Hey, just because people are settling in fairly quickly, I'm gonna go ahead and get started, and I'll say good afternoon, good evening, depending on where in the world you're tuning in from. Looks like a North American and European audience today, so appreciate you joining us very much. Excited to be joined by Contango ORE's President and CEO, Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse, for both an update on Manh Choh and also the upcoming work at Johnson Tract. But before I leave it to Rick, I got just a bit of housekeeping to do, so bear with me for just a couple more seconds. Today's event is being recorded, and the recording will be available early tomorrow morning. It won't be available this evening.
This is also an interactive event, so please do, if you have any questions for Rick at any time during the event, there's a chat box on the bottom right. Please do, ask questions. We'll try to get to as many as we can today, but even if we don't, I'll make sure that, Rick and his team get the questions soon thereafter, so you'll get a response in fairly short order. But that's enough out of me. I'll leave it to Rick for our presentation.
Perfect. Thanks, Romeo, and good afternoon, everyone. Yeah, today I want to update you on our first batch gold production, and then talk about our drilling that's underway at Johnson Tract. I was out there last week, so I wanna give you a sort of an update from the field, if you will. So, forward-looking statement, you guys know this well. So we've had our first production up for the Manh Choh Mine. It's a great milestone to achieve. Meanwhile, we wanna move our other projects forward. Johnson Tract, we're out there drilling now.
Lucky Shot's on care and maintenance right now, but we're working on getting a plan together for next year to get back drilling on that project and continue to advance both these projects and do the same thing we've done with Manh Choh, do a direct shipping ore type of approach, where we're not building a mill and a tailings facility and a power plant for all that. Obviously, that follows our model of reducing our environmental footprint and reduces our capital outlay and gets things into production quicker with a good return for our shareholders. Just our location map, just to talk about our Manh Choh project, located in central Alaska, over towards the Yukon border, where production is now underway.
And then, I'll talk about the Johnson Tract project, which is located in south central Alaska, on the west side of Cook Inlet, kinda just opposite Anchorage. If you look south, southwest out of Anchorage, you're looking right towards Johnson Tract. So first batch production statistics. It's been a very good... July was a really good month for us. We started the gold pour. They started batch processing, I think, ore through the mill on the third or so. They processed 210,000 tons, average grade .276 , which is 9.46 grams per ton. The average grade of the deposit is eight grams per ton. That's a gold equivalent grade.
So you know, we're a little bit, you know, 18% better than the average grade was processed in that first batch. Really good news on the recovery. The recoveries were 95.2%. The feasibility study had our recovery at 90%, so it's good to get five, basically 5% extra gold. That's a good thing. What was produced on-site, we produced a doré bar on-site, or Fort, I should say, Fort Knox produces a doré bar on-site. There were 49,000 ounces of gold contained in the doré, and about 11,000 ounces of silver. And then, there's another 6,000 ounces that are sort of held in inventory, if you will.
They're on the carbon, on the activated carbon, and they'll get processed, probably in the next batch, when we do that in September. That's on a 100% basis, so on our 30% share, as a 30% shareholder of Peak, of the Peak Gold joint venture, our production, our allocated production is for 14,700 ounces of gold, 3,118 ounces of silver. Now, out of that, we delivered into our hedged gold to the tune of about 8,900 ounces at an average price of $2,025, and then we sold spot gold, or sold about 5,800 ounces of gold at the spot value.
And that's it obviously moves around a little bit, but our average price realized was $2,400. So when you blend those two out, the 8,900 ounces and the 5,800 ounces at the two different gold prices realized, it averaged out to $2,188. And of course, the spot price you know there as shown there is was $2,440. We also sold 3,000 ounces of silver at an average price of $27.58. So that meant for total gold sales gold and silver sales of just over $32 million. Of that 6,000 ounces that's in inventory on the carbon. That's about 1,800 ounces to our benefit.
