Gentlemen, and welcome to the Ivanhoe Electric Santa Cruz Project Initial Assessment Conference Call. At this time, all lines are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. If at any time during this call you need assistance, please press star zero for the operator. I'll now turn the conference over to Ivanhoe Electric's Executive Chairman and Founder, Robert Friedland. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you very much. To all of you that are attending this conference call on behalf of Ivanhoe Electric, welcome. We have spent approximately 14 months since the initial public offering of Ivanhoe Mines on the New York Stock Exchange in pulling together a world-class management team based in Phoenix, Arizona, headed by Taylor Melvin, who will be speaking to you soon, along with a number of our key participants available to answer questions. What we're building here and what we're defining in a preliminary evaluation now is a pink unicorn, a truly green copper mine, incorporating world's best practice, exploiting unique geological advantages by just taking the icing on the cake of a buried, hidden porphyry copper center in the heart of the technology corridor of Arizona.
Very few mines like this have ever been discovered globally because of their amazing metallurgical characteristics. It's all oxide copper. The majority of the copper will be elementary grade, grade A cathode, produced right in the heart of Arizona, which has produced 10% of the copper in the world's history of the production of that critical metal. We're all very proud of this development and very happy with the enormous progress made by this team, that the market recognition of about a 37% increase in our share price since our IPO last year. It's only been 14 months since our IPO.
We're especially happy to have Ma’aden, the Saudi Arabian national mining champion, join us as a major shareholder in the company, and to join us in a joint venture where we intend to find many more mines like this with copper, gold, and other electric metals in Saudi Arabia. So at the outset, I'd like to emphasize, we're defining for you today the opening note in a symphony, the first bite at the top of the cherry at the mine project west of Casa Grande, Arizona. This is a project that will produce very high quality, long-term employment for Arizona citizens, who could be very proud of their contribution to the greening of the world economy and the production of a metal without which we can never even attempt an energy transition to leave a better world for our kids and our grandkids.
This project is truly the project that everyone is looking for in the United States. It will attract very wide media attention, governmental interest, and show the world that mining can and indeed is being reinvented by our team for the electrification of everything. So with that, I'll turn this over to Taylor Melvin. Taylor had a lifetime of experience at Phelps Dodge and then at Freeport-McMoRan. He's been in Arizona a long time. We're very fortunate to have him. And with that, we'll turn it over to our copper man in Phoenix. Taylor.
Thank you, Robert. Appreciate all those kind and quality words about our project. Let me add my good morning to everyone, and thank you for joining the Ivanhoe Electric conference call and webcast to review the initial assessment for the Santa Cruz Copper Project in Arizona. The completion of this initial assessment is a result of a tremendous amount of work by our talented team, and it's an important milestone for the Santa Cruz project. Evan, if you could please advance the slide for me. Before we get started, today's call contains forward-looking statements. I'd ask you to please refer to the statements included in this presentation and in today's news release, both of which have been posted on our website. A replay of this call will be made available on our website at ivanhoeelectric.com. Then we can get off that slide.
In addition to our Executive Chairman, Robert Friedland, we are pleased to have today on the call with us, Glen Kuntz, who's our Senior Vice President of Mine Development, Graham Boyd, who's our Senior Vice President of Exploration, and other members of our senior management team will be available to answer questions after the call. We're here today to talk about our Santa Cruz project in Arizona. Santa Cruz is one of our company's many electric metals exploration projects in the US and globally, including the exploration joint venture that Robert mentioned with Ma’aden in Saudi Arabia, where we're deploying our Typhoon technology to explore for minerals on a vast area of the Arabian Shield.
At Santa Cruz, on the next slide, the initial assessment that we're discussing today is a preliminary study of the economic and technical potential for a high-grade, underground copper mine with a small surface footprint. It is a result of a tremendous effort by Glen and his team, working closely together with our consultants, and it represents a significant milestone for the Santa Cruz project and our company. The study focuses on a 5.9 million tons per year underground copper mine, supported entirely by the high-grade, exotic oxide and enriched domains contained in the Santa Cruz and East Ridge deposits. Highlights of our initial assessment include estimated life of mine production of 1.6 million tons of copper being produced over a 20-year mine life. Approximately 1 million of those tons are expected to be produced on-site as 99.99% pure copper cathode.
