With Paulson & Co, the transaction is very simple. For $1 billion, we teamed up with John Paulson's companies to buy Barrick out of the Donlin Gold project. With the new ownership structure, NovaGold is now the 60% owner and 40% is owned by Paulson & Co. Yeah, this really has been an important transaction for NovaGold in many ways for the last couple of years. We were partners with Barrick and clearly their priorities shifted in the last few years. As they were less focused on Donlin and more focused on copper assets, NovaGold's share price languished. Not many years ago, we were a $4 billion market cap company. In the absence of a path forward for Donlin, we drifted down to about a $1 billion market cap.
Melanie and I would often meet with investors and one of the most common questions they would ask is they always say, hey, that's great. The project looks good, but where is Barrick? That issue is now off the table. You look at this chart and comparing NovaGold's underperformance to GDXJ. We used to be one of the better performing development stories until we languished the last few years because we were unable to provide a path forward. Now that we have that path forward, I think the company stock is certainly in a position to respond well. This is another fairly subtle way of presenting the same basic data. Our market cap drifted down because of lack of interest in our partner. We bounced along about a $1 billion market cap.
I think today, as we're now a few weeks past the close of the transaction, NovaGold's market cap has rebounded to about $1.7 billion. Okay. You know, this is just really a snapshot of it, you know, that there is no magic in arriving at a billion dollar cost from Barrick. That was at the time our market capitalization. So we paid $200 million, Paulson paid $800 million. In order to fund this, we completed public offering of 47 million shares and also a private placement. And then we had the green shoe filled. We had great response to our offering. It was well oversubscribed. We've used the proceeds to pay Barrick and now we're, and also to top up our treasury, we now have sufficient funding on hand to move Donlin through the feasibility stage. Okay. And just I think Barrick done what.
They called a feasibility study.
Greg, what was that, John?
Haven't Barrick done a feasibility study?
Sure, John. The question was, didn't the project have a feasibility study? The answer is yes. The study was, frankly, it was stale. It was completed in 2012. It was accepted by the owners at the time and then used to form the basis of our permitting activities, which we successfully completed. The study is stale and I think we're certainly prudent people. Before anybody would undertake the construction of an asset like Donlin, we felt it's important to update the feasibility study. Taking into account, of course, the higher gold prices, but also the inflationary pressures that we've seen in the mining industry. Turning back to the slide, some of the key attributes that really make Donlin unique in the gold space. It's going to be a big mine, produce over a million ounces a year for almost 30 years.
Cash costs well in the bottom half of the industry. First five years, it'll produce about 1.5 million ounces per year. It's a big deposit, almost 40 million ounces at 2.25 g per ton. We've still got a lot of exploration upside. You know, Alaska is frankly, we've always been comfortable in Alaska. With the recent executive orders focused on unlocking the resource potential in Alaska, you know, those are certainly very positive for us. We're following very closely the governments, the state and federal governments thinking about building a gas pipeline from the North Slope into the Cook Inlet. You know, this pipeline, if built, would provide a potentially inexpensive source of natural gas that we could pipe to the project to generate power. Our current feasibility study was based on imported gas into the Cook Inlet.
This development is certainly very positive for us. The project enjoys great support at both the state and federal level. We continue to engage with the local native corporations. Two of them are involved with Donlin. One owns the mineral estate and one owns the surface rights. We have life of binding agreements in place with both of these entities. Another really unique aspect of Donlin is we have completed the federal permitting. We have a record of decision and a 404 permit that authorizes work to begin at the site, really anytime that the owners deem it is appropriate. We continue to maintain a steadfast commitment to environmental stewardship and the well-being of our people and communities. Paulson's team brings great expertise to the project. They're well-seasoned gold investors. They've been heavily invested in Detour Gold over the years.
They successfully led a turnaround of that operation and that company, resulting in its eventual sale. People who invested with Paulson would have done very, very well with that. They also are a controlling shareholder in Tower Hill as well as the Perpetua project in Idaho, where they've secured some pretty significant federal money to advance that project. Thank you. Next slide. The next few slides are a little bit about John Paulson. For those of you that do not know John, he's well known for his the big trade or his bet against the housing industry in the United States. I think John was one of the first people that saw that the housing boom and the mortgage lending practices were going to lead to a big collapse. John found ways to make money on that trade. That's probably his single greatest trade.
