Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to B2Gold Corporation's third quarter 2023 earnings results conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity for analysts to ask questions. To join the question queue, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Clive Johnson, President and CEO of B2Gold. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Aisha. Welcome everyone to, as Aisha said, our conference call to discuss the results of the third quarter of 2023. I want to say a few introductory words, and then I'm going to pass it on. We have in our board room here in Vancouver most of our executive team, and you're going to hear from me, and then Mike will walk us through, like our Senior VP and CFO , will walk us through the financial results for the quarter.
Then, Bill Lytle, COO, will walk us through a brief update on projects around the mines, but also on the development projects, what we're doing and how Goose update and also with Back River, and also talk about the way forward and potential for Valley expansion and give you a good update on that. And many of you have seen the results, of course, through the news release and filing that was done yesterday. We're pleased with the results for the third quarter. We had another solid quarter, and with some good costs, and well, another well-run quarter by our extremely good operating teams on all of the sites.
Michael will take you through some of that, but as importantly as the results for the quarter are, I think we're feeling very comfortable about being on track for our guidance for 2023. So we'll update you on that and tell you why. Obviously, we're looking for Fekola's schedules for a good quarter coming up in the fourth quarter. We'll talk more detail about that. In terms of where we are, and then our focus a little bit of talk about looking forward a bit and then some strategy. The key point, as always, is to continue to be a responsible miner and optimize the gold production from our existing mines, to continue our great work that we do on the ESG front in so many different places.
Obviously, the focus now going forward on the development side is the Goose, which you'll hear more about going extremely well, the construction at Goose and we're on schedule, on track, expecting first gold production in the first quarter of 2025, as we'll hear more from Bill. But that's going extremely well. We're very pleased with that. We've also had quite a bit of exploration, drilling going on up at Goose and some George, and they're starting to get assay results back. And I think we're pleased with what we're seeing, both in looking at some of the infill drilling we're doing, but also some of the step outs, looking to see if the potential is for more mineralization beyond what had been drilled by Sabina.
Remember, they have a very small exploration budget, which is appropriate for a single asset company trying to finance and build a mine. We'll have a news release out next week, update on the Goose drill results for you, next week. We're feeling quite excited about that. We're also, of course, and going forward, looking at the alternatives and the timing to potentially expand Fekola by production, by trucking ore from the north. And also there was some talk about maybe one day down the road, building a second mill to further increase production from the Fekola complex. We've been waiting for a permit from the government. The government, as everyone is probably aware, has come out with a new mining code.
We're looking how that works, and Bill and Randall is here as well to walk us through some of what we're expecting there. We're looking for meetings with the government in the near term to try and discuss the implementation of the new code and how that might look in terms of expansion, and talk about everything we're doing down there with the government. So we're looking forward to having a positive result there. We do have heard repeatedly from the government, including recently, the government's ongoing commitment to gold mining and foreign investment in gold mining, and we've definitely had some nice compliments recently about the way B2Gold has operated in Mali.
We're confident that we can continue to work with the government, as we always have, to find the best way forward for all stakeholders. So we'll talk more about that. Obviously, as you know, exploration and M&A looking at opportunities is always a very important thing of what we do. I would say that in the exploration point of view, we'll have another significant budget for next year. I can answer some questions about that if you like, but I have another significant looking at Brownfields exploration, which we've always done quite well around our mines, and also additional regional exploration, but also looking at some new opportunities over Finland. We established a new company, an exploration company in the Philippines, to look at other potential opportunities.
We see the Philippines as a good place to be in the mining industry, but it's largely been unexplored for decades. We see ourselves as one of the real success stories there, and the government agrees. The new government, we think, the new government has shown that they are quite open to foreign investment, including in the mining sector. So we see an opportunity there. So we have a 100% B2Gold-owned Philippine exploration company to look at further opportunities, the archipelago, that is the Philippines. In addition to that, we will continue to look at investing in junior companies where they have what we feel is a good exploration people and good exploration prospects. We know how hard the market is in gold equities today as producers, let alone as exploration companies.
So, companies like Snowline Gold Corp, where we're at 9.9 in investor and Matador, et cetera. Sorry?
Matador.