Now, we're also giving guidance that we're gonna have two more batches this year. We're shooting for sort of September, and then batch before the end of the year. And so our total gold production should be somewhere between 30,000 and 40,000 ounces, probably in the neighborhood of 35,000 ounces, is what we're targeting. That's pretty much in line with a half a year's worth of production. Remember, if you go back to the feasibility study, we had an average of 67,500 ounces produced in a year. We started production on schedule in early Q3, and so it's roughly half of a year's worth of production. If we do a little better than that, that'd be great.
We certainly love the gold price at 2,500. Actually, I think we finalized some of our gold sales today, and we did clip some of those gold sales at about $2,500. So that should creep our blended realized price of gold sales up a little bit. So if I go back to the economics that were in the feasibility study, this table came out of that. Our all-in sustaining costs of 1,116 per ounce. We don't have costs yet for the processing end of the thing, of the gold pour or gold processing. We'll get that in Q3, when Kinross reports. So we'll probably be reporting on that probably in October, November time frame.
But we think we're on track. Our mining costs are on budget, our transportation costs are on budget, admin costs at the mine site, we're on budget there. So, you know, we'll get finalized numbers on the processing end of things, but I think I feel reasonably confident that we're gonna be, you know, plus or minus, you know, in that $1,100-$1,200 range there, for our all-in sustaining costs. So that's giving us, on our blended price, certainly giving us a good $1,000+ margin on our gold sales. So, and I wanna talk a little bit about the hedging. We've had a number of questions on the hedging, and as when the...
When our financials for Q2 came out, we had people concerned that we'd lost money on selling gold. The financials are for Q2, and we hadn't sold any gold at that point. I wanna spend the next slide here just talking a bit about that. We did, you know, we hedged. It's 40% of our total gold anticipated gold production based on the feasibility study reserves, and that represents 60% of the next two years of production. Just to kind of frame it there. Obviously, we put the hedges in place to appease the bankers. When we borrowed $60 million from ING and Macquarie, one of the conditions was that we get a guaranteed lock-in price of our gold sales.
That's why we put the hedges in place. The other alternative was to go and raise, you know, $70 million, which, as I think, everybody can appreciate in these challenging gold markets for equities, that would have been a very, very tough job and no doubt very, very dilutive for shareholders. Which is why we chose the debt path. But debt doesn't come... people don't loan you $60 million without a few strings attached, and the hedges represent those strings. If I look at our Q2 financials, I'll draw your attention to just a few numbers here in the highlighted yellow highlights.
You know, you have the derivative in the liabilities section there, the derivative contract liability. So that $17 million number, $17.8, that refers to the hedges that are in place that are current, so being current this year, and that's the derivative value. So you take your, you take your hedge book, and I won't try to explain how this is calculated. If you wanna know how that's calculated, I'll refer you to our CFO, Mike Clark, who's actually on vacation with his family this week. But, but it is, it's a calculation that basically looks at sort of the optionality of the value, option value of those, of those hedges.
Clearly, there's a short term, meaning this year, and then a longer term. The non-current liabilities is a bigger number because that represents the balance of the hedge positions for 2025 and 2026. But those numbers are... They're a calculation. They're not realized. We haven't lost, you know, $18 million this year. They're just a something you have to carry on your books as a potential liability, if, particularly if you don't deliver into those hedges. The other numbers on our statements, our income statements, and that's the unrealized loss on the derivative contract.
So as you're on a quarterly basis, as you're delivering into these things, you have another potential loss if when the gold price is the spot price is higher than your contract price of delivery. There's a delta there. And so you have to, you know, you have to report that. Now, there's a level of. That's why, that's why they call it unrealized, because it doesn't actually happen. We don't actually lose $12 million. We just didn't make the $12 million on those sales because the gold price is $2,400, not $2,025. So we realized a price of $2,025 on the ounces that were delivered into the hedge.
We didn't realize a higher price because we'd committed, we'd entered into a contract to deliver the gold at $2,025. Now, just keep in mind, when we put these in place, the gold price was, I don't know, $1,750, in that $1,750-$1,800 neighborhood. So, when we're putting price there, the gold price was significantly lower. But, and it's not a bad thing that the gold price is higher, because obviously we're making more money than anticipated in the feasibility study and more prices or higher prices than were realized by the hedge price, you know, two years ago. So, that's a sort of a geologist's explanation of how the hedge book works. Happy to answer more questions on it.
