Thank you for joining us this morning to discuss the results of the updated mineral resource estimate announced last night for our flagship Fenelon Gold Project and the Martiniere Gold Project, both located on the Detour-Fenelon Gold Trend, as well as our exploration plans for 2023. I'm Sean Stokes, Corporate Secretary. Also on the call today from our team are Marz Kord, CEO, Brian Penny, CFO, Attila Péntek, VP, Exploration, Victoria Vargas, Capital Markets Advisor. Before we begin the discussion of the updated mineral resource estimates and the 2023 exploration program, we'd like to remind you that some of the comments being made today may include forward-looking statements. I'd like to ask everyone to review the forward-looking statements disclosure provided in the news releases and in today's presentation. Please note that any financial details that we are presenting today are quoted in Canadian dollars, except where otherwise indicated.
Once management has completed its presentation, we'll move to the Q&A session. Please send your questions by using the Q&A function located at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Finally, if you don't yet have a copy of the news releases or today's presentation, you can find them on our website at www.wallbridgemining.com. We'll now start the presentation.
Thanks, Sean. Good morning. I think it's important to mention a few things before we get into the review of the updated mineral resource estimate and plans for 2023. Yesterday's announcement is the result of our cumulative efforts since the last mineral resource estimate in 2021 by designing a program that focused on improving the mineral resources at Fenelon and Martiniere. We're very proud of what we've accomplished so far. I'd like to thank everyone for their valuable hard work, our board of directors, management, and staff. I also wish to thank our shareholders who've been patient with us. Additionally, I wanna thank the community surrounding Fenelon for their support, especially our First Nation partners of Waskaganish, Washaw Sibi, and Abitibiwinni for continuing to support our efforts in the development and advancement of our projects.
It's a rare investment opportunity where a company owns and controls a large district-scale, underexplored, prospective land package in a safe jurisdiction with great infrastructure. We're fortunate that our projects are located in Northwestern Quebec, a jurisdiction that embraces and supports mineral exploration and mining, and a deeply skilled workforce and support from the local communities as well as the First Nation partners. Add to that a land package of over 800 sq km spanning over 97 km from the Ontario border, where one of Canada's largest gold mines, the Detour Lake Mine, is currently operating. On which Wallbridge owns two known gold systems at Fenelon and Martiniere, where we focused our exploration efforts over the last few years and have delivered significant milestones. We've done this with firm ESG principles in mind.
We're proud to say that in the last couple of years, between 25%-30% of our workforce is from the First Nation communities. In August of last year, we signed a pre-development agreement with the Cree Nation Government and the Cree communities of Waskaganish and Washaw Sibi where we now have the support of our First Nation partners in advancing our projects along the Detour-Fenelon Gold Trend. Attila will provide more details on the current mineral resource estimates. We've now delivered a mineral resource estimate of over 3 million ounces in the indicated category and about 2.4 million ounces in the inferred category. Our 2021 mineral resource estimate at Fenelon used the deposit as predominantly an open-pit-able deposit with a balance of that as an underground mine at mineable.
Such, we made a mineral resource estimate at Fenelon contained a large, deep, open pits. After drilling additional holes post the 2021 mineral resource estimate, it was determined that Fenelon deposit is more amenable to an underground mineable scenario, with perhaps some smaller, shallow pits around the Gabbro area 51. More importantly, we also believe that an underground mineable deposit has the advantages of potentially lower CapEx, a faster permitting timeline, and less surface disturbance than a large open pits.
Our 2022 exploration program was designed to improve the quality of the resource with a view of the Fenelon deposit being predominantly an underground bulk mineable while also testing the extents of those zones outside the 2021 mineral resource estimate footprint. The result of that program was incorporated into this updated mineral resource estimate. We've achieved 84% and 85% increases in the mineral resource estimate grade of the inferred and indicated categories, respectively, while managing to add 17% and 11% to the total contained ounces in the indicated and inferred, respectively. The drilling that we completed since the last mineral resource estimate at Martiniere has also significantly increased the size of that deposit. Martiniere is only 30 km West of Fenelon. Any economic deposit there or within the Detour-Fenelon Gold Trend would be complementary to Fenelon.