Matador . We just gave Matador a plug there. Okay, Matador, sorry. It's gonna happen once in a call. Yes, so we like their exploration upside and, and Matador, and we will, be closely following along their, progress. The other thing to, to maintain going forward is our fiscal and financial discipline, which might be shown for a long time. At the end of the day, we're in a very strong financial position, still paying an industry-leading, dividend that's over 5% yield, at the moment, and we're basically debt-free, so extraordinarily strong financial position and, and sitting on a substantial cash balance. Now, we'll have some money to spend next year, of course, with Goose and some of the other capital expenditures we have. So our plan going forward is to maintain at all times a very strong, financial position so...
In terms of additional M&A, we've made it clear, I think, and we'll continue to do that, we're not out there looking for new development projects. We're very focused on what we have. We have the Goose construction and then, and then also with expansion, potential expansion at Fekola and then Gramalote. You know, we did acquire the other half of Gramalote, and, at the end of the day, we, we've never really looked at it as, as a project owned by one company, and what size and scale should it be. We were always pushing because it was a 50 JV with AngloGold Ashanti, to actually, make it big enough for two companies. So we were looking at 350 to 4,000 ounces a year. Now, there is a, there's a higher grade core, apparently, of the Gramalote deposit.
Can we significantly reduce the capital costs and make it a better project? It was close before. Can we make it an economically attractive project to move forward to, with, with, with us doing it our way and building something maybe that, can produce 200 or 250,000 ounces a year, and with significantly lower capital costs? So we're kind of agreed, but otherwise, we'll do a study next year, probably a PEA, and come out and see. So that's obviously down the road, but we do think that, that Antioquia is a good place to be in Colombia, and there's lots of local support, government and local citizens, and even federal government has signaled that they want some gold mining to go ahead in the, in, in the country of Colombia.
I think with that, I'll pass it on to Mike to give you some more details on the results.
Good. Thank you, guys. So just gonna report the quarter and give you also an overview of where, how we see it out turning for the year and the guidance we've given for full year. So a solid quarter. Starting on the revenue side, we, we sold 249,000 ounces at an average price of $1,920 per ounce for revenues of $478 million. And I should say overall, sales were a bit higher than budget, and we're about 16,000 ounces ahead, probably, on the budget side, where we've outgrown sales, and we think we'll see that all throughout. Those were sales that were sold out from opening inventory. We think for the year, we'll see us maintain that as well. So we, we should be slightly ahead sales-wise versus production for the year.
On the production side, for the Q, total gold produced from our three operating mines, 225,000 ounces, which is just slightly 8,000 ounces less than budget, and that's the tale of some offsets, I think. On the Fekola side, Fekola was about 13,000 ounces under budget, and it was impacted really by the grade and lower mill feed grade that was going through. Fekola was hit by significant precipitation in the third quarter that didn't allow us to mine some of the Phase Six higher-grade material as quickly as we thought. So it was supplemented with stockpile, low grade, lower grade stockpile material. We do expect that we are now in that Phase Six and mining that material, and we expect that we'll more than catch up in Q4.
We actually expect to beat budget for Fekola in Q4. So that was a temporary rain-induced event, I think, that you'll see us catch up as we go through into Q4. At Masbate and Otjikoto, both of those operations are actually ahead of budget, production-wise. So Masbate, 51,000 ounces, 5,000 ounces ahead of budget. Otjikoto, 45,000 ounces, 2,000 ounces ahead of budget. And they both benefited from grade and slightly higher mill throughput at Masbate. At Otjikoto, the better grade is definitely at least partially, if not significantly, impacted by the Wolfshag material. We're mining material from Wolfshag underground has an average of about 5-5.5 grams per ton. And I think just to put in context, I think we, year to date, we've taken approximately 50,000 ounces from Wolfshag.
We expect Wolfshag material to continue, underground material to continue to be mined at least until 2026, as we continue to look at underground potential there. On the cost side, taking into account those production results, overall, total cash operating costs from all of our operating mines, we were $741 per ounce produced, including our share of Calibre, $755 per ounce. So approximately $50 lower than budget, and that's a good result. Again, for the Q, Fekola was a little over budget. It was $688 or just under $40 an ounce higher than budget, and that's a function of the lower gold production we saw from Fekola in the third quarter.