And maybe I'll, Romeo, just ask if there are any more specific questions in the chat room that you can direct before we switch gears and talk about Johnson Tract.
Yeah, fair. So there are two questions right now related directly to hedging. I think you've covered it, but it's probably good just to reiterate, just in case anybody else has these questions. So the two are, one from Tony: How does price hedging work on the Contango balance sheet? And then TB asks: How many ounces have to be sold at the hedge price?
I'll do them in reverse order there. The commitment is here on this slide. The 124,600 ounces of gold are sold forward at the $2,025 gold price. Now, we obviously delivered the first batch here. The 8,900 ounces were delivered, so it's the 124,000 minus the 8,900. Each batch that we produce, a portion of the gold, roughly 60% of the gold will be hedged at the $2,025 price, and the balance of the shares, in this case, was 5,800 were sold at the spot.
So that's why we end up with that, what we call that blended price on a weighted basis, between what's sold into the hedge and what's sold at that spot. So again, you know, that hedge is, you know, if the gold price goes up on you, it's not a bad thing. Obviously, we wish we would've, you know, not had the hedges and made $400 more an ounce. But we would've. The only way we would've been able to do that was to raise another $60 million of equity two or three years ago, and that, you know, that was a bridge too far back then. So you put the hedges in place to protect your downside.
So if gold had gone the other way, we just play out that scenario. Let's say, you know, gold went down to $1,500, we'd be laughing about delivering, you know, going and buying gold on the market for $1,500 and realizing a $2,025 price, but then we'd have to sell the rest of our gold at $1,500. That would be a worse scenario. So by protecting our downside with those hedges at $2,025, we've protected the downside. Obviously, that limits the amount of upside you have by the amount that you've hedged, but you're still making money.
Again, you know, our all-in sustaining costs. We think we're on track to deliver into those, plus or minus, and we'll be reporting on those when we report our Q3 financials in November.
Perfect. So if there are any other questions about hedges, please do pose them. I will get to them at the end, but I'll let Rick continue with his presentation for now.
Yeah, thanks, thanks, Romeo. So, I was out at Johnson Tract last week. It was a good visit. I've been out there many, many times before, but this is the first time as, as Contango and as the owner of the property. I've been a geo-tourist before, I guess. And again, this property, Johnson Tract, fits our DSO approach. It's right next to the water. We're about 10 miles from coastal Alaska. It's on land owned by CIRI, Cook Inlet Region, Inc., Alaska Native Tribe. It's private land. They have a right of way to the coast. It's good grade, and it's a simple, very nice ore body. It's 40, averages 40 meters wide. We're gonna come in with a...
As you'll see in the next few slides here, we're gonna come in with an incline adit that'll tap into the bottom of the deposit, so you're mining up. With the 40-meter widths, you're doing a relatively cheap underground bulk type mining. So I think our mining costs are gonna be very, very competitive for this project. Just, you know, a number of pictures out there. The camp is in really good shape. The crew is really motivated. It's a great crew. They've been out here a number of years, and they've got it dialed in. So we're drilling, we're logging the core, and we'll be...
Actually, we just had our first shipment of pulps go out today, and it's just everything's just working as planned and on schedule. So safety is a key part of running any operation. We've all of our policies and procedures in place and the emergency response plan. Obviously, it's a remote location still. You can just fly in there with a fixed wing or the helicopter, but we've got a good plan in the event that something does happen. Hopefully, nothing does. Camp opened on July 11th. We moved the helicopter in on the 19th and got the barge in there, got everything mobilized, the drills up on site, and started drilling on the 26th. We're averaging about 22 people in camp.
It goes up to about 30 or so. We've got capacity, I think, for about 70, so, you know, it's a good, solid camp. We'll probably go to early October with the program. Couple of other things that we're working on besides the drill program, which I'll get into in just a sec. We've engaged a group to do a preliminary economic assessment for us. We think we've got enough data to put our arms around getting a you know, sort of a scoping level document to say that this project really does add a lot of value for the company. Our 404 permit with the Corps of Engineers, COE is Corps of Engineers. That's the permitting agency for what are typically called a wetlands permit.