The 33 km, 30 km distance is within a trucking range of Fenelon with minimal impact on the operating costs using a centralized mill approach. This would eliminate major capital requirements associated with certain standalone infrastructure at Martiniere or other deposits. I'll now ask Attila Péntek, our VP, Exploration, to discuss the updated mineral resource estimate at Fenelon in more detail first, and then at Martiniere.
Thanks, Marz. Hi, everyone, and thanks for joining us. Let's look at the estimation parameters first that were used to drive the car grades. As you can see in these table comparisons, most of the parameters and the methodology stayed the same as it was in 2021. The main most significant change that I should point out is that we used higher open pit mining and processing costs due to the lower open pit component of this resource estimate. That's reflected in the higher cutoff grades for the open pits' resources. At Fenelon, it increased from 0.35 g to 0.45 grams per tonne, and at Martiniere, it's changed from 0.4 g to 0.55 g per tonne.
At Fenelon, in terms of new data, we added approximately 125,000 m of diamond drilling, as well as 28,000 m of infill sampling of historic drill core. Our geology models became much more robust, in part also benefiting from the mapping and sampling we have completed in the Area 51 underground exploration drift that we completed in early 2022. At Martiniere, while the 2021 resource was based entirely on historic data, the new resource now incorporates 30,000 m of drilling that we completed since last summer. This was the first program done with oriented core drilling on this project, which gave us a much better understanding of the structural controls of the gold mineralization.
At Fenelon, as you can see in this side-by-side comparison of these long sections, we've made significant changes to the deposit configuration compared to 2021, which was the main resource estimate. Instead of the over 600 m deep open pit, which you can see on the right-hand side, with this black line, we now have 96% of the mineral resource estimate contained in stope optimized underground bulk minable resources, which are reported at the base case, 1.5 g per tons gold cut-off grade. Additionally, we now have four shallow open pits, which are centered around the Gabbro zones, and Area 51, and those are reported at the mentioned 0.45 grams per tonne, gold.
Here you can see in these colors, the indicated resource, which makes up about 59% of the resource. In front of it is the inferred, with some transparency, so you can see the indicated behind it. How did we accomplish these improvements to the resource? With the elimination of the deep open pit, we lost a total of just over 800,000 oz of low-grade ounces that used to be inside the pit, which were above the 0.35 grams per tonne open pit cut off grade, but below the 1.5 gram per tonne underground cut off grade. You know, having lost those 800,000 oz, we replaced those, and we added more.
We replaced it with approximately 1.3 million ounces of higher grade material in the above 1.5 g per tons cut off grade. These 1.5 million ounces not only came from the switch from open pit to underground scenario, but a large portion of it was added by our resource expansion drilling around and inside the 2021 mineral resource footprint. The main areas we've seen significant additions were near surface in the Tabasco Cayenne areas, and then also in the northwest of Area 51 along the, as well along the diorite. As you can see here, no resources, whereas we've added significant resources here.
Also in the opposite end, in the southeast along the diorite contact, as you've seen in recent press releases, we've seen very significant additions to the gold mineralization that were not there in 2021. Of course, we also added the Ripley zone, which none of that was part of the 2021 resource estimate, and now it became a satellite zone to Fénelon. One important graph that speaks to the overall quality of the deposit is the ounces per vertical meters. This statistics is really meaningful when your deposit is compact in a fairly small area like Fénelon is.
Most of the ounces are centered in a concentrated in an area of one by 1 km area, down to about 1 km, as you can see on this image here. That means that it doesn't require extensive infrastructure, going several kilometers to mine these ounces in the future. Regardless of the type of mining method, the ounces per vertical meters both in the 2021 and the 2023 mineral resource estimates are very remarkable and validate the bulk minability of the deposit.
In the 2021 mineral resource estimate, the high value of ounces per vertical meters, starting around 3, 400 m vertical depth here, extended the open pit down to 600 m, like we discussed. After additional drilling after this resource estimate and based on the continuity and thicknesses of the zones, it became evident now that it would be much more beneficial to review the deposit as a predominantly bulk mineable underground deposit, where it has the potential to deliver attractive economics with lower CapEx, smaller footprint, faster permitting process than a large open pit.
We essentially now have more ounces in this new resource estimate at a higher grade, and then less tons of ore, as you can see from these black lines, where in the open pits there was a lot of tonnage, whereas now much less tonnage is containing all those ounces. The 2023 mineral resource estimate now demonstrates the high quality bulk mineable underground deposit at an average of over 3,000 oz per vertical meters for the entire deposit from surface down to 1,000 m. Between 408 down in meters where the heart of the deposit is, there's over 5,000 oz per vertical meters.