And like I say, that a lot of that was weather-driven, and we expect to see them catch up in Q4. Masbate and Otjikoto were both significantly under budget. That's been a story that's maintained as we've gone through the year, and it continues. And that, the, their beats on budget are a function of more production at each site and also lower fuel costs, particularly if it's Fekola. Fekola is seeing both HFO and diesel costs be approximately 20% less than budget. Otjikoto has also seen lower diesel costs, but it, again, because it's on the grid now, it's not impacted by HFO anymore. We don't, we don't run the mill power using HFO generators anymore. We take that power off the grid, so, but diesel did have an impact there.
And then when we take that and we look at the all-in sustaining costs for the Q total from all of our operating mines, $1,273 per ounce, approximately $90 less than budget. And again, that's firstly a function of the lower cash costs that we've seen, lower than budget cash costs, and higher than budgeted sales. As I mentioned, we are a little bit ahead on sales and all-in sustaining costs are measured on per ounce sold. And then also some lower CapEx than we thought, certainly at Masbate and Otjikoto. Some of the CapEx is lower than budgeted, and we think it'll actually be a permanent beat for the year.
I think we guided for Otjikoto, we probably have a verge tripping and somewhere in the region of $10 million, that we're not going to incur through the balance of the year. And from Masbate, probably somewhere in the region of $4 million for the balance of the year, will be permanent, beats against budget. Fekola did see some higher CapEx. We did see some higher than budget sustaining CapEx, really a lot of that related to fleet, either new fleet or fleet rebuilds. And as we look forward for the full year, or maybe it's just to comment then, so where are we year to date? Production-wise, we're very close to budget. We're, we're at 3,000 ounces from our mines, lower than budget. And like I say, we are expecting to get, do some catch-up at Fekola in Q4.
So we're confident of meeting our budgeted guidance range for production. I should mention as well that we didn't have any Fekola regional production this Q. We had forecast that we would see a start in Fekola regional production. However, as we've mentioned in other calls, there are delays within the mining audit in Mali and the new mining code being issued. There were delays in getting new mining permits granted. So we haven't been able to get Fekola regional production up and running this year, and then Bill will talk a little bit more about that and what the plans are for next year. But notwithstanding the fact that we didn't have Fekola regional, with what we see Fekola doing in Q4, we still expected Fekola production for the Fekola complex, which included regional in our original guidance.
We do expect that we'll be able to meet our guidance range, which was 580,000-610,000 ounces. Then on the Masbate and Otjikoto side, confident, I think that we can maintain the beats that we've seen so far this year. And so overall, we think Masbate will come in somewhere at the high end of its guidance range of 170,000-190,000 ounces, and Otjikoto will come in in its range of 190,000-210,000 ounces. And overall, we reiterate our consolidated guidance for the year, no change over the whole year.
When you look at the cost performance year to date, it's Fekola is pretty close to budget on the, on the cash cost side year to date, and Masbate and Otjikoto are still significantly under. So in the cash cost side, for the full year guidance, we've said we expect to be within range for Fekola, but we have reguided costs down, downwards for both, Masbate and Otjikoto. We haven't reguided overall consolidated range when you, when you blend all that through, but we do-- We have guided that we expect to come in, so we're below the low end of our consolidated guidance range for cash costs. On the all-in sustaining costs side, similar story, Otjikoto and Masbate significantly under budget year to date, so we have reguided their all-in sustaining cost guidance down.
But with Fekola, as I mentioned in the Q, we saw some higher sustaining CapEx, and we've also approved some, some additional sustaining CapEx. Again, most significantly related to new fleet and fleet rebuilds for the Fekola mine and some additional solar plant costs. And with those, we, we see that the Fekola sustaining CapEx could be somewhere around $50 million higher for the full year than budgeted. And so with that in mind, we've reguided Fekola's all-in sustaining cash cost guidance upwards for the period. But when you, when you marry that up with the reguide down for the Masbate and Otjikoto, overall, our consolidated guidance range is unchanged. Again, and again, we expect to come in at the low end of that guidance range. And just another comment between the CapEx.