I think he looks at Donlin as having that sort of potential. They've got a great track record in making money in the gold space. You're an interesting aspect about Donlin and I think this. You know, really we can circle back to this if you'd like. You know, Donlin brings our shareholders tremendous leverage to the price of gold. You look at where gold was a few years back and, you know, the project was okay, but it wasn't all that good. You know, when you pass $2,500, $3,000, you know, the leverage and the value of Donlin keeps growing steadily higher. You know, $2,500 gold, you know, the Donlin value is a little over $11 billion. To put that in perspective, we paid $1 billion for 10% of that to Paulson and NovaGold.
Our 10% in itself is worth over $1 billion when you look at it on an NPV basis. Certainly Paulson's $800 million looks equally as good. We continue to enjoy a strong shareholder base. Electrum is Dr. Thomas Kaplan's gold investment vehicle. He is our Chairman and largest shareholder. Paulson Advisors is an entity of John Paulson. They've been a shareholder of NovaGold for almost 15 years. It's been certainly great to have them on our shareholder register. We've had many interactions with them over the years. Lingotto is the Agnelli family office. You can see the rest of the major shareholders. You know, about over two thirds of our stock are with the top 10 shareholders. That's been a hallmark of NovaGold. Institutionally held with long term, very sticky money. We touched on this earlier.
You know, our public offering was well oversubscribed almost four times. And you know, we were very disciplined in taking what we need, but not being excessively diluted. It was important for us to have the funding necessary to close the transaction with Barrick. Beyond that, we did not really need the funds. We have got the great treasury to see us through the next phase of Donlin, which is the feasibility study. We are getting ready to kick that off with our partners. What is next for us? You know, now that the transaction is closed, we are working with the Donlin team and the Paulson folks at preparing the necessary requests for proposals to select an engineering firm or in this case, I think it will be firms to lead the feasibility study. By the time we get through this process.
We expect we'll be in a position to award the work somewhere in the third quarter or perhaps fourth quarter of this year. Our last estimate was it would take about two years and cost about $80 million on a 100% basis. Elsewhere at the site we've had an ongoing drill program. We've pivoted this program to focus on converting inferred material in and around the two known ore bodies which are the ACMA and Lewis. Up in Alaska we continue to engage with the local communities to maintain our social license. The technical work is ongoing and we're pursuing our remaining state permit which is for the tailings dam. The federal 404 permit authorizes build tailings dam but in Alaska a separate layer of approval is required from the state. It is certainly not on the critical path.
As I mentioned earlier, we have the ability to begin work at site whenever the owners are ready. The next few slides really just compare Donlin to, you know, other projects out there in the industry. You know, its output is the largest, just ahead of the KSM project and far ahead of any of the other development stage projects that are in the industry. Donlin would be one of the few million ounce a year ore bodies out there if it was built today. You know, this is really kind of a snapshot of where we were at. You know, we are on the verge of updating the feasibility study. You know, a project of this scale and complexity, the industry wide average, it takes about 20 years to get to the stage we are at now.
We think the feasibility study will take about two years, four to five years of engineering and construction related activities. Yeah, the grade at Donlin is two and a quarter grams. That is better than twice the current industry average. That is what, one, gives Donlin its very competitive cost. Two, it really separates Donlin from a lot of the other mines you look at. Many mines have been built in recent years with grades at a gram or even certainly lower. Two and a quarter grams. Donlin enjoys great grade which will give it a low cost production profile. This slide just depicts the mineralized belt at Donlin. You know the 40 million ounces of M&I are contained within the ACMA and Lewis ore bodies.
We know that both of these ore bodies are open ended at depth and in and around them is about 6 million ounces of inferred material. We have also got great gold bearing intercepts all up and down the 8 km trend, only 3 km of which has been drilled very thoroughly. We know both ECMA and Lewis are open ended at depth. When the time is right we will resume exploration all up and down the trend and at depth below the two. This area here is about 5% of our total land holdings in and around Donlin, Alaska. Frankly, I think Alaska is a great place to do business. The recent executive orders are highlighting the importance of natural resources to the Trump administration. Gold was declared a critical mineral by the administration.
It's the second largest gold producing state in the U.S., has a well-established permitting and regulatory regime, and it contributes significantly to the economy in Alaska. They're an area of the country that appreciates a strong, responsible natural resources industry. You know, underneath Donlin are two Alaska Native corporations. Calista owns the mineral rights and TKC owns the surface rights. This is private land that was dedicated for mining under the Native Claim Settlement Act. The government transferred these mineral rights and potential to these corporations for their own economic self-determination. They both have a significant owner's interest in seeing the Donlin project go forward. As we mentioned earlier, permitting is substantially completed in the United States. The federal permitting process, or the EIS process, is perhaps the most time-consuming of all the permits to achieve. We've successfully completed that. Our state permitting.