Let's look at all of this in 3D, and I'm just going to switch to a different software. Just bear with me. I hope technology assists. Marz, just could you confirm that you can see the? You know, we're looking down at the deposit right now. This is a plan view and just showing the main geology. The most important rock types are this Jeremie Diorite and the main gabbro. You can see the underground workings that exist currently on the project. In 2019, we completed the bulk sample here in the gabbro zones.
This year, as I already mentioned, we drove out an exploration drift into Area 51 to map and sample that and get to know it. If we pull up the block models from last year, this is, you can see in the legend on the right-hand side. We're looking at all the blocks that were above 1.5 g per tons cut-off grade. You can see the whole deposit here that was reported in 2021. Just pulling up the open pit of that resource at the time. You can see not only was it the pit very deep, 600 m deep, but it also, you know, large footprint. Large part of the pit didn't contain actually resources.
We focused a lot of our drilling in that near surface area to add additional resources. Now if we look at a long section looking towards the north, just switching that here right now and removing the geology just to clean it up a little bit. Again, you can see the deep open pits in the 2021 resource estimate extending down to 600 m. A lot of the higher grade material was actually contained inside that pit. Then the remaining high grade material that was below it, that's what made up the underground resource in the last resource estimate. Now if we compare this to this year's results, just going to remove the open pit here.
This is the block model from this year. If I toggle it back and forth, you can see a lot of areas where the whole deposit has just really bulked up. We've added a lot of additional resources. For example, if you focus in this upper area, the Northwest area that I already mentioned on the plan view, you can see a lot of additional resources there. Also here at depth in the Southeast, sort of down plunge area, we've seen really good resource additions. Looking at all of this again in plan view, so you can appreciate the changes also looking down. Again, just to focus on some of these areas here where we have really nice high grade material right near surface, new additions.
Also due to the infill sampling that we did, the infill sampling of historic core, we were able to add a lot of additional ounces even within the known footprint. A lot of resource additions are actually inside that footprint. It's not all coming from extensions, but you can again see here the southeast area, a lot of additions there. You know, looking at the open pits now. We mentioned that there's four smaller open pits now. One is centered here on the Gabbro zones. I'm just going to remove last year's block model. Adding in the other open pits, which are all in the, what we call the Area 51 zones.
Again, you can see some of this really nice high-grade material right near surface that makes up the open pits components of the resource. Again, looking to the north, just to get an appreciation of the depth of these pits. Right now, these 150 m is the deepest part of this pit at the Gabbro zones. We already have an open pit there actually, that's where the portal is for the underground workings. That would just be an additional pit there. Here are the Area 51 pits, which are a little bit shallower. They're about 80 m to 100 m deep. If we pull up the, you know, these are the underground stope optimized bulk mining resources.
Again, you can see sort of all the ounces being in a fairly compact area of 7 m out of 50 m to a kilometer. If we look at this now in a cross-section, looking north, this gives you a good appreciation for, you know, the thicknesses of these zones. We see a lot of these zones stacked together very close together to each other and large thicknesses of these zones. That's why this deposit is believed to be really amenable to bulk mining. Of course, the PEA, the preliminary economic assessment will give us the ultimate answers for that.
Just to close off, you know, let me just pull up the drill hole intersections just to emphasize that, you know, we really just drilled the deposit down to 1,000 m, so this is where the resource ends. We have one drill hole that extends further than that, another 500 m-600 m. We hit exactly the same kind of geology, same kind of mineralization styles. We actually hit the same diorite, same gabbro, and there's about 17 g per ton over 4 m intersection there as well. You know, it gives us really good indication that the resource will continue in the future, once we continue drilling at further depth.
Just to close off, you know, in plan view, if we look at this again, and just it's already speaking a little bit into what the plans are for 2023. We can see that most of these zones remain open. The diorite contact, and some of the structures that control the gold mineralization, like the Jeremie Fault, for example. Those will be some of the targets that we'll be following up in 2023. I'll just move back to the presentation. So Marz will talk a bit now about what we mean underground bulk mining, and what kind of production scenarios we envision for the upcoming preliminary economic assessment.
