Hello, and welcome to Virtual Investor Conferences. On behalf of OTC Markets, we are very pleased you've joined us for our Two-Day Precious Metals and Critical Minerals Conference. The next presentation is from Liberty Gold. Please note you may submit questions for the presenter at any time. 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.
Thanks very much, Lily, and my thanks to the OTC for the opportunity to present again at this virtual conference. We were here earlier on this year and delighted to be back to give an update on where things are moving with Liberty. In my career, I've had the privilege of being involved in the build of two mines, a copper mine in Chile and a silver, lead, zinc mine in Argentina. Five years ago, when I got the opportunity to join Liberty, in seeing Black Pine as it was then five years ago, it became very clear to me that I had in that an opportunity to build a third mine, but to build a premier gold mine in the Great Basin in the U.S., and that's why I'm here.
I hope that those listening, the OTCQX Investors and those online, and I thank you for the time, I hope you'll take away from this what does it look like when you get a focused, disciplined team moving through the development process into ultimately construction and operations of a premier asset. Next slide, please. I will be making forward-looking statements in this presentation, so please read those cautionary notes. What are the highlights of the company? We have a large-scale, very buildable gold asset in the Black Pine deposit located in southern Idaho.
The U.S. remains a Tier 1 jurisdiction. It has very well-established permitting structures. It has a very well-established legal framework. It has a very long history of mining, and it's a jurisdiction that we're delighted to be involved with. The scale that we see in Black Pine is just touching 5 million ounces in an indicated resource. That's all in oxide gold. We did a pre-feasibility study on this deposit in 2024, and you can see the very high-level results on the right-hand side there. This is clearly a very economic investment. Very nice after-tax CAD NPV, and a significant asset in the 183,000 ounces a year of gold production per year in those first five years.
That was the basis on which we decided that we wanted to take this through the process and migrate the company from a very successful explorer discoverer to what we anticipate will be a very successful developer producer. We're focused on Black Pine, we're in permitting, and we're moving this forward. Next, please. What's happening right now? We are in feasibility. We are well advanced with the feasibility study. 2025 was all of the drilling to generate a resource model to submit to the feasibility process. We published that early in 2026, and we've been doing the mine planning, the engineering work, the metallurgical work as feasibility, and we are on track to release our feasibility study in Q4 of this year.
Parallel with the whole engineering piece, we actually entered federal permitting in January of 2025 when we submitted what's called the Draft Mine Plan of Operations. We entered formally into the EIS process in April of this year when we received the Notice of Intent. That's the formal registration of the project as a formal federal project. We received that in April, and we now have, having applied for and received FAST-41 coverage, we have a new schedule that was also published in March, which gives us a target final Record of Decision in January 2028, directly after which construction can commence, and then production late 2028 and into 2029.
I'll talk in some detail about that going forward. We did complete this year the sale of all of our non-core assets. In previous years, we exited some holdings that we had in Turkey. That left us with some ground in southern Utah, the Goldstrike deposit, and we also held some ground around a gallium germanium project in southern Utah. We divested both of those in the first half of this year, putting significant cash resources into the company, and that's underpinning the financial P&L, financial surety of the company to take us through this development stage. Next one please, Susie. What does a large oxide gold project look like? Well, it's low capital intensity. You don't need a lot of capital to build a heap leach operation. They're very simple.
It's a leach pad, a processing plant, and an open-pit mine. We spent a lot of time during the exploration process securing water rights, and we have 100% of the water rights that we need to run this mine. It's a previously producing site, and probably in the middle there, you can see what would be called a spoil pile or a waste dump center of that image. There's been previous site disturbance. What we're going to do is somewhat simply restart that operation, expand the old pits, build a new processing facility, but really re-permit that mine in exactly the way it was permitted in the 1990s when it was operated.
You can see from this image that this is a dry, arid part of the world. There's no surface streams, rivers, or lakes. So we don't have surface water disturbance, no aquatic species. The rock is fully oxidized, so we don't have any acid mine drainage potential. Of course, because it's a previously disturbed site, we've got infrastructure in place, power lines and roads, which make access very simple.