So although we have that higher Fekola sustaining CapEx upwards, there are other Fekola non-sustaining CapEx expenditures that haven't all been incurred this year, are unlikely to be, so we think they're offset. And when you look at the total CapEx for the year that was budgeted and where we see the forecast coming, that total CapEx, including sustaining and non-sustaining for both, all the mines, we think we're going to come in very close to or right on budget. So there's no overall change, but there is a bit of a change between the sustaining and non-sustaining mix. That's the operating results. A few other comments on where we are.
As I mentioned, Fekola regional is delayed until we get into next year and understand how the new 2023 mining code will be applied and get an updated study for regional, but Bill will talk to that. Gramalote , as you saw, and as we announced last period, we did buy out the second half AGA's half of the JV, so we now own the Gramalote project entity 100%. And that purchase was used as a measurement trigger to measure the cost that we had on the balance sheet for Gramalote. So we did trigger an impairment of Gramalote for accounting purposes. Non-cash impact of $112 million hit the earnings related to that impairment.
But the rationale for the transaction was that we now own the Gramalote 100%, and we're now able to look, we think, as a single owner, we can analyze maybe a lower scale operation, lower capital intensity, higher, hopefully higher return, lower production, but overall, higher grade operation. So that's the goal. The goal is to look at that, and I think our internal goal is to have an internal study available with our first look at that by the end of the first half of 2024. Goose, again, I think Bill, we'll leave that with Bill to give you the update. With Goose, that's our most exciting new project, and it's going to be a big one for B2 as we go forward.
Still on track to bring it online, first quarter, 2025. Year to date, from a B2 point of view, we spent $157 million in cash on Goose capital expenditures, and we started funding Goose working capital. As a Arctic operation that that's has limited shipping season, key to make sure that we actually get the right raw materials or consumables up there that we need to de-risk that operation and keep it running. So year to date, in 2024, we spent just over $40 million on those inventories.
We are working on a plan to look at exactly what we think we need as we go through the next year and the next shipping season, so that when we bring Goose up and running in early 2025, we'll, we'll have significantly de-risked it and get the materials that we think we need on-site. So I think we'll come up with a new estimate for that when we get into the 2024 budgeting release. Otjikoto, just last couple of comments to make. I did mention, so we've had 50,000 ounces from Wolfshag year to date. We have also disclosed that we can see the end of the Otjikoto open pit operations coming, so there will be retrenchment of those operations in 2024, completed in 2025.
In the income statement, there was, in total, a charge of $12 million in the current year related to recognition of upcoming severance costs for the Otjikoto operations. Those are the main initial charges for those severance costs. You will see some other additional stuff as we go forward, but they'll really be because of passage of time and amortization purposes. But those, the initial recognition has now occurred. Just covering a couple of things, I think, on the earning income statement. I think just to highlight what the main impact that we saw, other than good operating results, was that the Gramalote impairment, $112 million. That does, of course, get adjusted out in adjusted earnings.
And so when you look at the bottom line for the year, the income attributable to shareholders company was $43 million, and net income was -$43 million, or -$0.03 per share EPS. But if you, if you adjust out the non-cash items, including that Gramalote impairment, adjusted income, net income was $65 million, and adjusted EPS was $0.05 per share. Then on the cash flow side, operating cash, cash flow from operations after working capital, $110 million for the Q, approximately $0.08 per share. And as I mentioned, that, that did get impacted by a buildup of some consumables and inventory items at Back River to the tune of $40 million, and also a little bit more of a longer delay in getting some of the VAT tax receivables refunded.
Financing side, nothing too significant that's new to comment on, other than we did pay a dividend, the normal, or the rate that we have paid over quite a few quarters now, $0.04 per share. And then for the year, or for the period, we end up $309 million in the bank, as Clive mentioned, and so pretty much debt-free. At the end of the quarter, we did draw $50 million on the line, on the revolver in early Q4, as disclosed. And we do expect that we'll be drawing on that line as we go through the significant CapEx buildup for Goose through the next year. And I think that really summarizes everything I wanted to comment about in the results of the operations.