Thanks, Attila. What I'd like to focus on is the review of the underground resource through the lens of bulk mineability. Here, let's take a quick look at some of the side-by-side comparison of our deposit against one of the analogs that we use, which is the Young-Davidson mine, currently operating by Alamos. On the left is a section looking west, identifying the Tabasco, Cayenne, and Area 51 zones. As they converge at depth, they create these large zones amenable to bulk mining. The center figure, the longitudinal section looking north, shows the strike lengths of these.
We can see when viewing this longitudinal alongside Alamos's Young-Davidson operation, that below the poor shallow Fenelon open pits that we have, we have a significant underground resource that is still open in all directions, as Attila just mentioned. Have very much similarity to that analog deposit. Young-Davidson has been mining for a few years. Recently increased from about 6,000 tons to close to 8,000 tons per day to a depth of about 1,500 m. At grades being operated at about 2.2 g-2.6 gr oz per ton for the last three years, approximately generating between 180,000-200,000 oz per year.
This slide here shows some of the comparable deposits to Fenelon, such as Agnico's Goldex, Yamana's Wasamac, and Alamos's Young-Davidson. Each of these comparable deposits have veins or zones ranging from 2 m to over 30 m-40 m in thickness. Again, very similar to the Fenelon, and these are continuous as well. So making them really amenable to bulk mining. Importantly, two of these deposits are currently operating successfully. The Yamana's new project, purchased from Monarch, is also planned to be in operation in a couple years. The mineral resource estimates preceding a production decision with these projects were in the range of 2 g-3 gr per ton, with gold ounces of about 2 million ounces-3 million ounces.
These producing deposits currently produce grades ranging from about 1.7 g to about 2.3 g per ton. Their cash costs range from about $750-$850 U.S. per ounce, and their all-in sustaining costs range from about $930-$1,070 U.S. per ounce. The production rates are around 8,000 tons per day. All of the data that we have here is derived from the websites of those operations and also is the last 12 months. This is sort of average of the last 12 months. Of course, Fenelon is still at the resource stage, requires additional work, starting with a preliminary economic assessment, conversion drilling, and all the other studies.
Encouragingly, the current mineral resource estimate at Fenelon is higher than the mineral resource estimates. In terms of grade, it's higher than those mineral resource estimates of these comparable deposits preceding their production decision. Now, Fenelon, as it is current, still has a lot of room to grow, potentially down to 1,500 m or more based on that one deep drill hole that we completed in 2021, and Attila just mentioned a few minutes ago. Continued efforts in exploration drilling will help us tell the whole story. I'll now turn it back to Attila to talk about the Martiniere and our 2023 exploration plans.
Thanks, Marz. So at Martiniere, uh, the new resource now contains a total of, uh, uh, just over six hundred and eighty thousand ounces, uh, in the indicated category and, and, and over 630,000 oz in the inferred category, which res- you know, represents significant increases in contained ounces and, uh, and also improved grades, uh, compared to the 2021 , uh, mineral resource. So we really see tremendous potential at Martiniere and, and plan to spend, uh, eleven million dollars on e-exploration there this year. Most of the resource additions, uh, came from extensions of kn-known zones along strike and depth. So you can see again in these side-by-side comparisons, uh, some of the resource additions, uh, along strike.
Very importantly, you can see how in 2021, the resources were isolated, separated from each other, and they had these smaller isolated open pits. Our focused drilling in the area in between was now able to connect them. You can see the continuous continuity between the two trends, and now the open pits are able to connect. The deposit remains open in most directions, and is largely untested below 400 m, 500 m vertical depth, as you can see also on these images. We're far from the depth that we've drilled at Fenelon. Here again, you can see the depth sticks.
The deepest part of the resource is around 400 m, and there's really not much drilling below that. Our recent drill results have shown that these shoots can be extended, so we will continue on larger step outs there. We also opened up some new areas for expansion, like one of the last drill holes that we reported, where in the east we found three new zones in one of those last holes.
Overall, the combined Detour/Fenelon Gold Trend mineral resource estimate now contains a total of 3.05 million ounces of indicated and 2.35 million ounces of inferred resources, both around 3 g per ton overall grade, which represent, you know, really significant increases both in grade and also in contained ounces since the 2021 resource. Let's look at the plans now for 2023. You know, following up on the updated mineral resource estimates and in anticipation of the upcoming preliminary economic assessment at Fenelon, our 2023 program will be aimed at both expansion of known gold deposits and making new discoveries on the rest of the underexplored land package.