That's the 404 permit. We've been working on that. We expect that to have happen. I think we've been guiding by the end of the year. I think we'll actually get it by the end of the quarter here. I think that's looking pretty strong. We signed a memorandum of understanding with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. It's the office of Project Management and Permitting. That'll be the group, state permitting agency for permitting the underground adit or incline that'll access the ore body. That work is underway. Obviously, the drill program that's underway is kinda two major aspects to it.
One is just straightforward infill drilling, and the other is to collect a lot of hydrology data, rock quality data, RQD, and geotechnical analysis. We're doing oriented core, and then a whole host of other environmental studies, fish habitat, meteorological weather stations, and fauna and everything else. Quite a bit going on at site. A meeting later this week with representatives from the Cook Inlet, the senior leadership team from Cook Inlet Region, Inc., the Alaska Native Corporation, that owns the land, and that we have a lease arrangement with, a typical, pretty typical mining lease arrangement. They'll receive a royalty, as part of their part of the lease arrangement.
And then, along with that, there's a number of engineering studies that series leading along with environmental work for that conveyance of the easement down to the port site along the coast there. So just some photos from around camp. Obviously, drilling up on the mountain. It's very steep terrain. We're building these big pads. It's a big job. Safety is the first priority. And I'd say that these guys are doing a fantastic job. That middle picture there, that's the oriented core, very technically oriented work. Chris Brown's our advisor on that. He's one of the best in the world on doing oriented core.
We've got a Niton out there, Dave Larimer, our exploration manager's testing his skills with the Niton. So that gives you a good estimate of copper, lead, zinc, gold, silver right away. Not so good on the gold, but pretty good on silver and the base metals. You know, we need over a gram of gold. So we're actually... We do see gold with the Niton, but it's really more for base metals than silver. We know that our silver is in galena.
That was one of the things we were testing here, just to figure out where the silver is, and we did a bunch of tests, and it seems to be pretty consistently in the galena, which is a good thing 'cause that's galena is an easy thing to concentrate. So we should end up with a really good concentrate, lead con here. You know, just working with the team there on logging the core and just getting everybody having good geologic discussions. And then the other middle photo there on the bottom, we have a prep lab on site, and this is, it's a really high-tech lab. It's really well-run.
We produce a pulp on site, which means we can get our turnarounds, you know, in probably two to three weeks once we ship those pulps out. And the first set of pulps went out today. So hopefully, within, I don't know, three, four weeks, we'll be reporting results to you. So very exciting to see that get underway. The drilling to date, we've completed three holes. We're numbering them from the top end down towards the bottom end. But hole eight there, the green one, goes right through the right through the guts of the ore body, and that's... We're not trying to wow anybody with a fantastic hole. I'm sure it will be a fantastic hole, but it is infill.
It's mainly just to get the metallurgical variation of the ore body. We've got a number across the strike of the ore body. We really wanna understand what it looks like on the long direction as well. So we've kind of crisscrossed it with the other two holes. And then the other big thing here is hydrology, spending a lot of time putting pumps in and PT stations. So we're getting all that work covered off here as well to get a good handle on the hydrology, both in the hanging wall rocks there and in the ore body itself. So we'll... All the rest of the holes are relatively shallow holes.
They're just crisscrossing the ore body right from you know just right near the surface there. So there'll be another eight or nine holes like that. View from camp, we've shown this before, but it just shows the road that's currently being permitted. Basically, just a, it's a couple. I think it's about three miles long and heads up. Actually, no, sorry, less than two miles long, heads up here at the base of the Dacite Dome, and that's a post-mineral rock. It's a good rock to put our development work in, right in the footwall of the ore body. You can see in this perspective, the Johnson Tract ore body sits in this gut right here.
