back in the day, now Barrick and many other companies have had great relationships in Mali, financing and gold mines and being responsible. We do some great community stuff, which is all detailed on our website.
It's a good place to be. Mali is a good country to be in gold mining, and that has not changed, and we do not anticipate that changing. As the government reaches agreement about new elections within, hopefully within the next couple of years, getting it back to democratically elected government, we believe that Mali is gonna be a good place to be, and still has the capability, as we've demonstrated, to show significant additional major gold deposits, world-class deposits. We think it might be on to another one here with Anaconda. Just remind people, when we acquired Fekola project from past owner, did an excellent job of taking it to the first stage and into a feasibility study. We had 4 million ounces in total in resources. Clearly, we more than doubled that.
We think we're really scratching the surface of literally almost up at Anaconda. Mali is a good place to be, and we'll continue to champion Mali as other companies will, and try to help people understand why we're there and why it's a great opportunity going forward. In addition to continuing our geographical diversification with some of the things that we are doing elsewhere. Colombia, just wanna touch on it in case there's a question on this. There may be a question on this, but I'll give a little summary. Where we are, as we've said, and as you know, we're completing a feasibility study that will be available in the third quarter. We're working closely with our partner, and then we'll go to the board with the operator, 50/50 joint venture.
I think we are, and I'm sure AGA is anxiously awaiting the results of the study. We've done some significant work to see if we could drop the capital cost by doing some legitimate reengineering, redesign. That seems to have had some success. The question is, what will inflation do to the cost of some of the gains we might have made by lowering the capital costs. We'll have a better view of that over the next two months internally, and then both parties will look at it and decide if they want to participate and make a development decision to build Gramalote Mine, which could produce 400,000 ounces of gold a year if it has the economics to support the capital cost expenditure.
We're in the same position of waiting to see the results of the study as our partner, and then there's different possibilities, whether if AGA decided they didn't wanna participate, would we buy them out, or would you bring another partner in if we wanted to go ahead? That'll all come, I think, become clear in the as we get into the third quarter. We'll know about that. There has been some negative press come out, I guess, around another project in Colombia that AGA has called Quebradona. They had been pursuing a permit there and had a few setbacks in terms of the government telling them to go back and do some more work, I guess, in terms of satisfying what the government perceived as the issues and some of their requirements.
I won't speak for AGA, but I'll just say that we think that the Gramalote situation is very different in terms of the location, the sensitivity of the location. We are in the right part of Antioquia, the northern Antioquia, with a strong mining history, tremendous local support. We get asked all the time when we're down there by everyone, "When are you gonna start building this mine?" We believe that support will continue. There's an important election coming up here very shortly in Colombia, but we believe whichever government goes forward in Colombia, we believe they're gonna they have they understand the importance of moving away from oil and gas and coal, and we think gold mining could be something that's beneficial to Colombia. We'll see how that goes.
At the end of right now, our relationships are excellent. AGA did some good work on social programs there, and we've done a lot of good work as well on looking at, on relocation plans and things like that. Tremendous support from the government and also within the local population, which is critical for projects like this. It would be the first significant open pit gold mine in Colombia. I just wanna get those points across, and I'll open it up now for questions.
Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we now conduct the question and answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you'd like to withdraw your question, press star two. If you're using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. One moment, please, for your first question. Your first question comes from Ovais Habib with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Hi, Clive and B2Gold, you know, congrats on a good quarter, especially on the cash costs and all-in sustaining costs. Just starting off on that, you know, regarding the guidance, for first half, you know, Q1, obviously, all-in sustaining costs came in at $1,036. Guidance for the first half is around $1,250-$1,290. Mike, you touched a bit on catching up on costs over the year, but are you being conservative on this guidance or for H1, or are you expecting costs to be significantly higher in Q2, or these costs are gonna be spread out throughout the year?
Well, overall, like I said, I think we can expect that we'll see the benefit. It was a very strong Q1, so we will see some of that roll into the first half for sure. I think we can expect that. Is it conservative to not re-guide the halves? Probably. Like I said in my comments, the prices are quite volatile and we are seeing quite a bit, especially in the all-in sustaining cost side, we're seeing some timing differences. You know, we were quite a long ways under in Q1, so you gotta remember that when you look at that all-in cost for Q1. We know we expect to see that reverse. Don't know the exact timing of that yet through the year.