The largest portion, about 1/2 of the budget, will be devoted to Martiniere, where we will be completing expansion drilling with large space step outs on the known gold trend and the ore hosting environments, to continue demonstrating the size potential of this deposit. We'll also start working on various technical studies, such as metallurgy, geotechnical, rock characterization, with the goal to bring this project up to the same level of advancement as Fenelon in order to include it in future economic studies.
At the Fenelon deposit, which, as we've seen, remains open laterally and at depth in multiple directions, we plan to drill around 15,000 m, which is again focused mainly on large step outs of the known gold zones and host environments, as well as the important structures such as the Jeremie Fault and the Sunday Lake Deformation Zone, with the hopes of discovering additional extensions and new gold zones or satellite zones like we've seen at Ripley. The remainder of the CAD 36 million 2023 budget will be devoted to regional exploration in the vicinity of the two known gold deposits, testing some drill-ready targets, and developing our pipeline of other grassroots exploration targets.
Zooming into a couple of these areas, first we're gonna look at the eastern part of the land package. You can see here the Fenelon deposit as a reference. Outside of the drilling that we've done at Fenelon, at the Fenelon Gold System, there's very limited geological information and historic drill testing on the Fenelon property itself and the neighboring Harri and Grasset properties. There are several targets within a few kilometers of the deposit that show geological and geophysical characteristics that are very favorable for the deposition of gold mineralization. Therefore, the 2023 program will drill test some of those priority targets.
You can see with these boxes, some of the extensions of the host rocks and structures that are controlling gold mineralization. You can see with these gray dots, those are the drill holes that exist on the properties. Not all of them are diamond drilling. Some of it is RC or other types of drilling. You can see just going 1 km or 2 km away from the deposit and there's barely any drilling and basically about 20 km strike length here at Grasset with almost no drilling at all. Here on the Grasset Gold Property, which is located east of Fenelon , we've been developing a very promising gold exploration target, which is a strong flexure in the Sambec Deformation Zone, as you can see here.
These flexures are generally very favorable areas. St-Laurent is also sitting at one of these flexures. There's a very folded stratigraphy. These are known to be excellent settings for gold deposition. Looking now at the western part of the land package, centered around the Martiniere deposit. We again have a large number of prioritized exploration targets on the Martiniere property itself, as well as the surrounding Casault and Harri properties. Some of these targets are again ready to be drilled and will be selected for drill testing this year. Some others require a bit more grassroots exploration to prepare them for future drill testing.
An example of that is the Casault east block, where we've flown a very detailed, high-resolution, magnetic survey this year, a drone magnetic survey, which you can see has much better resolution as the regional mag. That has really identified a significant secondary splay of the Sambec deformation zone, which appears to be associated somehow with the Lac des Doigts deformation zone as well, which controls the Martineau deposit and also some other showings in the area.
We've selected now this area here for a sonic drill program, which is sampling basal till along the structure, which will be completed in the first quarter of this year, in the hopes of getting this ready for future drill testing of some of the prospective segments of the structure. Finally, at Casault, the western block has already seen good results from our programs. In 2021, our grassroots drilling outlined the gold-bearing environment. Some of these structures have shown to be gold-bearing. There are, you know, some of our gold intersections are up to almost 7 g per tonne over 2 m.
We'll be following up those results with some field work and some more geophysics. I'll hand it back now to Marz.
Thanks, Attila. As you heard, we're pleased with our achievements since the 2021 mineral resource estimate, and strongly believe in the potential for expansion and discovery, not only at St-Laurent and Martiniere but elsewhere on this extensive land package we control in the Abitibi, which we feel is one of the industry's most promising and prospective. To recap, we've demonstrated large gold systems both at St-Laurent and Martiniere, with more than 3 million ounces in the indicated category and 2.4 million ounces in the inferred category. We're currently working on a preliminary economic assessment for St-Laurent, which we expect to deliver in the second quarter of this year and demonstrate the value of St-Laurent deposits.