Makes it really difficult to drill down dip, 'cause it's dipping underneath the mountain. You know, the mountain's going up a couple of thousand feet there, so your holes get deep in a hurry and just get at a bad angle. So this tunnel in the footwall will really solve that in terms of getting access to the rest of the ore body, so we can do infill work. It'll also be our development ramp. So once we can mine this thing, starting at, you know, the bottom of where we know it now and then mining up, which is, of course, you know, cheaper when you let gravity do the heavy lifting or the heavy dropping, if you will. Then, obviously, it opens up this whole area for exploration.
The plan, again, is to get the drilling done this year, supporting the permit application for the tunnel in 2025 , and then by 2026 , we should be in a place to be able to put the tunnel, get all the preparations in place and get the contractor in place to get that accomplished in 2026 . Roughly a year to build the tunnel and then a year to drill the ore body out. Those are rough timelines. And of course, that's part of our overall plan here with our. I call it our five-year plan. We are now in production at Manh Choh, and you know, we're on schedule, and we're now delivering into our expected production profile, averaging 67,500 a year.
On a $2,100 blended gold basis, we should be clearing over $60 million of free cash flow. Obviously, some of that will get used to advance Lucky Shot, which we'll plan to do next year. We've got a plan there to outline 300,000-400,000 additional ounces on top of the 100,000 ounces that we've got outlined, and then develop a mine plan that can deliver 30,000-40,000 ounces a year. Give us two, three years to do that. Meanwhile, we're advancing Johnson Tract permitting, and by 2027, we should be drilling underground and developing a mine plan by 2028 for Johnson Tract.
So a lot of work outlined, but I think these projects, on a project basis, we should be able to be in a position to produce over two hundred thousand ounces of gold equivalent here. And obviously, a lot of work between now and then to demonstrate that, but I think we've got a good plan here and a good team to execute. So happy to answer more questions. I'll turn it back to you, Romeo.
Yeah. Appreciate that, Rick. There's one kind of broad one from the audience I think is worth chatting about. That's, DLB Ross asks: How's your experience in Manh Choh informing Contango's decisions on other Alaska projects and prospects in the future? What have you learned, and what are you taking into to new projects?
Yeah, I think the main thing is, really. Well, it's a couple of things. One, looking for simple ore bodies, and specifically from a permitting standpoint. One of the things that just impressed me is the fact that we were able to permit Manh Choh in nine months. We only needed, well, the only federal permit we needed was the wetlands 404 permit for building the road, the 6% road that connects the deposit to the highway. And that disturbed 45.6 acres, if I remember right. And so that was, you know, being able to permit something, any mine in a year, inside of a year is a pretty amazing feat.
And obviously, you know, we have a lot more straightforward time permitting getting state permits. So your mine operating permit, you know, you have a good mine plan and a good plan, and you can manage water. That's what the state is concerned about. And so again, that's relatively easy to do in a year period of time, is putting a good sensible mine plan together, and if you've got water that needs to be treated, you can build a water treatment plant to do that. In fact, we don't. I don't know that we'll ever use the water treatment plant we have at Manh Choh.
We might if we get a lot of water, but we, we have a very large area where we can contain the water that any, any water that falls on our head, we have to... It, that becomes our water. So we have a big, big water pond that we put all the water in, then we, then we reuse the water for all sorts of purposes. So that's, again, that's relatively easy to plan for and to permit for. So I think that is, that's really the big takeaway, is if you've got a good quality deposit, good grade, that can, can afford the, the the transport costs to get to a mill, then the next, the next thing is that, you know, first is grade, then the next thing is: Is it a relatively easy ore body to, to permit?
Things that are above the water table are a lot easier to permit than things below the water table, because you have to worry about a lot more water when you're below the water table. It's not that you can't do it, it's just that it's a much bigger, much bigger permitting issue, a lot more data to collect over a longer period of time. And obviously, it's gonna cost you a lot more to handle all that water. So, I think those are the, those are probably the two real takeaways, in terms of what really focuses our model, and that's why we acquired Lucky Shot, and that's why we acquired Johnson, because they fit, they fit all those conditions.