We just felt because of some of the volatility you see in operating costs and particularly with fuel and then the timing of that CapEx, that it was better just to maintain our guidance for the halves as we have them and for the year overall. But yes, in answer to your question, half one's probably still conservative by maintaining that guidance.
Sounds good. Thanks, Mike, for that. Just quickly switching gears to Anaconda. Will, your team is looking to complete a PEA on Anaconda as a standalone. You know, several discussions have been in terms of, you know, Anaconda kind of becomes, you know, a kind of a within the Fekola Complex. Now, within that, are you able to share infrastructure with Fekola in any way and possibly reduce CapEx to develop Anaconda?
Yeah, for sure. I mean, that's probably one of the things that I should have talked about. You know, when you talk about capital costs for constructing an entire mill and infrastructure, you've really got to cut a lot of that out. I mean, even if you look at things like right now we're looking at how do we align a regional tailings facility? Well, you know, 'cause that's a big capital cost. The camps are things you could expand. The workshops could be shared. You know, all of that, the warehouses. So really everything outside of the mill, even the power, right? Remember that we've got that additional 30, was it 36 MW of solar power there?
We've got extra capacity, and we're looking at it right now, which is one of the things I didn't emphasize, but we just picked up that Bakolobi property, which fits between the two. But that, not only is that a good exploration target, that's an amazing opportunity for us to consolidate our infrastructure. As I said, things like tailings facility, roads, solar plant. There's, you know, we needed that room to the east. There's a lot of good things really associated with that Bakolobi license.
Thanks for that, Will. My last question is for Clive. I mean, in regards to development of Gramalote, you know, or potential development of Gramalote. Is that completely exclusive of building Anaconda? I mean, if you go forward with Gramalote, does that impact Anaconda? And if you go forward with Anaconda, does that impact Gramalote?
Yeah, good question, Ovais. Will can help me here, but we don't think so. We've always said we're not gonna try and build with our tremendous construction team. We're not gonna try and build two significant mines or mills at the same time. If you look at the potential sequencing or timing of Gramalote is a go, then a lot of the mill and construction will start as soon as we can get the permit reissued with some of the changes that we've made or updated, I suppose.
If you look at the timing of all that, and we've looked at it quite closely, of course, then we definitely wouldn't see an issue where the earthworks crews that would be doing the initial work at somewhere like Gramalote, if it's a go, would then potentially be able to move on. This is also subject to, of course, the additional results that would justify potentially an Anaconda and the sulfides building another mill. We don't know how far off we are. They're now to look at that, we may not be that far off in terms of the resource already and the kind of results we're seeing. First of all, the priority there is to start trucking the saprolite down.
If things go to what we hope, then while we're trucking the saprolite down for a number of years, a couple of years, whatever it's gonna take to get the full permit to build a mill at Anaconda, if appropriate, we would be producing 80,000-100,000 ounces a year from the saprolite. While we build the mill, and then you just segue into the saprolite, and everything else goes through the new mill at Anaconda. If you look at the timing of that, if Gramalote is a go, we see Gramalote being not first ahead of the saprolite. That's just road building exercise, which we do.
I'm not gonna say it's a no-brainer for us, but pretty much is when you look at what we've done, not only in Mali but around the world in terms of road construction, et cetera. The first step is really pretty straightforward, building a road. We expect to get the permit for that by the end of the year. As Will said, there's multiple sources for ore to feed the Fekola Mill with saprolite material. Then the rest of that start to unfold. With a lot of drilling this year, I'm hoping by the end of this year, we'll have a better idea of whether we think that another mill is likely to be the way forward, and then we'll start working on that, permitting that.
While we're doing that, we could very well be building a mill at Colombia, if appropriate, at Gramalote. We don't see a big sequencing issue or problem because what you're talking about, what we're talking about is phase II at Anaconda being a new mill. That would probably slot in after Gramalote from what we see today.
Perfect. That's it for me, guys. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thanks, Ovais. Good questions.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Jamie Spratt with Haywood Securities. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning, all. I'll follow on from Ovais, who asked very good questions there. Maybe with solar, if I can, you know, that it's a very interesting topic. 20% of your power is supplied from solar. Is it in Q1 does it warrant expansion of that plant, given, you know, the obvious, you know, trade-offs, or quick paybacks with the oil prices and the potential expansion of, you know, Anaconda going forward? Or would you keep it at 36 MW for the moment?
