Hello, welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we are very pleased you've joined us for the second day of our Precious Metals and Critical Minerals Conference. The next presentation is from Liberty Gold. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter in the box to the left of the slides. You can also view a company's availability for one-on-one meetings by clicking Book a Meeting. At this point, I am very pleased to welcome Jon Gilligan, President, Chief Executive Officer, and Director of Liberty Gold, which trades on the OTCQX Best Market under the symbol LGDTF, and on TSX under the symbol LGD. Welcome back, Jon.
Lily, thank you very much indeed. I really appreciate the opportunity to come back and present to the OTC conference. I think the last time I did this was in February this year, wow, the whole market and the world has been on a rollercoaster ride in those very few months. It's certainly true for Liberty as well. Next slide, please, Susie. I will be making forward-looking statements. These are the particular cautionary notes. I'm very excited to give you everyone here attending the call an update on where we're at with Liberty. I think the principal news in the last this year was we really cleaned up the Liberty portfolio.
We were able to execute on the transaction with Heliostar to divest of the Goldstrike project. We also divested of our critical minerals assets in Utah to Blue Moon. Most importantly of all, we have moved efficiently through the U.S. permitting process for Blackpine, and we're now in the NEPA process, expecting a formal decision on the project in under two years. Very exciting times for Liberty. We have a large resource in our Blackpine deposit in southern Idaho. Great economics from the pre-feasibility study, and we are moving very efficiently through feasibility to get us to a construction decision in late 2027 for construction in 2028. We really like the U.S. We are a very strong U.S. gold story. Idaho is a fantastic place to do business.
Strong support from the state for the rebirth of the mining industry, or the relaunch perhaps of the mining industry in Idaho. They have a long history of silver mining in the north part of the state, phosphate mining in the east. With the approval of Perpetua, recent approval last year, with other projects on the go, DeLamar from Integra and Beartrack-Arnett from Revival. Blackpine sits in a suite of interesting development projects in Idaho, and we're very excited to be working with the state agencies to bring this project forward. Next slide, please. This is the team. We did bring on a new director last year, Lauren Roberts.
He is an ex-Chief Executive Chief Operating Officer of Hecla and Kinross, brings a lot of operating experience to the team. We've consolidated our management team. We have a strong technical group and a strong permitting team. We have all of the in-house capacity we need to advance Blackpine through the feasibility, through detail engineering into construction. With the sale of Goldstrike to Heliostar, which closed last month, that was a $72.5 million deal at $17 cash and $2.5 in stock, with staged payments. You can see those payments, roughly 50% of those payments happen in the next 18 months, then the rest of the money is weighted on technical milestones.
We also have warrants that are in the money at $0.45 that expire this month. We're seeing inflow from that, given our share price is $1. We saw $1.40 today. I think it says $1.49 in late, we anticipate that those warrants will be in the money. We had cash on hand as of April, $35 million in the treasury. We're expecting over the next 18 months to put another approximate $40 million into our treasury.
We are fully funded to take us through the next two, three years into construction of Blackpine, which is a, I think, a very strong position for the company to be in and really sets us apart, I think, from our peers. We have strong institutional ownership, 41%, just under 42%. Certainly long-term players that many of you here will be familiar with. Principal shareholders there are VanEck and Franklin. Then we have a number of sort of significant players such as Amati, Konwave, Commodity Capital, Ixios, Aegis, Wheaton Precious Metals, and RCF. We own just under 4% and they hold the only royalty that there is on Blackpine, which is a 0.5% royalty. We have a 50% buyback right on that royalty.
All of the economics in the project are calculated with a 0.25% royalty, which puts us in a very enviable position relative to many assets in the U.S. in particular, have, you know, royalty burdens from 2%-10%. Very strong position. Long-term, long-term analyst coverage, we have a great relationship with our analysts and we feel that they do a very good job representing the scale and nature of Blackpine. I think the average price forecast for the analyst is something in the order of $3.60 against a $1.50 share price. The analysts are bullish about Blackpine and about Liberty Gold. Where is Blackpine?