We see significant opportunities for growth not only at St-Laurent, which could be a much larger deposit, but also at Martiniere, where we see future improvement in its size for open pit-able as well as underground type resources. We have a large land package which is dramatically underexplored in comparison to the southern belts between Val-d'Or and Rouyn-Noranda. We see potential for multiple discoveries along this land package. We started this year with about CAD 23 million in our treasury, as well as an approximately CAD 4 million, which is expected in this quarter to be received from the Quebec government for the balance of our 2021 refundable tax credits. The balance of that CAD 36 million program is expected to be funded from other sources. I'll now open the meeting up to questions.
Sean Stokes will be reading those questions.
Thanks, Marz. First, an apology. I neglected to introduce a key team member, Robert MacDonald, our GM of Mining Operation and Projects, at the outset. The first question, Marz, is two parts. One is, how is Wallbridge looking at the sequencing of the open pits and underground development? The second part is does the new bulk mining scenario make use of the existing underground workings and in what capacity?
Sure. It's very early to say until the preliminary economic assessment is completed. The indications are that, you know, you have three or four small deposits. Typically, in these, it's advantageous to have some pit material, especially when you're ramping up your production, testing the mill. Also potentially some of those open pits, once they're completed within the first two or three years, that it can be used as a storage for the tailings or your waste rock. Again, all of those would be reviewed in the preliminary economic assessment, at least in the preliminary stage. What was the second part, Sean? Sorry, I.
Does the bulk mining scenario make use of the existing underground workings?
Yeah.
If so, in what capacity?
So the type of production profile that we're looking at today, as mentioned in some of the analogs to Young-Davidson, the current mine workings is only down to about a couple of hundred meters, and potentially the material handling system may require additional infrastructure such as shafts or any other alternatives. Certainly we want to maximize the existing infrastructure that's there, perhaps even in the early stages of the production. So we'll determine those again once through the, you know, review of the all of the mining applications in the preliminary economic assessment.
Okay. We've had a couple questions about when drilling for this resource the MREs was cut off and also when we expect to put out additional results.
Okay. Attila, perhaps you can answer this...
Yeah. The cutoff date for the geologic model and the drilling data that's included here is early November. We've, when we designed the program last year, we fast-tracked all the drilling that was needed for the, you know, in support of this resource estimate to be completed in time. By early November, we had most of the, you know, assays that we were looking for to update this resource. Of course, you know, with the size of our programs, there's always a large number of assays still in the system. We continue to receive more assays, and we'll, you know, we'll continue to announce some more results from the 2022 program.
Okay. We may as well continue with Attila. There's a question, Attila, asking what exploration areas excite you the most.
I think, yeah, it's the ones that I've shown on, on the map. It's gonna be. The next week, we'll spend a lot of time with the geos to try to get to a consensus of what the favorite targets are. Yeah, there's certainly a lot of good targets that, you know, in the last two, three years, we've really focused so much on resource drilling and trying to keep growing the resource that now, you know, we're really looking forward to some of these bigger step-outs and getting to test some of our, some of our ideas to get into some new discoveries. Yeah, I mean, the list is kind of endless. The land package really has a lot of potential. Yeah.
Great. Thanks. There's a question regarding funding for 2023 in terms of current resources and plans to fulfill the drilling program.
I'm gonna revert that to Brian.
Yeah, thanks, Marz and Sean. You can see from what we've disclosed in our news release that there's about CAD 9 million-CAD 10 million that we have to fund. The status of the 2021 refundable tax credit audit is, we've received a draft assessment. We agreed with the minor adjustments, and we're expecting a final assessment in that CAD 4 million to come in in the first quarter. That is pretty much locked and loaded at this point in time. Another source of financing is last year when we filed our tax returns, we claimed refundable, I mean, for last year's taxes, 2022, we will file our returns in April of this year, and we'll be claiming a CAD 8 million-CAD 10 million refund.
We will fast-track that as much as possible. That's another potential source of funding for the year. You know, obviously, we will need to raise some equity, and we'll do that as on an opportunistic basis. The program here is designed to minimize dilution, advance the projects at the same time, and I think we achieve those two goals here, the way it's laid out.
Thanks, Brian. There's a question here regarding advancement of environmental and other studies, and also adding on there if we're looking at any alternatives to material movement versus sinking a shaft at this point.