The remaining 600,000 tons will be produced as concentrate that's approximately 48% copper by weight. Our estimated life of mine C1 cash costs are approximately $1.36 per pound of copper produced, and our estimated after-tax NPV, using an 8% discount rate and flat $3.80 per pound copper, is $1.32 billion with an IRR of 23%. Those valuation numbers include estimated initial capital of approximately $1.15 billion and sustaining capital of slightly below $1 billion. Our initial assessment base case assumes that 70% of the project's electricity requirements will come from renewable energy. This results in very low estimated Scope 1 and Scope 2 emissions of 0.49 tons of carbon dioxide equivalent per ton of copper produced. That's exceptionally low for our industry.
In Arizona, as you know, this is a great place for solar energy, and thanks to our acquired land package, we have an abundance of flat land for potential solar projects. It's also worth reiterating that we control all of the private surface land and the mineral rights encompassing the entire Santa Cruz Project. You can go to the next slide, please. As we've discussed before, the Santa Cruz Project is located on nearly 6,000 acres of private land just west of Casa Grande, Arizona, located between Phoenix and Tucson, just off of the I-10 corridor. The land that we acquired in May includes associated water rights, and the project enjoys excellent access to established infrastructure, including interstate highways, rail lines, and the electrical power grid.
It's also worth noting that you can get to this site in about 45 minutes from the Phoenix International Airport. On the next slide, as I mentioned earlier, we expect the Santa Cruz project to have a very modest surface footprint. While this illustrative map might be a little hard to see, the project is currently contemplated by the initial assessment, utilizes only about one-third of our total land package. You can see on this map, the multicolored boxes to the west of the land area represent various components of the potential surface infrastructure, and the green shaded areas show where we anticipate the potential to locate renewable energy infrastructure. Adding conceptual phase solar energy facilities to our project adds about 900 acres to our estimated, total land use.
At this point, I'm gonna turn the call over to Glen Kuntz, who's gonna walk you through more details about our initial assessment and the Santa Cruz project.
Thank you, Taylor. Good morning, everyone. The initial assessment is a pivotal milestone for the Santa Cruz Copper Project. And in particular, when you're looking at this slide, you'll see that the infrastructure that is located on the west side, that Taylor touched on with the purple and boxes or purple and orange boxes, is basically to the west of the ore body and the tailings storage is to the right of the ore body. We purposely created that environment so that way we have flexibility, and we can actually expand on this footprint if need be in the future. Next slide. Kevin? The initial assessment focuses exclusively on the high-grade exotic oxide and rich domains of the Santa Cruz and East Ridge deposits. The oxide and rich domains of the Texaco deposits are currently not included in the study.
Future studies could evaluate the potential addition of the large primary sulfide domains at the Santa Cruz and the Texaco deposit, which are subject to market conditions. Next slide, Evan. The initial assessment envisions a phased approach to reduce the initial capital requirements of the project. The phased approach will focus on mining the upper portion of the exotic and oxide zones of the Santa Cruz and East Ridge deposits before additional development capital is required to extend the twin declines to access the lower portion. The life of mine mineralized material is expected to total 105.2 million tons, grading 1.5% total copper. The majority of the mineralized material will come from the Santa Cruz deposit. Mine access is via twin declines of 4.3 kilometers to reach the upper portion of the East Ridge and Santa Cruz deposits.
The declines will support the movement of people, equipment, ventilation, and mineralized material. Two vent shafts will support the intake and the exhaust. Mining is contemplated using industry-standard long hole stoping and drift and fill mining methods, and a combination of tailings and cement paste as backfill for support. These applied mining methods are a safe, efficient, flexible, and cost-effective approach to the 15,000 ton per day operation. Next slide. The mine processing flowchart shown on slide 10 depicts the solvent extraction, electrowinning, SX-EW, in a conventional froth flotation, ultimately producing a 99.99% pure copper cathode and a 48% copper concentrate. The flowchart is a conventional design for treating high-grade mixed copper oxide and sulfide mineralized material.