You can see right in the center of the screen, Blackpine is right on the southern border of Idaho, just adjacent to Utah. It's a two-hour drive from Salt Lake City, on a very nice highway freeway, the I-84. Literally you can see Blackpine from the freeway. It's in a very favorable position. This is not the northern part of Idaho that one might imagine with trees and forests and fish rivers. This is essentially Nevada from a landscape point of view, very dry, arid region, no surface water. I think an ideal place to reopen a mine. It was a previously producing site, and we are proposing to mine in exactly the same way and process in exactly the same way as it was operated in the 90s by Pegasus.
Key issues this year or key activists this year, 2026, you're going to see the feasibility study published early in Q4. We are well advanced with that. We published the feasibility mineral resource in February, and that formed the basis of the mine planning work, which is largely complete now, and we're into process design quotes and the sort of financial evaluation. We consider ourselves well on target to get to that Q4 release of feasibility. We did register and were accepted as a FAST-41 covered project. That is the permitting accelerator agency in the U.S. that acts as a sort of a concierge service to projects, to significant projects, and guides those projects through the federal process.
We had a project schedule renegotiation through the aegis of the FAST-41 team to get to March 20 of this year when we published our new schedule. That has a record of decision. This is the federal schedule, record of decision scheduled for January 28, which then would allow us to begin construction very soon after that. I did mention that we divested of Golds trike this year and put some significant funds into treasury, and that's really underpinned the financial strength of the company going forward. Next one, please. What do you get for Blackpine?
Blackpine, we're talking oxide gold, so near surface oxidized gold mineralization that is open pitable within, in this case, within 400 m of the surface, and is processed through heap leaching, which is a very simple low capital intensity leaching. In our case, it is run of mine, which means that we don't need to crush the rock before we leach it. It's a simple drill blast load haul, dump onto the heap, the impermeable plastic, and then extract the gold from that material. No tailings dams, no mills, no grinding, no crushing. Very simple process, easy to build and very accessible for a company of our scale. Because it was the previously producing site, there's already power to the front gate. There are roads to the front gate.
As you can see from that picture, this is a fairly dry area, no surface water. In fact, all of our pits are operating above the water table. We have no pit lakes, no pit depressurization or no pit dewatering, which from a geochemical point of view and from an environmental impact point of view is a very favorable outcome. We do have all the water rights secured that we need to start the project. As you will see in a moment, this is a relatively low capital entry project. We are delighted to be working to be located in Idaho and working with our engaged local communities. We have some great interaction with those folk. These are the results from the pre-feasibility study, which was published in October 24.
You can see we're looking at a 17-year mine life. This is a long-lived asset producing over 2 million oz of gold with nice gold production in the early years, 183,000 oz a year for the first five years at a very competitive cost of just over $1,200 all-in sustaining. This is from a June 2024 cost base. We're in the process, obviously, of updating and revising that in the feasibility right now. The initial capital at that time came in just over $300 million, and payback at $2,000 gold, which in back in sort of July 2024 seemed to be a pretty good price for gold. A three-year payback, 32% IRR, and just over half a billion dollar NPV.
You know, just under 2-to-1 NPV to cash. We felt that was a fairly strong project at the time, and that justified us in 2025 executing on a large drill program to expand the resource to go to feasibility and then ultimately pursue feasibility in 2026, which is exactly where we're at. What's feasibility going to look like? Just go back one, Susie. Thank you. Gold today, I think, is at $4,700. We are looking probably at a base case price for feasibility in the next sort of three to four months in the $3,000-$3,500, I would expect we'd be looking at, depending obviously what happens in the next month or so. You could see at pre-feasibility, the economics were just under $2 billion at $3,000 gold.
We see some pressure on capital, and we would expect that capital figure to rise in going into feasibility. Same with the operating costs. We're seeing stress on labor, stress on some construction materials. In fact, we're executing on a long lead early order right now in anticipation of seeing some pressure in the markets for availability. Feasibility is going to look a lot like the $3,000, at least at $3,000 numbers that you see here for feasibility. For pre-feasibility, we will see some increase in initial capital and increase in operating costs, but we're targeting the 200,000 oz a year metal production, and I think that will give us a significant improvement in feasibility relative to pre-feas. Next one, please.