We started as a company during that exploration stage, and we picked this project up in 2016. So we've been on site here for 8+ years. We have, in that time, completed four environmental assessments. So we have a comprehensive environmental baseline of this part of the world and significant interaction with the permitting authorities and the regulators, both state and federal, to allow us to conduct the exploration stage. So it's a logical step now to move into the mine permitting stage. We have strong support from the local community. We've been engaging with those communities since we started in 2016.
We're building those relationships and building social license to allow us to move forward in a meaningful way during that permitting process. Next slide, please, Susie. As I mentioned in a previous slide, this is a summary of the October 24. It was a significant mine life, 17 years. As I mentioned, 183,000 ounce a year producer, which is a significant-sized producer. Cash costs were very good at that time, CAD 1,400 an ounce for life of mine average for a very modest, just over CAD 300 million capital build. You can see the economics in that top line in the orange boxes at CAD 3,500 gold, just over a year payback, triple-digit IRR, and a CAD 2.4 billion after-tax NPV5. A very attractive project at the pre-fee stage.
The other, I think, important thing in this slide is if you look at those same metrics at CAD 2,000 gold, you still get a very attractive project. Half a billion CAD NPV, 32% IRR. That illustrates very nicely that this is a project that has strong economics against a wide range of gold prices. The deposit shows this great financial talk. As gold price rises, you get significant uplift in the value proposition. That's a characteristic of these large, lower-grade oxide gold systems and a characteristic that I think gets exploited significantly as these come into production. Next slide, please, Susie. I mentioned that we did a bunch of feasibility drilling in 2025. Well, the outcome of that was an increase of some 700,000 ounces into indicated, taking us to just under 5 million ounces, 4.88 in indicated.
That's the mineral resource that will underpin the reserve. Obviously, we haven't published a reserve yet because that's an output of the feasibility study. You will see that in our mind, we're targeting something around 4 million ounces. We have an additional 1 million ounces in inferred, which won't make it into the reserve. Clearly, that's upside opportunity defined as a resource in addition to blue sky exploration potential that we see in and around the current deposit. Very exciting, very solid resource, lots of upside growth potential. Next slide, please. What are we doing? Well, we're still drilling. We're still back in the field. 2026, a 40,000-meter drill program. This is really broken down into three core areas. First of all, most importantly in blue, you can see some very tightly spaced drilling.
This is pre-production drilling in the areas that we've identified that have a high chance of being mined in the first two to three years of the operation. We're drilling infill drilling to upgrade from indicated to measured resource, and that really de-risks that ore supply, the oxide gold ore supply in those early years. It gives us more detailed information about grade and tonnes. It gives us some good information about the specific metallurgical response and really allows us to tune the mine operation in those early years, underpinning metal delivery confidence in that payback period.
In yellow and orange, that is what we call compliance drilling. We have to drill under areas of infrastructure to demonstrate whether we do or don't have mineral resources, and whether they would be impacted by locating heaps and rock storage facilities on them. That drilling is complete.
The yellow is a detailed drill grid on old historic surface rock storage facilities, waste dumps as they tend to be referred to. Those are being drilled out not only for the grade that they have, and we know today that they are ore, so we would feed those to the plant, but also as a possible overliner material to use as that technical cushion for the heap as we build it. Dual purpose there. In green, we've got the sort of mineral resource step out clean up. As you drill these resources, you tend to get some sort of raggedy edges of the resource model, because controlling drill geometry can be a little tricky. We're doing a tidy up and a simple step-out expansion to put some more resource into the indicated category.
That resource model, that drilling, we're about halfway through now. We'll start to see drill results coming out in the second half of the year. This will feed an update of the resource model, which will come out early in 2027. That'll be the basis for the detailed engineering work, which ultimately will define what we build and the final metal production schedule for the first five years. Next, please. A brief look at the site. You can see on the right-hand side of this image, that big blue line, that's the Interstate I-84. We are two hours north of Salt Lake City, about an hour south of Burley. Literally, seven or eight kilometers off that road, so fantastic access. You could see the mine site from the road. We're going to be a drive-in drive-out site, so no camp.
A simple, very nicely located in a very stable location, the heap leach facility, flat line, gently sloping to the east. A process facility, which is what's called an ADR plant. That's a very well-known and very well-established technology. Site services is a truck shop and some buildings, and that's about it. We have a power line already to site that's already energized, so we just need to draw from that. In gray on the left-hand side, you can see those are the open pits that we will be excavating. In green, north and south, those rock storage facilities.