Based on our multi-stage test work, we have applied a 95.4% average recovery in the initial assessment. The chart on slide 11 illustrates the estimated production profile over a 20-year mine life. The initial assessment outlines an average annual production in the first 10 years of approximately 85,000 tons of copper. Average life of mine C1 cash costs are estimated at $1.36 per pound, with little year-over-year variability. The estimated life of mine operating costs are supported by the high tonnage throughput, which uses economy of scale to manage production and operating costs. It incorporates a technologically advanced electric production fleet that allows Ivanhoe Electric to maximize productivities, including automation and tele-remote mining, to effectively capture these opportunities. Next slide, Lynn. The chart on slide 12 illustrates the potential cumulative cash flow over the life of mine.
The initial assessment outlines a three-year construction phase, expending $1.15 billion in initial capital costs. Sustaining capital is estimated to total $0.98 billion for the life of mine. The initial assessment projects the life of mine revenue at a copper price of $3.80 per pound to be $12.87 billion. The initial assessment outlines an undiscounted pre-tax cash flow of $5.22 billion, a pre-tax NPV at an 8% discount rate of $1.64 billion, and an IRR of 25.1%. On an after-tax basis, the initial assessment generates an after-tax NPV at an 8% discount rate of $1.32 billion and an after-tax IRR of 23%. The initial assessment demonstrates a break-even at a flat $3.80 copper price between years three and four of production.
I'll now hand it back over to Taylor for the next slide.
Hi. Sorry about that. Can you all hear me? My line just got dropped.
Yes, we can hear you, Taylor.
Sorry about that. Are you to slide 13 yet, Glen?
Correct. We just started on slide 13 and handed it off to you yourself.
I appreciate that. That was a little bit of a curveball with a line that went silent. So, back to slide 13. Now, this slide shows an illustrated valuation sensitivity to changes in copper price, capital expenditures, and operating expenditures. As you can see, the project is quite sensitive to copper price movements. Our base case model, which is run at $3.80 per pound, has tremendous upside when you look at illustrative copper prices that are in the marketplace from other third parties, including Citibank's long-term price in 2030 of $4.85. So this project has an attractive cost profile and, you know, tremendous upside, in our view, as in a world that we all believe where, you know, copper prices will be more attractive. So we've shown you this illustration of various copper prices.
On the next slide, one of the key attributes of the design parameters of our initial assessment is the incorporation of 70% renewable energy. Under the initial assessment base case, the project is estimated to produce 490 kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent per ton of copper produced. This would place Santa Cruz Project's carbon dioxide emissions per ton of copper produced among the lowest in the world, according to Wood Mackenzie data. It's worth noting that as part of our future studies, we're exploring the potential to achieve 100% renewable power through the incorporation of on-site geothermal. We're in the early days of studying that alternative, but the early results are encouraging, and Glen and his team are doing tremendous work on that initiative.
Obviously, with 100% renewable energy, the carbon dioxide emission profile of the project improves even further. On slide 15, Evan, you can see how our estimated CO2 emission levels compare with current U.S. copper mining operations. Again, this is based on available data from industry consultant Wood Mackenzie. Moving to slide 16, beyond the potential for industry-leading CO2 emission levels, you can see here that our initial assessment's estimated C1 cash costs of $1.36 per pound fall in the second quartile of the industry's cost curve. That's an incredible achievement in this level of study by Glen and his team, particularly for an underground copper mining operation in the United States.
On the next slide, slide 17, when you put the initial assessment, production, and cost estimates together, you can see that the Santa Cruz project has the potential to be a significant source of new copper production in the United States, with very attractive operating costs. In summary, we are very excited to share the results with you from our Santa Cruz initial assessment, and we're very excited about Santa Cruz's potential to become a new source of responsibly produced clean copper in Arizona. We're advancing studies for a modern, high-grade underground copper mine that can deliver 99.99% pure copper cathode on-site and utilize renewable energy and modern technologies, according to the initial assessment.... We believe the Santa Cruz project can become a significant supplier of clean copper in the United States and a significant source of high-quality jobs for Arizona, Arizonans.