This is an overview of where we're at. We did, as I mentioned, become a covered project under FAST-41. Just to give you context about that, there are only four gold mining projects in the U.S. under FAST-41 covered status, which is, as I said, the full concierge service where the FAST-41 team actively manage the process. They were very good to work with through that schedule renegotiation. We also received through the U.S. Forest Service, who is the lead agency, on notice early April, that then put us into the formal NEPA process, which is writing the EIS document. We've completed our public scoping period.
That finished at the end of April, we're now drafting that EIS with our independent EIS contractor, Stantec, who is working with us for the forest and with us to write that document. We had one really big win here. The state, Idaho state, made the visionary decision to align the state permitting process with the federal permitting process under that FAST-41. You're able to Everyone, it's open to the public, is able to go on to the permitting council website, which shows the timelines for all of the projects that are under the FAST-41 auspices. You will see under Blackpine that there are lines for the federal process, and there are lines for the state's process as well.
The state have agreed that they will have their permits available at the same schedule that we have for the federal process. Here you can see the timeline. 2026, Notice of Intent was published on the Federal Register. That was in the end of March, early April. Public scoping is complete. We expect to see the draft environmental impact statement available in early Q1 next year. Targeting the final environmental impact statement in Q4 for a record of decision, a final record of decision in January 2028. That allows us to make a project construction decision, a final investment decision late in 2027 or very early in 2028, which gives us the window for construction in 2028 and first metal production. First gold pour is targeted in December 2028. We are under three years from metal.
This is what the project looks like. It is a very simple layout. You can see on the right-hand side of the screen, I-84. That's the freeway that two hours to the south is Salt Lake, and 1 hour to the north is Burley. A single large heap, in a very gently sloping plane of sight, so very favorable from a stability point of view on the heap. You could see a power line in yellow that's already there that goes to site. We don't have to construct that. It's energized. We simply pull. The water wells in blue center right exist and are currently pumping. They are providing water to agricultural use. We've purchased or we have purchased the right to use that water, and we repurpose the water for the mine.
When we are finished mining and we've rehabilitated the site, the water gets returned to agricultural use. No new water on the basin or net draw on the basin from mining activities, which is a very important aspect of this project. I think has been very strongly supported by the local communities. Two large open pits, Discovery and Rangef ront. You could see two surface rock storage facilities. Simple process facility at the base of the heap, then site services is simply a truck shop. This is not a complicated project. Underpinning it all, next slide, please, is the mineral resource. This was published in, I think it was February we actually published it, early February.
Just over 500 million tons of material for just under 5 million oz of gold and resource. What is driving the economics of this project is the higher grade material. That's the material that you can see in red and purple in the image. At a 0.5 cutoff, we have 1 g, 60 million tons at a gram, so just under 2 million oz of gold at a gram. That material is layered in discrete mineral zones, very nicely modeled and modelable mineral zones within a carbonate rock sequence that we're mining, straightforward to mine. We think this high grade is surrounded by a very large mass of lower grade material which comes along free for the ride.
We end up with a very competitive, very low strip ratio, in the between one and 1.5, which I think really drives the economics. Next one, please, Susie. This is where we are at today. We have embarked upon a drill program. We have 3 drills drilling in the field right now. We're doing some technical work really for production. We're doing some compliance work around condemnation drilling to meet with the standards required for that specific activity. We are doing some infill drilling in the early years of production so that we de-risk the mineral supply or the ore supply in those early years during payback, which is a very prudent thing to do.
We do now have, as a result of the Golds trike sale and with money in the treasury, we do now have plans to start some additional drilling in the blue areas. This would be resource extension and step out drilling. We have a number of significant targets on this site. It's by no means fully drilled out. Our current permitted area, which is the yellow and black line, is about 40 sq km , of which we've really drilled in earnest about 30. There's another 10 sq km in that area that we need to evaluate. Outside of that, there's another 30 sq km of our property package that we haven't even touched yet. There is a longer term exploration story here. This is going to be a long-lived asset.
Engineering is progressing very nicely along the feasibility schedule. We do have some significant metallurgical test work that is just completing right now, some large diameter columns, which will validate or we anticipate will validate the run of mine heap leaching process and look for that to be released sometime in the next quarters. Engineering is advancing strongly using M3, which is a well-known U.S. engineering firm that's got a lot of experience designing and building heap leach operations in the U.S. Next one, please. In summary, this is where we're at for Blackpine. We have a very clearly defined path from today through to a permit decision in early January 2028.