A very simple, very straightforward, very well-known conventional mine. Finally to point out here in blue, center right, water wells. Those wells are currently drilled and operating, so they're pumping. They are supplying agricultural use, irrigation farms. We have a deal with the local farmers.
We take that water out of agricultural use, re-task it to mining, and when we're finished, the water gets returned to the farmers. We compensate the farmers for their loss of revenue. Net result, no new water draw from the basin, which is a critical social license piece in this area where water resources are very, very valued, and our stewardship of them is extremely important. Next slide, please. The permitting piece. Obviously, permitting remains a significant project risk, and we've gone a very long way down the road, in terms of understanding that risk and mitigating, putting strategies in place to mitigate the risk associated with that permitting schedule. Principally, we applied for and were awarded FAST-41 covered project status. We got that in January.
FAST-41, as many may know, is a sort of federal group that was put in place by this administration with a very strong mandate to advance and support large projects through this NEPA process. We've been very impressed with the interaction with that group. Once we got approved to join that agency, there was a 60-day schedule renegotiation process, which we went through, and at the end of March, our new schedule, the federally approved schedule, was published on the federal permitting dashboard, and that's available to anybody under the Black Pine Project, I would encourage people to go and have a look at that. We entered the formal NEPA process in April this year once the Notice of Intent was published, we're now working diligently through the Draft EIS process.
I think one of the most important pieces during that FAST-41 process was the State of Idaho took the bold decision to align its permitting framework with the federal agencies. They came out, when we had a sort of a joint session between the federal agencies, FAST-41, and the state process. Net result was on that federal permitting dashboard, you will see state permitting processes side by side with federal permitting process, all of those arriving at the same endpoint, and we could see what that is in the next slide. This was the first time that a state had formally aligned itself to a federal permitting process. Next slide, please, Susie. Just go to the next slide, please, I'll come back to this one.
So this is the current schedule. As I said, this is on the Permitting Council website. It gives us a definitive pathway from today through the permitting process to a final Record of Decision. That's that center bar which says federal permitting. Record of Decision final. The date is January the 5th. That is the date we expect to receive our final Record of Decision. Pretty soon thereafter, subject to completing some bonding requirements and receiving a notice to proceed, we would start construction.
We anticipate construction to be one season, we see the first gold pour. So the first ounces coming out of the rock late in Q4, commercial production sometime in 2029. We're still working on that final timeframe right now, and that will come out when feasibility comes out. You can see to my previous point on that line, which says state permitting, those state permits and approvals are absolutely in lockstep with the federal permitting process.
Those are specifically what's called a cyanidation permit. Sorry, permit to use cyanide in the State of Idaho, the air quality permit, along with reclamation and closure approvals. Then bonding. We have a very well experienced permitting team. We have four people in the organization that are driving the relationship with both the federal agencies located in Idaho, state agencies, obviously in Idaho, relationships with Washington and the congressional delegation. We maintain those. I think we've found very positive support right across the spectrum. If we go to the previous slide, Susie, please, just to give you a sense of what the support is. Obviously, Governor Little has been very supportive. He was driving that process to align the state agencies with the federal agencies.
The congressional delegation, James Risch and Mike Simpson, strongly supportive of economic development in the southern part of Idaho and can't say too many good things about Emily Domenech at the Permitting Council. Extremely switched on, clearly driven to support development in the U.S., and it's a pleasure to interact with her. Next slide, please, Susie, and then follow after that. With a technical process that takes us through to detailed engineering in 2027 and construction in 2028 running parallel to the permitting process, which meets up with that final Record of Decision in January 2028. What does the cash position look like for the company? I'm delighted to tell you that it's extremely strong. We have a good balance sheet. $37 million U.S. cash on hand at the end of Q1.
As a result of the sale process for Goldstrike and the critical metals, we have CAD 38 million inflows of cash over the next 16 months. Between those two amounts, we are fully funded to take us through all of the engineering piece, early long lead acquisitions to fund the corporate, all of the drilling that we need to do to get us to a final investment decision in line with that final permitting decision at the late in 2027, early in 2028. Just under 550 million shares outstanding, just under 600 in total. We do have a strong strategic partner in Centerra Gold. They came in in September 2025 for a 9.9% stake. We've had long-term support from significant institutions, VanEck, Franklin, to name two, Wheaton as well, and a strong institutional ownership, just over 40%.