Good. Thanks, Mike. Just, well, maybe a note on Otjikoto, as we said, we're going, we're seeing the end of open-pit mining, but we do have some low-grade stockpiles for the near future, and we've had some encouraging results, potentially, continuing underground mining. Further, we'll know more about that as we keep drilling. But, so there's significant potential to produce beyond when they open pit. And whether it's low-grade stockpiles or whether it's low-grade stockpiles complemented by some underground, better underground grade materials. So just so people are aware of that, we could still be there for a significant amount of time, perhaps more on the 100,000 ounces a year in the future than the 200,000 ounces we're at right now. So we'll see how that develops.
With that, I'll pass it over to Bill Lytle.
Yeah, thanks, Clive. I think a lot of the things I was going to talk about have been hinted at or even talked about a little bit. I just want to provide some more color to some of the issues, and I'll start. Operationally, Mike did a great job explaining everything. I think the key really there is to really highlight that we, as far as Q4, we see everything on track. We're going to have a really good quarter, in particular at Fekola, getting out the bottom of phase six. And at Otjikoto, we're going to have a big quarter as well. So as Mike said, we're on track to meet our guidance. Looking at Fekola Regional a little bit, I just put a little bit of history in place so everyone remembers.
We originally had internally last year come out with a preliminary economic assessment, and then did a feasibility study, which we were presenting to the government when they halted us to kind of take a look at this new mining code and this new local content law. But the key thing is you need to know is that study was done and it was economic. And as part of that, the government actually let us start to build all the infrastructure. So the infrastructure for mining in that area is actually complete. And the reason I tell you that is it's important to understand kind of the process as we go forward. Now that they've got these laws in place, they have to create an implementation decree for both of them.
We were down there, I guess it was a couple of weeks ago, talking to our team down there about the local content and how does that impact what we're doing. And basically, we saw a path forward on how we were going to resolve any outstanding issues on local content. And so right now, what we're waiting for is those implementation decrees to come out, whether it be at the end of this year, or the beginning of next year, when we can sit down with the government. And assuming that those are all finalized, we will be able to quickly submit our documentation based on the new laws, and if it's still economic, which we believe it will be, look at putting this into production.
We probably need a quarter, you know, three months, once, once we get our licenses and our conventions in place. So what we're talking about internally is that we're talking about in the second half of the year. So if you assume kind of Q1, you do all the negotiations, get all your permits in place. Q2, we do all of our pre-stripping and finalize all of our infrastructure. We could be ready in the second half of the year to go. And so that's the way we're looking at that, for the regional stuff. As far as Goose is concerned, we did have a—we had an analyst trip up there not too long ago, and, that went very well.
I think, we're very pleased with the work that's been done up there, and we continue to say that we remain on schedule for that. But if you remember, we always talk about kind of some key areas that had to be done. The camp was done. That opened up in early summer. We had to get 3 major buildings up, that being the mill building, the workshop, and the powerhouse. All of those buildings are now stood up with the concrete. We're busy cladding them, and quite frankly, three-quarters of the mill has been cladded, and we'll have that closed up here in the very near future. So much so, we've moved installation of the mill ahead of schedule. So that is actually going to happen this month. The team's on site.
The cranes have been installed to help us there. And so that's where we're. In regards to the construction of the mill, we're ahead of schedule. So really, what remains outstanding, and is on the critical path, is the logistics. All the procurement for the 2024 construction season was done. Everything was shipped, everything arrived at the MLA, so we're sitting there with more than 3,000 containers ready to be dragged up the winter road. The winter road construction team is on site now. All of the equipment has been run through as far as a maintenance check, and really now we're just waiting for cold weather.
So the plan really is to start in December on that, work our way through the first couple of months, and then start trucking things up the road in early February. So that would give us a nice long window to the first part of May to make sure that we get everything in. So we really remain on track. I guess one of the questions which has been asked a couple of times is the mine plan, the updated mine plan. We've always said that that's it's going to come out at the end of this year, and certainly it will form part of our budget that we released for next year. But we don't see any issues there. That's going kind of as we had expected and kind of forecasted before.
And then I guess maybe the last thing I'll talk about is Gramalote, and Mike hinted a little bit. So Gramalote is a project that we've looked at a couple of times already, but we've always looked at it with a lens that it has to be bigger and it has to be within the confines of the permit that we already had. We now have taken full control of this project on 100% of it, and so it really allows us to take the blinders off or take the directional engineering off and really focus on what is the best design for this project. And so we're looking at a smaller project that a single company could operate, and we're really looking at consolidating some of the infrastructure into some of the basins altogether.