You can see on one side of the page all of the permits that we have in hand. The only permit left to really obtain is the dam safety permit. We've submitted the preliminary design packages on that and have no concern that it won't be in hand well in advance of the feasibility study being completed. At any rate, we do not need that permit in hand to start construction. This highlights really the commitment that we share with the native corporations to environmental stewardship, the health and safety of our people. We're very active in the communities in and around the Donlin site. From a governance point of view, NovaGold's always gotten tremendous marks for board diversity, ethical conduct, and frankly very transparent in all levels of our reporting. Yeah, the management team, we've touched on before.
Richard Williams, like myself, is a long term Barrick veteran. Richard, during his almost 30 year tenure with Barrick, he led many of the feasibility studies for the refractory plants going back to the Merkur plant, all of the autoclaves at Gold Strike. His last assignment at Barrick was he was the lead project director on the construction of the Pueblo Viejo mine in the Dominican Republic. He led that project through feasibility study, through commissioning and into production. When he was done with that, he joined us. He's really one of the key people in the industry that have experienced building these big assets and he is the ideal guy to lead the next couple years. What we have to do. Peter Adambic, our Chief Financial Officer, joined us from Hudbay. Of course, Melanie's on the line with us and Ben Macklis is our General Counsel.
He's a well-seasoned environmental attorney, formerly a partner at Dorsey & Whitney. Our treasury, now that the dust is settled from our various transactions, our treasury is in great shape. You know, our full year forecast is presented on the slide. We've got once the noisy quarter getting all of the transaction-related material is behind us, our expenditures will settle back down to their very predictable levels of recent years and we will focus on updating the feasibility study. Just, you know, looking at the news flow coming up for us, you know, we're working with Paulson on the Donlin Gold budget. I anticipate that the total budget for Donlin will be, you know, comparable to the $43 million that was approved when Barrick was still on board. We'll shift a lot of the work streams to focus on updating the feasibility study.
The drill program is well advanced and we will be guiding the markets on our results as they start coming in in the next couple of months. We are continuing to advance the technical work, support our state permitting efforts, and work with our stakeholders on outreach and investment engagement initiatives in Alaska. With Paulson as our new owner, Donlin Gold is in a great position to update the feasibility study and move forward. That is an alignment of owners that we have not had at Donlin in many, many years. All right, that is the final slide in our presentation this afternoon.
John,
Greg and Melanie, thank you so much. Of course, everyone on the call always is able to submit questions through the question box. We have a go to stage channel, like a YouTube channel where the replays of all of our meetings are archived for several years. Everything is open public, no password. We only like to have public events. Greg, in terms of the feasibility study, we have the price of gold, we have CapEx, OpEx, potentially tailings reviews, practices and tailings changed a lot since 2012. You have the natural gas pipeline which you are saying the government might run to Cook Inlet. What else might change besides the engineering firms?
I think the project as it was conceived by Barrick all those years ago, you know, 55,000 ton a day processing plant, an open pit gas generation for power. The main parameters for the project are unchanged, you know, over the last few years as we were working with the Barrick team that, you know, Barrick's been our partner for a long time but the company went through basically a new management change post ran. So we had worked with the folks at Barrick on reviewing all aspects of the Donlin project and after this thorough and comprehensive review with them, it really came back to the same place. This is a ore body best mined by open pit methods. An ore body that has the scale to support a long term operation and it's got permits in hand.
I think very little has really changed with the review of recent years. You know we've done some fine tuning to the flow sheets, been able to coarse in the grind and add a little bit to the recovery. By and large the project is essentially as permitted and as presented in the original feasibility study, just the study needs to be updated to reflect the current capital and operating costs.
In terms of updating a major's data simply on the basis of price. Our good friend Tony Makuch who used to run Lakeshore Gold and Kirkland Lake Gold and managed the Hoyle Pond mine and built mines for Dynatec, ran Newmont's data for the Timmins district at $2,150 rather than $1,700 gold. And the resources rose from 9.2 to 16.4 million ounces. And he did not count, which Goldcorp and Newmont did not count, a 4 million ounce refractory zone at Hoyle Pond called TVZ. So really it is 20.4. When you simply run the price of gold above Barrick's price of $1,600 or so, the SEC three year moving average is going to be about $2,600 averaging. The current year might be $3,100. When you work in the first quarter that was $2,857 and last year was around $2,600. In the year before that $2,000.