In closing, I'd like to add, this is a very exciting time for our company. We're exploring for the right metals at the right time and in great jurisdictions like the United States and Saudi Arabia, utilizing our proprietary Typhoon and CGI technologies. As you've heard today, we're advancing studies for a modern, underground, high-grade copper mine in Arizona with a low carbon dioxide footprint. At this point, operator, we would like to turn the call, turn the call open for any questions from participants.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. Should you have a question, please press the star followed by the one on your touchtone phone. You will hear a three-tone prompt acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift the handset before pressing any keys. First question comes from Andrew Mikitchook at BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning, team Ivanhoe. Congratulations on the initial assessment. Kind of go to a two-part question that maybe for Dan and Graham at the same time, depending how you guys want to handle it. In terms of what's included into this mine plan and what's excluded, how much flexibility is there in the mine plan for what Graham's, you know, geological teams find in terms of changing or redefining the shape or expanding the shapes of Santa Cruz or Texaco or other zones? And how would that impact the infrastructure you're building and the permitting effort? Is that all kind of all inclusive into one, or is that a lot of different things? I'm not sure. It's a lot of-
Andrew, thanks for the question. Andrew, thanks for the question, and good to hear from you. Thanks for being on the call today. And I'm gonna let Glen and Graham talk more about this, but we've done a tremendous amount of drilling to, you know, delineate and define the resource that supports the initial assessment. And the work that's been done has been done purposefully to retain the optionality, you know, for, you know, in the future and, you know, depending on economic conditions and copper markets and prices, to incorporate the primary resources sometime down the road. But we did a lot of work to define the oxide resource and to build this initial assessment around that high-grade oxide cap, if you will.
I'll turn it over to Glen and Graham to supplement that.
Sure. Hey, Andrew, this is Glen. How are you doing?
I'm good.
Excellent. Excellent. So you, you know, when you first looked at the resource, you would remember that the overall Santa Cruz resource was kind of, the cutoff grade was about 0.7% copper. And inside the initial assessment, the cutoff grade for the longhole stoping is about 0.8% copper, and then for the drift and fill, we're using 1%. So we're using slightly higher cutoff grades than actually what the mineral resource was. So the mineable material, which is 105 million tons, is falling within it. Since we've been actively drilling over 65 holes this past year and counting, that are basically further defining this resource, which allows us basically flexibility in the approach to mining.
We've put all of our current infrastructure into the footwall of the ore body, so to speak, which gives us flexibility, not just to mining the oxide and exotic material and the chalcopyrite material, but also in the future, it allows us to access the primary material if we choose so. So it's set up so that we do have flexibility for the future.
Then how far would it be to stretch the infrastructure towards Texaco? It doesn't look that far on a map. Is it, is it challenging from a mining point of view or, or a permitting point of view?
From a permitting perspective, it doesn't change. From a distance perspective, it's a few kilometers away, about from the infrastructure to kind of the far edge of Texaco, it's about 3 kilometers as a crow flies, so to speak. From the East Ridge, you can kind of see on that map where the East Ridge is located, it's closer. It's about, you know, I'll call it about 1.5 kilometers, more or less. So as we continue to drill in the Texaco, in that Texaco Ridge area, and if we can bring, for lack of a better word, mineralize closer to East Ridge, it definitely changes the approach to that area.
Right. And maybe just like a few minutes out of Graham, what-
Sure.
To what degree do you think the exotics or the higher grade portions now are delineated, or is there still further upside from further infill drilling, you know, these quite valuable shoots, pods, I don't know what you want to call them, of mineralization?
Yeah, sure. We've actually, you know, this, this resource and the mining shapes are based on the 2022 end resource. And so since then, we've actually disclosed some additional, you know, exotic hits.
... So, for example, I'm just pulling it up on the website here. We've got, I think it was hole 58, I believe, and Glen, correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think, yeah, we had about 55 meters at just over 3% copper. So we believe these exotic zones will, will get a little bit bigger here.
We have more exploration work to do on...
Yeah.
On our extensive land package. I mean, maybe comment on the southwest.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, the exploration program is gonna continue. As Glen said, we're working on trying to find a way to connect Texaco into potential future development and adding the southwest target that we found hypogene sulfides in this year, the past year, and looking for kind of the high-grade oxide cap to that. So these are two of the early focus areas for the exploration program this year.