And that would allow us to cut down on some of the high capital costs of resettlement and some of the other issues of the infrastructure that had to be built. So the plan really is to start in Q1 of next year or just after the first year, and to have a PEA out by the middle of the year. But I caution, once again, Clive always says that all PEAs are not the same. The fact of the matter is we have a very good resource there of indicated material. And so at the end of the day, while we'll just be putting - we'll just be laying out the infrastructure, we can move very quickly if it was positive after that. Okay, Clive, anything else you'd like me to talk about?
No, I think that's a good update. So I think with that, we'll open up to questions. Operator?
Thank you. We will now begin the analyst question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press Star, then one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press Star then two. The first question comes from Ovais Habib with Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Thanks, operator. Hi, Clive and B2 team. Congrats on a good quarter. Again, this is despite the rainy season in West Africa, and great to see the development of Goose is progressing well.
... Actually, also great to see costs coming in below guidance as well. So just a couple of questions on me, from me. My first question is regarding the new mining code in Mali. So what I, from what I understand, once the decree has been provided, to B2, B2 then applies for the, for the permit or the exploitation permit, and then kind of moves forward with, some sort of a trucking option. Does that, you know, negotiations that you're having with the, with the Malian government right now, does that, you know, impact how you're looking at the standalone operation as well? Can you provide a little bit more color on that?
Spec that?
Yeah, so I'll have to take it. Of course, Ovais, I mean, everything has to be on the table now. Well, you know, certainly the new 23 code does apply to anything regional, and quite frankly, without the decree, we can't really say which way we're gonna go. But we have to look at both of them within the lens of the new decree, for sure.
What I'm trying to ask, Bill, is if you do get the decree, I mean, and you go forward with the trucking option, is there a chance that that negotiation could continue and then you get a better kind of understanding and better economics for the standalone mill? Or is that kind of set in stone once you get the decree for, let's say, the initial start of Anaconda?
Yeah, so I think conceptually what you're saying is right, but we just don't know at this point, right? The, because the decree hasn't come out, we haven't had the discussion sit down with the government. I mean, Clive is... He hinted at it, but when we were down there just recently talking about local content, we did meet with the Minister of Mines, and the one thing he did say is, he likes what B2 does, and they do want mining in the country. So, you know, how that all plays itself out is yet to be seen, but, you know, that'll all come out of the discussions after the decree.
I think one of the interesting things there, Ovais, was the fact that Bill touched on it, was that even though we were delaying getting the permit because of the mining audit, the new code, et cetera, the government encouraged us to go ahead and build the infrastructure for trucking ore. So most of that infrastructure is in place, ready to go. So therefore, the government was anticipating by encouraging us to go ahead and build the infrastructure, even though we didn't have a permit to actually truck ore, was a signal from the government that they clearly want to see that happen. For sure, obviously, everyone knows that, Mali is looking for increased revenue. Everyone, I mean, difficult times, et cetera, in many ways.
So clearly, gold mining and the 20%, ownership or whatever it's gonna be, more than that, under the new code of the area, of the potential expansion area, not Fekola, but the potential expansion areas of the Fekola complex in the north, are of great interest to the government in terms of increasing revenue. So they should be highly motivated to get a permit in their hands and get mining as soon as possible. So we're encouraged by that, and we'll see how the discussions go.
Okay, sounds good. Thanks. Thanks for the color and from both yourself and Bill. Just you know, switching gears, I guess, to the Goose Project. You know, you guys were doing a lot of you know, exploration work, drilling in the area. When do we expect some results, and how are kind of preliminary results looking so far?
Yeah, I think we touched on that earlier, but we are doing a lot of drilling has been going on. We're starting to get assay results in, and we're gonna have a news release for you next week, giving you detailed updates on what we're seeing from the Goose drilling, including some assays. So we're very encouraged by what we're seeing so far, once again in replicating some of the grades before, but also looking further down plunge and further opportunities. I think you know of our view of the exploration potential there. And of course, as I said earlier, Sabina was understandably, as a single asset company, trying to build, finance and build a mine, did not spend a lot of money on exploration.
It was CAD 5 million a year, and we had over CAD 20 million this year and even more looking forward to next year. So you'll get a good update on that next week.