Do you think you're going to run the model at the three-year average $2,600, which is what the SEC permits, or a different gold price, Greg?
John, I think, you know, it'll take us a good two years from today to have the feasibility study approaching its final form. I think we will of course look at one, the prevailing gold price, the trailing average of the last few years, and we'll run the appropriate sensitivities on those. I think, frankly, we're in the early innings of a long term bull market and the project returns at prices well under what we see today are robust. I think we'll get the feasibility study done and take stock of the gold prices and the markets when the time is right.
If someone were to assume that you use the three year moving average two years from now, whatever God makes it, is that a reasonable behavioral assumption?
I think that's one of the starting points, John. You know, if we're, none of us can really see where we're going to be in two years' time, gold could be $5,000 an ounce. It could be $3,000. Certainly by the time we get there we'll have a much greater expectation and confidence in that regard. I think there's, when I look at everybody's predictions, what's happening in the world, there's more reasons for gold prices to stay where they're at or go higher than there are to go down. I think we're going to be enjoying that as we move forward into the next couple of years.
In 2012, the team raised money in hindsight very well at $9.75 per share. The gold price of course turned down in the spring of 2013 and 2013, 14, 15 were tough years. So the NovaGold was really good in the timing. You've just done two capital raises at 3 and 3.75 that make the maybe 50% more shares outstanding and you've picked up 10% working interest in the project which is 20% more gold. Because you talk about that process and I, I guess from a distance it looks like Barrick, like Four Mile in Nevada and Copper in Zambia and Copper Gold in Pakistan and this was the fast best way to move the project ahead.
John, are you not sure what you're asking about Barrick?
Why'd you issue stock below $9.75 and issue 50% more shares to get 20% more gold?
John, I think just to refresh everybody's memory, the last equity raise we did was in 2012. As John noted, it was a bit over $9 a share. I think it was $9.50 a share and we raised $335 million. You know, since 2012, our share price has been as high as $13, as low and it went under $2 at one stage. Yeah, the markets have been, you know, not just NovaGold, but really the entire gold space has been pushed around by the marketplace. Yeah, NovaGold, our stock was languishing because we could not provide a path forward. With this transaction behind us, we've done that.
I look at it more on the value of the underlying asset and what we paid for it, which is to say we paid about 20 cents on the dollar to get the extra 10% of the project. You know, a lot of ways to really look at it. Certainly, you know, markets have been, you know, gold stocks have been out of favor for most of the last five, six years. I think that's changing now as gold prices are starting to move up and people are paying attention. You know, I don't. I think we did a transaction that was in the long term best interest of our shareholder. Our market cap, which had been languishing about $1 billion, or frankly in many cases quite under that, is now approaching double from where we were prior when we announced the deal.
I think the marketplace is ultimately the judge of these types of transactions. The marketplace has been very positive on what we've accomplished.
Did your board consider borrowing $200 million instead of issuing stock to give the consideration to Barrick?
John, our board considered many, many alternatives before we landed where we did. You know, borrowing money, frankly, is not much of an option for a company with no revenue. You know, that's just putting a time bomb in your balance sheet. You know, we talked to all sorts of financial players. We engaged actively with the royalty and streaming companies, and our board considered quite a wide variety of alternatives before we ended up with the equity offerings.
Should we mention on the call, Greg, that you have a tour of the Donlin Gold property next week,
John. We do and I'll let Melanie fill everybody in on the particulars.
Yes, good to highlight that, John, and thanks for having us on the virtual conference today. We have the tour next week with a combination of buy side and sell side and we have a full tour. Really glad that we were able to put that together and able to share a summary of the Donlin Gold project with these participants over the course of three days next week.
Are the logistics defined at Anchorage?
correct?
How long is the flight from Anchorage to the site?
An hour and a half.
Do the people sleep one night or two nights? In the mine camp.
We don't stay at the mine camp. It's just easier. We do part of the presentation out of Anchorage. There's flexibility to do both. Given the numbers of individuals that are part of this tour, it is best that we come back to Anchorage. We will also be meeting with some of our key stakeholders for dinners. That's why it's important for us to come back to Anchorage, to have the ability to maximize the reach and the meetings and the information that can be shared with all of our participants.