They're near infrastructure, they're good grade, they're good quality ore bodies, and sometimes it's a good quality ore body just because of grade, and that's the case of Lucky Shot. It's just, you know, at 14 grams per ton, it's a really high grade, so you can afford to mine it, even though it's not at the best of geometries. It dips at 30-40 degrees, which is not ideal geometry for underground mining. You can do it, it's just, you know, costs a little more, but when you got 14 grams, you can afford to pay for it. So. And then, the other thing is landownership.
You know, owning, working on private land, and working on private land that's owned by an Alaska Native tribe or an Alaska Native corporation, in the case of Johnson, that also makes it easier. When the landowner wants to mine, obviously, that's what, you know, that's the first order of business. When you're working on federal land. It's public land. You have to go through that whole debate about whether that's the best use of public land, and there's lots of folks out there who don't think it is. So, when you're working on private land, you get to kinda lead with the fact that that was, you know, that's what the purpose of that land is for.
Patented mining claims, and then in the case of CIRI, land that they selected as part of their Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act rights. So, yeah, those. I think those are the important takeaways. But good question. Great question.
Yeah, those are, I think, key learnings moving forward, so that's, that's great. One question, just changing tacks a little bit. Somebody asked, what's the plan for the Amanita prospects?
Yeah, so early days there. We just saw an opportunity, you know, a company that was, you know, had a, I don't know, trading at a $1 million, $2 million market cap, and they had a nice land position in Alaska. We like the Fairbanks District. You know, there's a lot of gold being produced out of the Fairbanks District. I mean, Fort Knox has produced, I think they're running close to 10 million ounces now, and I think they'll celebrate that at some point here. And there's just been a lot of alluvial gold found all around Fairbanks, and that's why Fairbanks is here. It's here because of the gold, and it's here because it's an important transportation hub for central Alaska, or interior Alaska.
So, yeah, it's more of a, you know, a long-term strategy of looking at the Fairbanks District, which has a lot of good geology. And so we don't have a specific plan yet put together for Amanita, but we're certainly working on it. We see the potential there for a 500,000 to 1 million-ounce deposit in the historic area that's been identified. But there hasn't really been any significant work done on it in probably, I don't know, close to 10 years, I'd say. So we're gonna spend some time digging through all the information, all the data, and put together a good plan. Hopefully, yeah, we'll definitely get out there next year.
I'm just-- I won't commit to drilling it just yet, but 'cause we wanna really go through the data and decide what we're gonna do there. And the other property that came along with it is Golden Zone. There's some nice good grade copper, gold, pyrite associated with a series of porphyry type deposits. So very, very interesting geology there, and again, right off the highway, so we like it for those reasons.
Great. One question about Johnson Tract. What's the distance from the future portal to the seacoast by future road?
As the crow flies, it's 10 miles. As you build a road, you know, roughed in, it'd be, you know, sort of somewhere in the 15-20-mile range, as you sort of wind around the, up across the, over the, over the valley there.
Makes sense. Rendaswe from the chat asked-
Just to put that in context, that's the same distance of road that we built for Manh Choh.
Oh, there you go. Perfect. Rendaswe from the chat asked: what are your thoughts on extending Manh Choh's production life?
Exploration, so we've got a $4.7 million exploration program ongoing now. We'll probably wrap that up in the next month or so here. Winter seems to be fast approaching here in Alaska. The geese were heading south yesterday when I was barbecuing on the deck, so we'll probably be reporting results from this year's program. It was mostly drilling. There's a little bit of reconnaissance work that we're doing in the south end, further south in the Tetlin Lease area. But most of the dollars were spent drilling, so I mean, look, it's a very high-grade deposit. It's a skarn, and it's pretty.
You have to drill a lot of holes in these things to find an ore body. So, yeah, we'll report results here in the fall time. I'm gonna guess November-ish timeframe. But, I'm pretty bullish. As you know, there's a strong geochem anomaly associated with the outcropping mineralization, and it just trails on down the ridge, and there are several other nice anomalies that are certainly undertested, as is the area between the two deposits. The North and main deposit are... They dip towards each other, so that was a natural place to test out. So, yeah, I'm confident we'll find more ore, and hopefully it's good enough grade to be able to send up to the Fort Knox Mill.