We have a clear technical path through feasibility into detailed engineering, into a construction decision, a final definitive cost estimate and a construction decision in late 2027, then construction and first metal in December 2028. We are a focused company. We have the people in place to get this done. We have sufficient funding, fully funded in treasury to take us through to the January 2028 decision. Our next step is to move through project financing to generate Project finance to build this. It's an exciting time for the company, and I thank you all for your time to hear about Liberty Gold.
Thanks very much, Jon. That was great. Just before we get into the questions, we've received a number of additional questions that we may not be able to get to in this last five minutes. For those who have asked questions, please feel free to reach out to me directly, Susie Bell, and we'd be very happy to follow up after the presentation. Jon, just starting at the top, one of the questions was about now that we're fully focused on Blackpine, where does the incremental capital have the greatest impact on de-risking and advancing the project?
The, I think from a, from a technical point of view, the infill drilling in the early, the first three years of production is very high value capital spend. It really gives us a very clear idea of not only the gold flow or the grade flow in those early years. It also gives us full coverage on any on any grade control issues that we may run into and any structural issues. It really de-risks those early mining years while we're in payback. I think that's probably from a sort of getting the mine started, that's the key de-risk. I think secondly, spending capital on step out and peripheral resource growth drilling, I think is very good value.
There are very, very few of the 3,000 holes that have been drilled in this deposit that do not have gold above 0.1 g in them. This is a very large system. We understand quite well, the core of the system, but we don't really understand what's out there beyond that. I think demonstrating that this mine has a significant life exists, I think is very valuable use of capital. I'd guide listeners to the Marigold Mine, which I tend to use this as a good analog for Blackpine. Marigold started in 1989 with a nine-year mine life, has produced every year since, and still has a nine-year mine life. It's been that incremental drilling that's demonstrated that longer term asset, and Blackpine is exactly that type of asset.
Excellent. Now a question more focused on permitting. Given the our acceptance into the FAST-41 permitting process and a record of decision in early 2020, how much comfort do you think that that gives potential strategic or project finance partners, if you can address that question?
I think in the U.S. today, the FAST-41 is the process that you can enroll to give you, to provide comfort on permitting timelines. It is the mechanism put in place by the current administration. Actually, it comes from the first of this administration. Our interaction with them and the process they follow, I think has been very rigorous. Projects that have gone through it have benefited significantly in timeline from that interaction. I think it is a significant de-risking step. I think it's seen as such by corporates. I think in terms of project finance, I think it gives future potential finances some level of surety that we will get our project permits in the timeline that we say.
It's a government schedule, not ours. I think the critical piece for me, I think where we're going to see some positive answers is the state aligning with that process. Typically, states don't do that, there are lots of examples where one receives federal permits but not state permits. That process, those two processes have been out of phase in many projects. Ours would be the first one where they're in lockstep, I think that is a significant de-risking step and seen as such.
Gotcha. Thank you. Just probably our last question here as we're heading down to the last minute. About the team. As Liberty Gold advances Blackpine, how is the organization and leadership team aligned today to deliver disciplined development stage execution under your leadership?
Fantastic question. Thank you very much. We have the technical team. We have four people in our technical team who are doing the feasibility study. We have four doing permitting. We have very strong, very experienced in-house team that's working on those two key aspects. As we move into detailed engineering, which will start in the fourth quarter of this year, we will need to build the owner's team to do that. We're going to need a construction manager. We're going to need a site general manager, the site team. Those individuals, we have a very clearly prescribed ramp-up schedule, for want of a better word, in key positions in the company over the next 18 months.
We're out in the market right now looking for those positions. We have strong contacts and the team is very experienced, and therefore, you know, we're able to leverage our networks to source high-quality individuals to bring into the company. I think we've been very successful doing that to date, and I'm confident that we will be able to grow this team over the next 12 months into a very capable and very solid engineering, construction, and execution team.
Okay. Thanks, Jon. I guess we're wrapping up here. Just wanna let all investors know who have asked questions, we'll be able to reach out to them, touch with our progress. Thanks so much, everyone.
Thanks so much, everyone. Take care.