I'm crying crocodile tears, Greg, because Agnico has a tour next Monday and Tuesday at Kirkland Lake. Then I scheduled to go to Timmins and see Tony Makuch's deal at Discovery Silver. I'm taking a few clients there myself. I'm staying over to Rob McEwen's mine Friday and I have some 76-year-old prospector that wants to talk to me about all his mineral claims. One night. I have a whole week I scheduled two months in advance and I'm missing it. If you have another session in August, I go to Greece for over three weeks, and in September I'm supposed to go to visit Valley in Brazil and Colorado Springs, the gold forum. Barrick's going to take people to Carlin for two days. When do you think you'll have your next session?
It'll probably have to wait until next year.
That's just as well.
There's always. [crosstalk]
Going to Greece for a month. Let me ask the questions. Would you consider starting production construction, excuse me, on certain parts of the project before the definitive Feasibility Study is finished as the economics are clearly attractive, but timelines are long due to the size and location of Donlin.
The question as I understand it is would we consider doing some site work while we're undertaking the feasibility study? I think the short answer to that is yes. You know, the first year's construction of the site, relatively modest capital outlay. We have to establish an upriver port near the village of Crooked Creek and then connect that port to the mine site via 30 mi road. And that in itself is, you know, not particularly capital intensive, but it would allow us to significantly compress the future construction schedule. It is something that's on our minds. We'll be working our way through that as we get the Paulson team fully up to speed and as we take stock of, you know, the cash needs of the company. It is clearly an option that's available to us.
You need that port. It's a village called Crooked Creek in order to deliver machinery and supplies for construction.
That is. That is correct, John. Crooked Creek is a little village on the bank of the Kuskokwim River. In fact, we're very. We're very fortunate to have riverine access to the site up in Alaska. You know, and that's, you know, most of the bulk materials that go in and out of parts of Alaska come up in the river system or on water. You know, Alaska, particularly the part of Alaska where Donlin is located, you know, there's no road system at all. The rivers are the highways, both on water during the open season and on ice roads during the winter months.
We have the President of a prominent mining company, retired, asking why it takes two years to update the feasibility study.
John, it may take less than that, but I think at this stage, our guidance on that should be conservative. Once we get an engineering firm on board and get the work underway, we'll be able to provide a more definitive schedule. I think let's stick for two years until we have the engineering firm engaged and understand what their availability of people is.
We have a question. Could you give a timeline for having the mine up and running or first production? First for gold.
I think, you know, throughout our presentation, we've touched on that. So let's just give it a recap. Let's say we start the feasibility study, and that takes us the years 2026 and 2027 out there to build it. So that puts the initial production sometime early in 2030, 2031.
In terms of, I think that's the last question. Yes. In terms of production, would you, would it simplify anything if you shipped a concentrate and didn't build an autoclave system, or would that make it tougher because then you'd have to ship that, all that outbound material?
I think, John, that's a good question. It's something that we, you know, over the years, we studied a lot of options aimed at reducing the upfront capital. That was a problem. Does it make sense to produce a con and ship a concentrate? I think it was something that we ruled out, but for a couple of reasons. I think when you look at the actual capital of the autoclaves in the context of everything else, if you pulled the autoclaves out, you might save $450 million. You could save money. That's certainly in the context of the $7 billion it takes to build it. That's not really a material savings. What you really do more than anything else is you, one can only ship con out during the summer months, so you have a pretty erratic cash flow.
The other is every ounce you produce by doing that is at a cost substantially higher than the cost of building an autoclave on site, having year-round access to getting your product out. It was something that we looked at, but in the context of Donlin and the full investment, you know, we felt there were better alternatives just to stay the course and build the autoclave part of the facility.
In terms of permits, are there any degrees of modification permissible? For example, if someone, if the government builds a pipeline for you and it's simpler for you to deliver the gas, I guess that falls within the existing permit. If you make minor changes in the tailings design, industry standards have evolved since 2012. Probably whatever things you do are an improvement and that would fall within the permit. Do you envision anything that the feasibility study is going to focus on that would require a change of regulatory process, amending the permit in a significant manner?
No, John, I think that the, you know, first off, I'll speak to the tailings dam. The Donlin dam was designed to be totally downstream embankment. And downstream embankments are, you know, the strongest type of structure you can build. The other aspect, not just the downstream construction, which makes the dam totally robust, is the fact that it was permitted to line the tailings dam at Donlin. And that's, that's probably common practice now. It was not common practice when we were, you know, doing the original feasibility study. It was an enhancement appropriate to the setting where we're at.