Awesome. We're bouncing back and forth on projects. I apologize for that.
Easy.
Matson asked, back to Johnson Tract. I know it's still a long ways out, you know, not long comparatively, but long in time. Any idea or thoughts on logistics in regard to moving the material out, who's gonna be processing, et cetera?
Yeah, short answer is no, not at this time. I mean, obviously, you know, we'll have to build a road to connect to a barge site. It's been referred to as a port site. All we need is a barge site. It's not... It'll be a fairly small, you know, barge-type access, or just build a ramp out of gravel material. We'll have plenty of material from the development work at the underground at Johnson to build, you know, sort of a barge site and to help build the road out there and all that. In terms of where the ore will go, having a number of early-stage discussions, but that's really all we can say. There's...
When you have a good grade lot, it's you know lots of people like good grade going through their mill. So I think I've said this before, if you've got somebody who's running five grams per ton of ore through their mill, and somebody brings you know nine or 10 to them, there's always a discussion to be had. There's a deal to be made. So stay tuned on that. You know this isn't gonna happen with respect to Johnson Tract. We're gonna take our time. We've got a number of options of folks to talk to that are all let's say you know barge accessible. That's obviously the first step. Wherever it goes, it's gonna be on a barge.
Where it goes after that, you know, whether it goes on a rail or it goes on a highway to, to an existing facility, there's certainly a number of folks to talk to, and we're in those early stages at this point.
Great, thanks. Now jumping projects yet again. Somebody notes the potential contribution of Lucky Shot is significant. Just curious, what were the acquisition costs for Lucky Shot? And then looking forward, are there other such opportunities, that are similar?
Yeah. Short answer is, yeah, the acquisition cost. Yeah, that's a rusty file cabinet in my brain now, but I think it was $10 million. You'll have to look at our disclosure on that. There are some milestone payments if we achieve certain milestones of production in the future. But in terms of sunk costs, that's what we acquired it for. What was the other part of the question, sorry?
Are there any other similar opportunities?
Oh!
-you can pursue?
Yeah. Short answer is, you know, there's, what, are there three or four thousand junior exploration companies all looking for something? When we apply our filter to it, you know, near infrastructure, good grade, and relatively simple, you get rid of about 95% of them. Most everybody's looking for big things, and when you look for big things in today's world, they seem to be mostly a, you know, a gram or a subgram. You know, people who are developing 10 million ounce resources at half a gram, I just don't have a lot of time for. So, the short answer is, yes, there are. There are not a lot of them, and especially when we go, you know, go do due diligence on things.
You know, I think the things that we're gonna take. We'll be looking at, and we've got plenty on our plate right now, so, you know, we're not in a hurry to go do something else. You know, you always look around and see what else is out there. You know, things that are in a hub and spoke camp type situation, where you've got a central mill and there are other things in the neighborhood that are of quality and can afford the truck ride or the barge ride or the rail ride or whatever it is, are out there. I think they are out there.
Not to get off topic here, but, you know, we have a $2,500 gold price, and the market hasn't moved a lot yet for the junior space.
Mm-hmm.
Majors are starting to get some respect on their cash flows, and I think Contango should attract that same attention because we're... You know, we just sold $32 million worth of gold. And, again, I don't have my cash costs yet, but, you know, you can do some quick math. If we're making over a $1,000 margin on that, we're doing pretty good. So, I think we'll get rerated as the market understands that, we're, you know, we're gonna have three more or two more gold pours this year, and we're gonna, you know, deliver 30-40 thousand ounces of gold at a good margin. That'll put us in a good, good place. So, we've got two other really good projects.
And of course, exploration, as we talked about at Manh Choh, will continue, and that's about adding years to the mine life. But yeah, I think we're in a good place, and we're gonna be very selective. If we look at other things, it's gonna be very, very selective, and it's definitely gonna have to be very accretive to the company.
Perfect. I got one question about Johnson Tract, and then two kind of recap, finance questions, so we can jump back to slides if we need to. The one question on Johnson Tract, they note there's a petition going on to create a beluga protection zone in the Tuxedni Bay area. So they're curious if the road to the port would be outside of this area, and generally, how it'd affect the project.