Okay. We'll, I'll, I'll hand the microphone off to the next question. Thank you very much for your answers. I might come back.
Thanks, Andrew.
Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. As a reminder, should you have any questions, please press star one. Next question comes from Farooq Hamed at Raymond James. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone, and thanks for the call today. Just wanted to maybe... Your, I guess, operating plan. I recall when you put out the resource, there was some discussion about the type of mine that you would build, the type of mine, mining method you would use, and, and maybe some focus on how you would get the material to surface. So I noticed in the initial assessment, you've decided to use a Rail-Veyor. So maybe just around that, I just had some questions. Maybe if you can give us some insight into how you went about choosing the Rail-Veyor technology as opposed to conveyor or trucking to surface.
And then maybe also, given we're looking at about a 15,000-ton per day operation, are there examples of a Rail-Veyor system being used for that size of underground mine and for this distance of haul, which I imagine would be that 4.3 kilometers? So maybe that would be my first question.
Sure. This is Glen. Go ahead, Taylor.
No, no, no. Thank you, Farooq. Go ahead, Glen.
Evan, could you go to slide 9, maybe just to kind of set the scene? So as you can imagine, you can see how the... It will start off at the portal box cut. You can see how the ramps decline, and then they, and then they come around a cloverleaf and come straight back. And one of the things that the Rail-Veyor allows us to do, because our ore body footwall is actually quite linear, it actually allows us to put a bunch of drop raises in, and basically, when we move mineralized material from the stopes, we basically use, we basically dump them straight into the, to the raise, and, and then therefore, they're picked up by the Rail-Veyor. So in other words, we're reducing the eliminate or we're reducing the need to use a lot of trucking.
So that's the first component. We could have used a traditional, conventional, conveyor belt to bring it up to surface rather than the Rail-Veyor. Conventional conveyor belts are, as you know, you have to create large transfer stations. They really only operate in straight lines. They, there is, there's some less flexibility for the type of mining we want to do. The Rail-Veyor gives us that flexibility. Agnico Eagle uses it, you know, both in their Val-d'Or mines, for example. They've been using it for many years. They're moving a high tonnage volume in Val-d'Or. Stillwater uses it down in their operations, and then there's also mines down in Brazil that use it, and it, and in that case, it covers multiple kilometers. So it's just...
It does give us an efficiency also because on the way back down, it generates electricity. So it's using electricity to come uphill at quite a quick clip, but then the reverse is going down, it's actually generating electricity. So there's a lot of advantages to it. Trying to truck 15,000 tons a day up that ramp, that's 4 kilometers, and do it that manual way, that's something you would do a long time ago, but today's day, that would not at all be efficient.
Thanks. That's, that's helpful. So I'm, I'm familiar with Agnico's mines using Rail-Veyor, but I wasn't familiar with some of the others. So it's good to hear that they, that they are used in applications with that amount of tonnage underground.
Mm-hmm.
I'm glad that you guys came up with a solution that I think that was a big question for how to move this much material. Maybe just switch gears a little bit to kind of some of the next steps. I think Andrew touched on this a little bit in his questions, but so you've put out the initial assessment. In your press release, you had some reference to the PFS and moving to an option of using 100% renewable. I'm just wondering what other considerations are you thinking about as you start thinking about this project and moving it to the PFS?
Specifically, would there be any consideration of looking at that, you know, the primary material, the sulfide material, the resource that's connected there, and potentially putting that into the mine life on the back end or something like that?
... So before we begin the PFS, we currently will move into a series of further trade-off studies. Part of the trade-off studies will look at different types of material. It'll also look at things like, you know, more metallurgical testing and geotechnical and water management, all the things that we will want to define before we kickstart our PFS.
Okay, thanks. And so, so not at this point, thinking about extending the amount of material mined?
We will. We are still going to do a trade-off. We have to do a trade-off because we've done more drilling, and so we will have more mineralized material. So we will look at a larger footprint of material, and that will also include the primary, and then we'll ultimately decide whether we incorporate it or not into the PFS, but we need to do the trade-off work ahead of time.