Okay, sounds good. And then, and then just in terms of the drilling that you're doing, I mean, you guys had, when we were at that site, you guys gave us an update on the underground development that had already been completed. Is there any drilling that's going from, you know, taking place from underground as well, or is it just mostly surface drilling right now?
Well, Victor, Brian, go ahead.
That the plan is certainly first half of the year, the priority is actually to develop towards the ore. So that's the priority. So we'll continue drilling from surface. As soon as we have cubbies opened up for us to drill from underground, we'll be at it. There is already an underground rig on site, so as soon as we can, we'll replace that surface drilling with underground drilling, Ovais.
Sounds good. Thanks, Vic. Clive, that's it for me, and thanks for taking my questions.
Good. Thanks, Ovais.
The next question comes from Anita Soni with CIBC World Markets. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon, guys. I just wanted to go a little bit further into the options for Fekola, and I know you touched upon it a little bit, but could you just sort of reiterate what you think, like, where you think additional ore sources would come from, should you not get your permits for the satellite deposits?
Well, if we don't get any approvals for the satellite deposit, you would have to stay inside of the mining permit. So that's Fekola, that's Cardinal, and that's continuing to develop the Fekola Underground, but we wouldn't see any ore in 2024 there.
Okay. So, like, I know you mentioned that you were looking at ways to mitigate the 18,000 ounces that you had expected this year by accelerating Cardinal. What... I was just wondering if that could extend into 2024 or not?
Absolutely.
... Right, so you do have opportunities. Could you just quantify, like, what Cardinal could potentially add to the fold instead if you had to run?
No, I can't really quantify because we're right in the middle of doing that as far as our budget season, so it'd be a bit premature. But I will tell you that, you know, we are looking at how does Cardinal fit in? Are there additional ways to mine Cardinal at an advanced rate while we wait? All those things are on the table.
Okay. And then I just wanted to ask about Otjikoto. Could you just tell me what the levels of the stockpiles are? I don't think I have that anywhere, so that you'll be processing once the underground and the open pit are mined out in tons and grade, if you have it.
Yeah, I don't have it in tons and grade. If I... Dennis, maybe you know, but now I'm speaking just from memory, and I'll correct myself if it's wrong. But I know we have more than 10 million tons on the stockpile, and I believe it's at 0.4 or point... Yeah, I think 0.4 grams.
Okay. And presumably, you still wanna-
A little bit higher.
Sorry, you'd still wanna run the-
Sorry, do we have another answer to your question? So we don't end up-
Yeah. Sorry, I was just wondering, on the mill, did you want, did you want to continue to run it at the current levels if you were, when you're processing the stockpiles and, so not separately, but for longer term?
Right, before we get to that, Anita, Brian has an answer on the grade, a different answer.
I think by the end of the mine life, Anita, I think they'll be close to 20 million tons of low grade, sort of in the 0.44-0.48 gram per ton range. It's, it's kind of a blend of, of low grade and mid-grade. So that's, that's kind of where we'll be at the end of the, the mine life. So definitely, you know, 6-7 years of, of throughput available there to supplement with underground.
At the end of the open pit, mine life. Can we talk about the mill? I think Anita is asking about what would be-
Yeah. So, so we have, we have looked at would we in fact bring the mill back down, and the answer is we can, but we don't necessarily have to. Right now, the current, the current life of mine shows us continuing to operate in that kind of 2.5-3 million tons per annum and making a, a profit, making a profit. It does require us, as you heard Clive indicate or Mike indicate, we're gonna have to retrench all of the open pit workers, and we're gonna have to bring our costs down. But it is profitable at those grades, and, you know, that, that's what the economics show for the next, through 2031.
Okay. And, can you just remind me what the closure liability on it is, in 10 years from now or 7 years out?
I hope it's less. Well, I guess we've recorded $12 million, but it'll probably—I don't have the exact number, probably—but it'll probably inflate itself up to somewhere more like $20 million by the time we're done.
Okay.
Yeah.
All right, thank you.
Remembering that because the open pit is closing next year, we've already started concurrent reclamation, so a lot of the waste dumps are already under reclamation right now.
Okay. All right, thank you. That's it for my questions.
