The playbook — gold · September 8, 2026
Liberty Gold puts a number on Black Pine: US$2.4B NPV
The Idaho oxide gold project clears its Feasibility Study — 4.04 million ounces, 16 years, and a stock that rose more than 50% while gold barely moved.
Liberty Gold released a Feasibility Study — the detailed engineering blueprint that says a mine can actually be built — for its Black Pine project in southern Idaho on September 8. The headline numbers: an after-tax net present value of US$2.4 billion (what the future cash flows are worth today, discounted at 5%) and a 60% internal rate of return (a measure of how fast the money comes back) at a gold price of US$3,250 an ounce. Behind those figures sits a 4.04-million-ounce reserve grading 0.29 grams per tonne across 433 million tonnes — very low grade, meaning every tonne of rock carries less than a hundredth of an ounce of gold.
The grade sounds thin, but the design is built for it. Black Pine is a past-producing Carlin-style oxide system: soft rock you can leach gold from by trickling solution over crushed ore, no expensive crushing needed here — run-of-mine heap leach. That keeps operating cost to $8.98 a tonne, with a favourable 1.34-to-1 strip ratio (waste dug per tonne of ore) and all-in sustaining cost of $1,566 an ounce over a 16-year life producing about 177,000 ounces a year. CEO Jon Gilligan, a 40-year operator who ran integration work at SSR Mining and spent 17 years at BHP, has been at the helm since June 2025. Centerra Gold took a 9.9% stake in September 2025. The market noticed the trajectory: the stock is up 50.4% over three months while the junior gold index rose 27% and gold itself barely moved, up 2.5% — company-specific news, not a sector tide.
Now the caveats, because they matter. This is a study, not drill results, so there are no intercepts to weigh. The economics lean heavily on gold price — the NPV nearly triples between $2,500 and $4,500 an ounce. Recovery is a modest 70.2%, and carbonaceous rock that won’t leach is treated as waste. There are no Measured Resources and no Proven Reserves: the entire reserve rests on Indicated blocks, which is why the ongoing Drilled-to-Measured drilling matters for start-up confidence. Note also that the reserve pit design and 0.05 g/t cut-off grade were calculated at US$2,250/oz gold — $1,000 below the economic base case — a conservative foundation, but one that means the ounce count and pit shell would shift under different price assumptions. Permitting is the real gate — the environmental review is at early scoping, with a Record of Decision the FAST-41 coordinated permitting schedule targets for January 5, 2028. The US$411 million initial capital has no disclosed financing structure yet. Watch for final DtM assays later this year and the Idaho cyanidation permit filing in the first quarter of 2027.