Okay, great. Okay, thanks very much. That's it for me.
Thank you. The next question comes from J.C. Evensen at Eucalyptus Resources. Please go ahead.
Hi, Taylor. Congratulations on the initial assessment. Just one question from me. A lot of focus here on low CO2 and where this mine will be positioned in among American copper mines. Early days, but given critical, copper is a critical element, the IRA and some other American projects having getting government support, could you maybe touch on how you're thinking about kind of the sources of capital to kind of drive this project forward?
Sure, JC, and thank you for, thank you for the question, and thank you for being on the call. As you might imagine, I'll touch on the financing part first. You know, we are exploring, you know, all avenues available to us, for future financing as it relates to, to this project. And, you know, we'll continue to keep you all informed of that, and that process will be driven by our board and our Executive Chairman and in consultation with, you know, with all of our stakeholders. So we'll continue to look at all potential options for financing.
But on the clean part of the discussion, the CO2 emissions, you know, one of the great things about designing a new copper mine is Glen and his team are able to start with a blank slate. We've got this tremendous large land package, private land package in Arizona, allows us to explore the potential for, you know, large scale solar. As I mentioned earlier, he's also exploring the potential to incorporate geothermal on site. And we think there's a really good chance that we can move this project towards 100% renewable energy, which would be a great achievement, you know, for our company, for our industry, and then certainly be a showcase for what we think would be, you know, responsibly produced clean copper in Arizona.
As it relates to IRA, you know, that's an evolving topic. You know, you might have seen recently the Department of Energy put copper on its critical minerals list. There are other government agencies that have different lists, but we are in, you know, very close contact with people in Washington on this subject. You know, as Glenn's mentioned, we've got a lot of work to do to advance this project from the initial assessment phase to the pre-feasibility study phase, and at that point, we would be in a position to provide much more detailed proposals and to access any potential IRA-type assistance.
It's something that's very much on the front end of our thinking, very much at the forefront of our analysis as we look to what might contribute to ultimate financing of the project. You know, given my background in banking and looking at other projects around the world for the last 20 years, we're very well informed about what potential financing alternatives could exist for our company and for this project.
Perfect. Thank you.
Thank you, ladies and gentlemen. Again, if you, if you have any questions, please press star one. Next question is a follow-up from Andrew Mikitchook at BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Taylor, maybe just a quick follow-up on the source of capital. The CapEx in today's study, I'm assuming, is 100% equity or cash, sorry. There's no leased equipment assumed here or, you know, a leased over the fence power plant or something like that. Those are inside the mix of things I assume you would look to evaluate?
Yeah, correct. I mean, what Glen and his team have done on the power side is incorporate the renewable energy in our operating cost estimates. There's a couple of ways you can look at this. You could look at this on the front-end cost, or we'll run it to the operating side, and we chose the latter. But we have been in contact with third-party consultants about, you know, the potential for, you know, renewable infrastructure on the property. But yes, it's all, you know, for the rest of the project, it's not leased equipment. Glen, you want to comment on any of that?
Yeah, no, we've been, we've been actively engaging some of our major, you know, operating equipment manufacturers, you know, the OEMs, and are, you know, been encouraged by all the discussions to date on, on how they can supply us, you know, basically an ability to meet with our current needs and timelines. So we've been actively engaging this for about the last year and a half, and we'll continue to do so, but currently, we are just assuming that we're purchasing the fleet.
... than the current base case for the initial assessment.
Great. Thank you very much for that, detail.
Mm-hmm.
Andrew, this is Robert Friedland. Nobody's got a green copper mine in the United States. Copper's been added to the list of critical materials at the Department of Energy. There's nobody I know that thinks that green copper is gonna stay at $3.80 a pound for the next 20 years, or we're not gonna have an electric car industry or even pretend to have an energy transition. So there's an enormous amount of financing available. In the case of Ivanhoe Mines, the governments of Norway, Finland, and Sweden lent us close to $300 million total in funding for electric equipment at concessional rates. And the Inflation Reduction Act opens up a plethora of financing opportunities from government money.