Yeah, sorry, that's really early. That's, I think it was just announced a year, maybe a month ago or so. It's the Center for Biological Diversity and, I can't remember the name of the other group now. It's certainly something we're aware of, and we're tracking, and, very importantly, Cook Inlet Region Corp is tracking, as are, I'm sure, a number of the oil and gas producers in the Cook Inlet. It's a very productive oil and gas basin. So yeah, there'll be a fair bit of scrutiny on that. There certainly are belugas in the area. I've certainly seen them in the Tuxedni Bay there. It's a beautiful area. So it definitely is something we're tracking.
But it's pretty early days to say how that'll be implemented. These things definitely take time. And I'll note that CIRI definitely has rights to build an access road and a port facility. So, you know, CIRI's a pretty serious Alaska Native Corporation, and I think their, you know, their rights will be upheld because they were passed by the federal government. So, I think there's definitely. We wanna do things in a way that obviously, nobody's interested in destroying the beluga population, so we'll conduct our business accordingly.
Perfect. Three finance questions. We'll just rattle through them. If you wanna throw the slide up, feel free. T. Decker asked what the cash flow projections for this year and next year are.
If I can just do simple math, you know, and this is obviously a very forward-looking statement, I guess. If we're producing. Let's call it midpoint, 35,000 ounces of gold. And we're in the neighborhood of that $1,100 all-in sustaining costs. You know, we should have, you know, $35 million come out of that. Now, that's total production, so, you know, we've already gotten money for it. Now, we don't have the costs for it yet, but, that last, that 30. If I say $35 million, that would be net of the $1,100 costs. Obviously, we've got to pay the bankers off.
That's an important thing, so the, you know, the hedges. The hedges don't pay the bankers off, they just guarantee a price at which we can pay them off. So, that's, yeah, but we're paying the bankers off, and we're reducing the hedge book as we go along here. So, yeah, I think hopefully that answered the question.
Yeah, I think so. There's another question, same-ish topic, but concerning the hedge book. Is there a minimum amount of ounces that have to be delivered monthly, quarterly, et cetera?
Quarterly. It's, we put the hedge book together was based on the mine plan. And so... And that's something you can revisit. You can move these hedges around a little bit. There's a little bit of a cost to it, but not huge. So, you know, if we're gonna have a really good quarter, we might wanna load up a few more hedges into that delivery into it. So there, you know, there's a little bit of flexibility in it, but short answer is, there we're hedged roughly 40%... Sorry, roughly 60%, of the ounces delivered in a quarterly period.
Perfect. One last question, unless somebody sneaks one in. Robov asks: Sorry if this has already been addressed, but any chance of a TSX listing in the near future?
Yeah, so I've had that question a couple of times. I really don't see any advantage to paying the extra fees associated with TSX. Canadian shareholders can very easily trade stock through, you know, the various platforms that exist today. So, there's not really an advantage. I would say the only time we might think about it is if we had a Canadian property, and, you know, that might make sense then. I don't know. You know, flow-through is a blessing and a curse. I think it's helped make the difficult markets that we have for junior companies, 'cause everybody gets used to that flow-through financing.
I mean, I'm reading today about Canadians complaining that you know, a foreign company, Gold Fields, bought Osisko, and it's like, well, because we don't have, we don't have a really good market for raising money in Canada anymore. So, you know, I don't want to, you know, get too political or anything, but it just, it's, it's not really a good situation that the Canadian markets are in for raising money, and particularly for raising larger money. I think it's, it's just not going in a good direction. So I'll stop there before I dig a hole for myself. But short answer is, no plans for right now.
As a Canadian, we do just like to complain, so you can, you can expect that in any direction. Rick, thank you so much for running through this and everybody who joined today. I know it's a pretty, pretty big audience, and for the folks asking questions, really, really appreciate your time. If you have anything else, any additional questions, please do reach out. We'll make sure that Rick and his team get back to you as soon as possible. But otherwise, everybody, have a great day. Thanks for joining us.
Thank you much. Bye-bye.
Cheers.