Okay, thanks to you.
The next question comes from Carey MacRury with Canaccord Genuity. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, guys. Maybe just a follow-up on Fekola. Was the original plan before the delays on the regional for Fekola to kind of be in that 600,000 ounce range next year? I guess my question is, without the regional, should we be expecting production to be down at Fekola, or was that expected to be growth at Fekola?
Yeah, so the answer is yes. Production will have to be less. But if you go back, I think you really need to go back to kind of the technical studies we had when we put out our last technical report. It did show 2024 as a down year, right? So we always projected maybe less than 600, but it will be whatever we're gonna produce and whatever we get in the regional stuff for 2024. So it will be down.
Okay, thank you. Now that you're back in the high grade, can you give a sense of what sort of grades we should be expecting for Q4 at Fekola?
Yeah, it's plus 2 grams, but Carey, you could calculate it if you just looked at what our range was and where we're at, and you could do the calculation because we're saying we're gonna be kind of at the lower end of our range.
Okay, fair enough. Thank you.
Oh, yeah.
The next question comes from Don DeMarco with National Bank Financial. Please go ahead.
All right. Thank you, operator, and good morning, Clive and team. Maybe we'll start off with Goose. Bill, you, you talked about the ice road, and so the ice road is gonna start in early September. You're waiting for it to be cold enough. Can you give us an idea of what specifically, what kind of temperatures or sustained temperatures you're looking for before you can start?
No, what I can tell you is that we're looking for ice thicknesses, right? So basically, I think, once again, I hear up there, you wanna start out with, like, a meter thick of ice, then you can start dragging some of your containers up. And then as you get, as it continues to freeze, it gets to sometimes in excess of two meters. That's when you can bring your heavier loads up. And you said September, but it's actually, we'll probably start in December on the tundra, which freezes first, and work our way out towards the water sources.
Okay. So, I mean, it sounds like the team is ready to go right now on site, and so you're just basically measuring ice thicknesses or kind of waiting for the sort of green light to go ahead? You said you're targeting early December, just to clarify?
... Yeah, well, that's right. So basically, the team will be put into place early December, that they've obviously got to make sure that all the equipment is operating. As I said, we've already done a full maintenance on it, but we've got to identify, right now we're in the process of identifying which containers are going to come up first, you know, loads, weights, all that stuff is happening at MLA right now. So that's kind of the early stuff we're working on right now.
Okay. And the total distance of the road is about 163 km. If you build that over two two months, 60 days, I guess your target is roughly 3 km per day, but you're, you're building it from maybe three different fronts, right from the middle, and then from both endpoints. Is that it?
Yeah, that's correct. And the key really is, remember, we're gonna do the sea ice last, and so that's really where I think there's, you know, 20 or 30 kilometers of sea ice, maybe 40, if I remember correctly. That's really the key stuff that has to freeze up thick enough before we can go.
Okay, great. Maybe just shifting then to the questions on Fekola have been answered, but on Calibre, can you share what your strategic intentions are with this, with your 24% share in this? I mean, I see from the financials, AISC's still attractive. It's running around $1,200 an ounce. But what are your thoughts, medium or longer term with Calibre?
Yeah, and those guys have, you know, done a good job. I think it was a great deal that everybody won. You know, our Nicaraguan employees from the B2 times stayed almost completely in place. And Calibre's got some good technical people. They've done a good job of what they've done, and they continue to grow their production profile. So we're happy shareholders, and they're good. They're good guys, old friends. They're doing a good job. We're happy with our investment.
And as they go forward, I've always said to the Calibre guys, if you are going in, whatever you're doing going forward, as things go along, looking for to bring another shareholder in, we would consider, you know, selling a portion of our position, but we're not in any rush to do that, and we're not. We'll work with them if that were to come about. We like what they're doing, and we're happy to be shareholders.
Okay, great. Well, thanks for that, and good luck with the rest of the year. That's all for me. Take care.
Thanks, Don. Sure, thank you.
This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Clive Johnson for any closing remarks. Please go ahead.
Okay. Thanks all, and for your participation and your good questions. We look forward to continuing to update you. As I said, next, the next thing up in terms of news would be the update on exploration in Back River, including Goose and George . Thanks for your attention.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.