So obviously, a mine in the United States can just go get a bank loan for most of its capital. But the opportunity to develop a green mine brings up the obvious point that low carbon dioxide copper is gonna trade at a much higher price than dirty copper. I don't know of anybody who thinks that copper developed burning coal is gonna pay, play at the same price as copper that is super green. So the automakers and American manufacturers in the near future are gonna work with people like Abaxx Technologies, which are making Smarter Markets, and we're gonna see a big premium for clean copper. That's blatantly obvious. Green aluminum is already trading at a higher price for European manufacturers that want green aluminum. Somebody has to go out and actually build a green mine. You're looking at it here.
There's a high geothermal temperature gradient as you go deep underneath the ore body. So there's an opportunity not only for solar, which is intermittent and into the grid, but also for geothermal, which is continuous. So it's difficult to imagine what the premium might be for clean copper production in the United States of America, but this is literally a pink unicorn, and that's why I think its unique upside potential is not captured in a silly NPV model. And of course, it's scalable.
If the copper price goes to $12,000 a ton, or $15,000 a ton, which is Goldman Sachs's view and Citibank's view, respectively, obviously, all that primary ore at 0.88% or 0.91% sulfide copper comes into view for expansion, even without more of this oxide ice cream that we're finding all over the place. So, guys, we just bought this project. We just got it. It's only been 14 months since we went public. We drove this thing around and wrapped the mine around it in record time. Resolution has been going for decades in Arizona on land challenged by native title. 10, 20, 30 years of development. So I haven't seen a project come this far, this fast in the United States, and I've never seen a copper mine that looks this green.
So the constituency of capital interested in green metals dwarfs the scale of traditional mining money that just wants to go out and mine anything. So we would appreciate your, you know, your coming forward to see the unique nature of... Where is this green copper gonna come from? How are we gonna mine it in the United States? It will occur in these buried porphyries under gravel cover, where you don't disturb the topography and where the gravel cover has enough water to oxidize the copper to make these ice cream-type grades and produce a cathode. There must be 10 or 20 or 30 more of these things hiding under Arizona. And don't forget, we have the unique technology to find them. So this is the fingerprint of the first one, and we have no doubt with Typhoon technology, which only we enjoy.
There's many more of these things to be found. Same thing in eastern frontier of the Congo. We have our phase 1 mine, our phase 2 mine, our phase 3 mine. There are many more to be found in the Congo, and the analogy is directly applicable to Arizona. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to go out there and find and develop clean mines. So we would appreciate your understanding and support. Thank you, guys.
Thank you, Andrew.
Great. Thanks.
Hi, folks. We have one question from the webcast, which I'll ask aloud right now. Could you please elaborate on the permitting timeline and construction time for this initial assessment?
Sure. Thanks for the question. The permitting timeline is detailed in our initial assessment. Glen, you wanna walk through sort of the highlights of the permitting process? And I'll highlight again that this is a project on private land, so, the majority of our permits will be, you know, state-issued permits. But, Glen, you wanna go ahead?
Sure, sure. Thank you, Taylor. So from a permitting perspective-
...The bulk of our permits, because we're on private land, are really associated with the city, the county, the state. They revolve around a few and not associated with federal because of the private land component to our land package. We from a... You know, conceptually, in the IA, the construction period is approximately three years as it's currently structured. So we're envisioning basically that we could start production in the coming few years and basically be in a production scenario in 2029, where we're producing copper. Of course, that's subject to a lot more test work and a lot more trade study work and obviously other things as well. So, but that's initially what we're envisioning.
The first important step was to complete this initial assessment because that study, this study will be the basis for, you know, most of our permitting work. So at this point, we can start to, we can commence with that work, and that'll be going on in parallel paths as we advance the studies that will support the pre-feasibility study. Any other questions, operator?
No further questions on the line.
Listen, thank you everyone for your time.
Thank you, Russ.
and for participating today. Robert, any comments?
Great. Thank you, everybody. To be continued. You're all invited to Phoenix, Arizona, to see what it takes when a group of people put together a really important clean copper mine in the, in the Copper State. Thank you for your interest, and to all of you that have worked so hard to get this far, my appreciation. Adios.
Thanks, everyone, and thank you, operator.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes your conference call for today. We thank you for participating, and we ask that you please disconnect your lines.