Yeah. I'll answer that. We've continued doing the environmental baseline study as well as all the required studies that would advance the project to its ultimate stage of production. In this year's budget, we certainly have allocated approximately CAD 3 million in the studies both at Grasset and Martiniere. The studies at Grasset obviously has been quite advanced in terms of environmental baseline and, in fact, some of the required studies for the permitting. That will continue. As Attila mentioned, Martiniere hasn't really seen a lot of environmental baseline work, nor a lot of the geotechnical or metallurgical studies. Therefore, we also have allocated some of that in this year. In terms of infrastructure, again, I'll mention that it's too early.
Certainly, the way the deposit is, it is possible to defer the shaft sinking or shaft alternative in terms of material handling to be able to utilize the ramp access for the upper parts of the deposit partly because the deposit's really starting from surface down to 1,000 m. Once again, those would be answered perhaps more clear in the preliminary economic assessment.
Maybe just to reiterate, Marz, when the PEA will be completed?
As I mentioned, the preliminary economic assessment was commissioned in the fourth quarter of last year, parallel to the MRE. There is a lot of work that's already been done, but obviously the PEA will have to have had the final mineral resource estimate update prior to incorporating that. We expect the PEA to be delivered in the second quarter of this year. Hopefully, as we mentioned, the MRE was expected to be done in Q1, and we managed to actually do it very early in the Q1. We're hoping that we can do the same with the PEA.
Obviously, we need to make sure that the PEA looks at various alternatives in order to ensure that we demonstrate the value of the Fenelon deposit, which we expected based on what we, you know, presented today in terms of its bulk mine ability to be positive.
Okay. Just a question here on timing and the rationale behind issuing the MRE at this point?
I'm not exactly sure the context in which the question was posed, but we drilled about as Attila mentioned, about 125,000 m at Fenelon on additional infill sampling. We felt that we required to provide an updated mineral resource estimate based on what we understood post the 2021 MRE. We believe that in order for us to really demonstrate the value of Fenelon, we needed to complete this MRE now so we can develop the preliminary economic assessment. That's the reason for the timing of that.
Okay.
Sean, just maybe two abbreviations that we used in the presentation. One of them is the DSO that we talked about is really a Deswik Shape Optimizer. Essentially, really look at the stope optimization. When you really look at an underground, when you talk about an underground mine of a deposit, perhaps starting about two years ago, this started. Before that, typically, you would use a Whittle open pits from your mineral resource, and whatever the remaining was, you would consider that as an underground deposit. At our 2021 as well as this year is really based on a stope shape optimization.
The resource is really hopefully, the preliminary economic assessment will have a pretty good conversion factor from the mineral resource estimate to the PEA level. We'll take a look at all of those. That's why the DSO is really a shape stope optimizer to demonstrate the real understanding of the minability of the deposit in that resource. There was another one that we used, it's called the LTM, and just wanna say that that means last 12 months, just for those who may have not received that. All of the numbers that we provide in the comparison in terms of cash costs and all these sustaining costs and grade of the comparable deposits were really the average of the last 12 months.
Okay. There is one question here about efforts by the Quebec government in terms of infrastructure and assistance with respect to infrastructure. I don't know whether we can answer that, but I thought I'll put it out there if we can.
Well, I think one of the key components of this project is a support from your government, wherever you operate. Certainly, Québec has been really embracing exploration and mining development, particularly in this area where as we know Montanoux Montgomery, which is, with the new road improvement, would be about 75 km from Fenelon or thereabouts. Montanoux Montgomery just had one of their operating mine closed by Glencore. Certainly, the opportunities that exist for them and as well as ourselves to use Montgomery as perhaps a center for the supply chain and the labor chain value is really good.
The Quebec government as well as the municipalities and even the First Nation partners are really supportive of all of our efforts in terms of advancing our projects, particularly at Fenelon, but along the entire V2 Fenelon Gold Trend.
That basically covers questions, Marz.
Well, thank you very much, I hope we've answered most of your questions, today. As we went through the presentation, we demonstrated the, value of the, of the current, prospective land package as well as our resources, along this, V2 Fenelon Gold Trend. I encourage you to ask any other questions that you have, either through myself, through email, as it is on our, releases or, Victoria Vargas, who is our, capital markets advisor. We look forward to a, successful 2023, and hoping for, that new discovery along this underexplored land package. Thank you.