No. Well, we're doing the studies right now, Jamie Spratt, for sure. We see absolutely the possibility to expand that solar plant. Remember, not only are we bumping up against what do we do engineering-wise as far as production, but you also have these ESG components which everyone is focusing on more and more. The reality is that is one that you can really get some bang for your buck because we know it makes sense, we know that there's financial payback on it, and it's a good story, right? It's actually the right thing to do there.
Okay, excellent. I mean, maybe an extension on that one. How about maybe it's obvious. You've got a facility at Otjikoto. You were, I believe, if I remember correctly, looking at potentially something at Masbate, but I'm not sure whether that's still on the cards.
Yeah. Let's handle the Otjikoto one first. The Otjikoto one, what we've actually identified there, because Southern Africa has been so aggressive in putting on renewable energy, Namibia has really returned from a net consumer of power to a net generator of power. What we're seeing now is that the power lines are delivering power at much cheaper costs than we had envisioned even when we designed the plant. We have the ability now, and we're in the process of connecting to the overhead power line, which will once again reduce our costs. Once again, we get the ESG credit because that power is generating from the hydro plant, Ruacana Hydro Plant up north and solar power. We're gonna get some benefit from that.
We don't know exactly how much, but what we see is during off times, off-peak times, we'll run off the power grid and save money that way. During the daylight hours, of course, we run off of solar power and very little actually on HFO going forward, starting in Q3. The Philippines, of course, we're looking at it. That's one of those, if you've been there, you know that land is at a premium in the Philippines, so the question there is now, where do you put it? Dennis is working with John Rajala really to identify areas, even things like, is there potential of floating them in the tailings facility, the old waste dump area? All those areas are being looked at, but certainly we're having a hard look at that.
Okay, great. Thanks. Maybe one more question there, before folding into others. Maybe on Anaconda, again, in terms of if you can remind us what potential scales you're considering in the PEA for future satellite facility or, you know, self-standing facilities. I'll leave it there. Thank you.
Yeah. I'm saying too preliminary to say right now, given the fact, I mean, we do know that we wanna truck between 1 million and 1.5 million in phase I. What phase II looks like, don't know. What I will tell you is that, you know, we started out at 4 million tons per annum at Fekola. At nine. I remember last time you asked me, can we go even more than that? So, you know, which I would imagine is probably something at four or less to start with the ability to expand.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thanks, Jamie Spratt.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Anita Soni with CIBC. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. Similar question on Fekola. I guess Jordy asked kind of what I was getting to in terms of the overall size of the standalone facility. I know you're saying it's too early, but I was hoping that I could get maybe just one more detail. When would you think that would start up, if you were looking at something around the 4 million ton per annum mark?
Yeah. Can I give you a bunch of. I'm madly waving my hand and putting air quotes in the air right now, right? Because we don't have any of that data. I mean, let's just think about this. If we could do a preliminary study this year in the optimization and kind of a trade-off study and say that it looks like it's a go. I know that there'll probably a resource out next year that we could then probably put a study on. Let's say it takes us 6 months to do the study. At the same time, we're ordering equipment. The equipment comes in 2.5 years to build it. My math shows that it's kind of 2026.
Okay. A second question would be, in terms of overall, I guess we're always trying to figure this out, or at least I am. Fekola Proper, you know, without the Cardinal deposit and without the Anaconda deposit, what's kind of a baseline scenario of, you know, what we should expect out of that asset over the next five years?
I think that information was put out in the PEA. If you're talking about just Fekola Proper, or the updated feasibility study, which happened in 2020, then you have to overlay Anaconda on top of that and of course Cardinal and the underground and the increase in mill throughput.
Okay. If I go back to the 2020 PEA, that's a good starting basis?
Yeah. It's not the PEA, it's actually a feasibility study. Yes.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. Clive Johnson, back over to you.
Okay. Thanks everyone for your time. If there's other questions that occur to you, feel free to reach out to Randall Chatwin, and he'll put you on to the member of the executive team that will be the appropriate one to find the answers to your additional questions. Thank you for your time and have a good day. Thanks, operator.
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