The 2012 design was extremely rigorous for 2012 and complies with the stricter industry practices today.
Absolutely.
Summarizing, Greg.
Yeah, absolutely. The state of Alaska, you know, they have a very intensive review process. One of the reasons we waited until we needed it to file the tailings dam permit is for that permit to be granted, the state of Alaska needs final engineered construction drawings. That included extensive geotechnical drilling in and around the foundations for the dam. The state of Alaska has another level of review to ensure that the dam is built to what I would say is best common practice.
I know this is a terrible question off the top of your head, but I respect you can you for running numbers in your head. If you ran the economic models at $2,600 gold on the current drill data, how much do you think the reserve would increase? If you ran it on spot gold of $3,350, how much more do you think the reserve might increase?
Yeah, that's an interesting question, John. As you might guess, we've certainly pondered that. In many ways, it's why we're excited about the potential at Donlin. When you. [crosstalk]
That's why you did the deal.
Yeah. When you increase the gold price, you know, the open pits basically bottom at the end of our drill database. So you mine substantially all the material. Yes. You, by increasing the gold price, you do bring in, you know, some more ounces. The biggest potential is, you know, we've done some drilling, you know, several hundred meters below the pit bottom at both deposits and never gotten out of the mineralization. In fact, it gets on the ACMA side, the grade gets much stronger at depth. I think really we have a great problem. We just need to do additional drilling, which we plan on doing in the coming years. We still see tremendous room to grow, if not double the endowment at Donlin, and that's just on a small part of our land holdings.
Once again, we welcome questions from our friends on the webcast, and we've covered them with the potential to extend the ore body in both directions and to depth without considering the price of gold. Greg, are you brave enough to guess how much more gold is there than what's on the books right now? I'm just assuming you're one tough, brave dude and this is a public meeting.
There is substantially more gold there than we see today, John. I think as we release some of our drill data, I think everybody will understand that. I would invite people to, you know, go back a couple of years when we had some active drilling programs with Barrick. You know, some of the drilling we did, particularly at depth, were some of the best intercepts anybody had in the gold space. If you study the charts and figures we provided back then, you will see that we have drilled comparable, if not better grades well below both deposits. What does the future hold? You know, I think we have got a lot of room, both at depth and along strike to find another Donlin-sized deposit.
Greg, I tried to stroke you the best I could to get a. Get your guess as to how much more gold is there is there. The attorneys have trained you well.
I think that's a compliment, John.
Thank you. That just means you're obedient and you stay out of trouble. As we get older, we have to stay out of trouble, Greg.
I've noticed that, John.
Thank you and Melanie very much. Congratulations on everything you've achieved. In two years you'll worry about who's going to build the mine and whether it's better for you to have a royalty role, a minority role, or who your partners are. Do you think there's any way that you might be the operator?
John, don't. We really don't know what the future holds. You know, right now we have the skill set we need to advance through feasibility study. Part of the reason why we wanted a partner like Paulson is, you know, companies the size of NovaGold are much more agile than the bigger companies. We wanted a partner like Paulson who saw this project the same way we did, which is now is the time to update the feasibility study so we're totally aligned with Paulson. Two years from now, the world will be a different place and our board will consider what options are out there. I think for right now, we aren't interested in taking on another partner. We're focused on delivering a positive feasibility study with the Paulson team.
Greg, I went over to Melanie on the floor of PDAC a couple, three months ago all excited and said that there was a company making a display in the Investors Exchange on the other side that had ground in Balochistan and east of Barrick and they explained how elaborate the military escort had to be for their geologists to go out and do work and that the U.S. equipment that Biden abandoned in Afghanistan was now in the hands of the Baloch Liberation Army. The BLA, the tribe is the same in eastern Iran and Afghanistan and western Pakistan. Just think how much nicer it is for you to do field work at Donlin in Alaska and put a pole in the water and go fishing too. God bless you that Barrick likes Pakistan better and you have got more of the deal.
We're pleased with the outcome for NovaGold, John, and we wish Barrick well in that endeavor.
Super, super. You have a good night. Thanks everyone for joining the call. Melanie, you're looking real good. I did my hair two nights ago for the webcast too. Take care. All of that straight.
Bye.
Thank you everybody. Bye.