Wheaton obviously is in the register, and they own the only royalty that there is on Black Pine at a 0.5%, and we have a 50% buyback on that royalty. All of the financial modeling for this asset for Black Pine is done at a 0.25% royalty. That is quite unique in the U.S. There are many assets have a long history of transaction and sort of a royalty build on them. 2%-9% as a range is not uncommon for gold assets in the U.S., and we are very fortunate to have that low royalty. It gives us a lot of flexibility as we start to think about project financing activities in concert with the release of that feasibility study in early Q4 this year.
Strong balance sheet, good coverage, to my final slide here, what's going on here at Liberty Gold? We believe we're a compelling gold development story. We believe we're a compelling investment opportunity. The producers continue to enjoy solid and robust gold prices, despite the fact gold has come off a little since the beginning of the year, it seems it's remaining strong. The fundamentals for gold are strong. Central bank buying remains very positive.
I think that's going to underpin a strong gold price. Producers are going to want to grow by organic investment, also by acquiring assets. Credible developers with large-scale assets are a relatively rare commodity, we believe we're a premier in that field. We have scale, 5 million ounces in indicated. We have a high-quality asset in terms of its metallurgy and its leaching process. We've done some very solid engineering, and we've done the work as though we were an owner.
We own the feasibility study, and we own the outcome because we're going to build it. The team I've put together has a strong track record of operating and building mines, and strong experience in leaching. We have great institutional support from our shareholders. We have a clear pathway to development, a feasibility study coming out in Q4, a strong and defined permitting schedule. I think that's going to take us through very nicely the next 18 months to a positive investment decision, and Liberty Gold has a very clear window through to becoming a metal producer late in 2028. Thank you for your time. I appreciate you listening, and I'm happy to take any questions.
Thanks very much, Jon. We've got a series of questions from Investors in the audience, and one of them about the feasibility study. Investors often view the feasibility study as the end goal, but from your perspective, where does that fit into the overall development timeline, and what milestones follow immediately after it's completed?
We see the feasibility study as a point in time. It describes the project based on the resource and obviously what you know, nearing to give you a reasonably defined cost estimate. Really the purpose of the feasibility study is to create a document that is good enough to represent the economic outcome to let you go and raise finance to build it. For me, it's a bit like you finish high school, you get your exam results. The purpose of those exam results is, for many people, is to get to university, for others, it's to move on. In our case, university is detailed engineering. Thing which will happen in 2027 is actually what ends up generating an engineering drawing that's issued for construction.
You actually build that detailed engineering piece, and the idea is that feasibility study, you've answered a number of questions in feasibility study, and then simply you engineer those and decide the fine details in detailed engineering.
Fantastic. Specifically about Black Pine, what gives Black Pine an edge versus other gold developers competing for capital at this moment?
I think a couple of things. First of all, we are a run-of-mine heap leach operation. That means no crushing. Very simple process, drill, blast, load, haul, open pit mine. You dump the rock on the leach pad, and you flatten it off and leach it directly. We don't have the operating complexity of crushing, and we don't have the capital or operating costs. The costs are somewhere in the order of $2 US a ton, significantly lower than anyone else. Partly as a result of that, the overall capital cost to build the project is very modest, CAD 327 million at pre-feasibility. That will rise in feasibility, because obviously we're two years along. It's a modest amount of money to build a significant gold producer up towards the 200,000 ounces a year.
I think the other point here is we have a good life. We have a 17-year mine life. That's a long period of time to go through multiple gold cycles and to provide enough time from a debt perspective to allow you to amortize any debt that you take on to build it. It's a very favorable situation to be in, and we've had a number of very positive interactions with the financing institutions over the last five years as we get to this point, and those interactions will start to concrete as we get past feasibility.
Fantastic. Jon, I think we're just at the end of our presentation here, to let the audience members know, we'll be able to respond directly to questions and just any final comment that you have for the audience.
I'd like to thank them for their time. I encourage them to have a look at our website, libertygold.ca, and also to go onto the Federal Permitting Improvement Steering Council website to look at our permitting schedule. I think we have an exciting project, and I'm delighted to have had the opportunity to present it on the OTC platform today. Thank you, everybody.
Thanks. Thanks to the OTCQX.