House Investment Conference about their major gold deposits in Alaska and British Columbia.
NovaGold (NYSE-AMEX, TSX: NG) is a precious metals company engaged in the exploration and development of
mineral properties in North America. NovaGold is focused on advancing its two core properties, Donlin Creek and Galore
Creek, with the objective of becoming a low-cost million-ounce-a-year gold producer. When Donlin Creek is in
production, NovaGold's share of production for the first five years is estimated at 800,000 ounces of gold annually,
with cash costs in the lower half of the industry. Galore Creek will add additional gold, copper and silver to
NovaGold's annual production.
Interview Transcript:
Al: Hey thanks for joining me I’m Al Korelin. We are recording a video at the Cambridge House Investment
Conference in Vancouver British Columbia. This is a great conference I've been attending for the past twenty
years or so. I have to tell you Joe Martin and the crew do a fantastic job. Ten thousand people through the door
here yesterday. Very, very big deal. I'm chatting right now with Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse. Let me tell you a
little bit about Rick. I’m sure you watched the previous video cause about seven thousand of you did watch that
but having said that I’ve known Rick for a long-time. Rick is the co-founder of Nova Gold he is currently the president
of Nova Gold and chairman if I'm not mistaken.
Rick: CEO.
Al: CEO. Well, both start with a C. One of my favorite guys in the business. This guy is a really hard worker and Nova Gold
has evolved into what I think is probably, unquestionably the strongest development stage company in the
world within our industry. Rick, thanks for joining me appreciate it.
Rick: Great to see you again, Al.
Al: We shot the video about four months ago in that video we talked a little bit about kind of an update on the Nova Gold.
Let's continue that for this and then let's talk a little bit about what you guys are going to be doing in 2011.
Rick: Sounds good. Well we are focused on our are Donlin and Galore projects.
Al: As always.
Rick: As always. Just to remind people those are… Donlin Creek is a 40 million ounce gold deposit in Alaska. We’re partnered
with Barrick Gold who’s the largest gold company in the world. We’re finishing up a feasibility study update probably
June-July we’ll have it out. That'll give the up dated economic parameters for the project. What we’ve done is we’ve
changed the project from the source of power for the project. It’s a remote project. It’s gonna use 130 megawatts of
power so power is a big deal.
Al: A big deal, yeah.
Rick: And we’ve changed that over from assuming we’re gonna use diesel, to using liquid natural gas so there’s some
different capital requirements for that project verses the diesel scenario but we think the operating costs are going
to be far less and we think the environmental footprint will be more a smaller environmental footprint.
Al: You guys, don’t mean to interrupt you but us old guys have a tendency to lose our train of thought, you guys are very
environmentally conscious. I know that corporate responsibility is a very, very big portion of the identity that you're
portraying to the world. It terms of natural gas I would think that that would be a lot greener for lack of better terms
then diesel.
Rick: Absolutely. We think it's really better economics. We think it's a greener fuel. Lower CO2 emissions. Better air quality
emissions, and just overall much easier project to handle logistically. Rather than moving all that fuel up the river,
diesel fuel, up the river we would just be putting gas in the gas pipeline. So you know, we think it's a much, much
better product all the way around.
Al: What exactly, in terms of continuing development, what are you guys going to be doing this year and let's just talk
about… let's not get into some of the other areas. Let's talk specifically about what's going on up both in
British Columbia, and Alaska.
Rick: Sure. So continuing on with Alaska we’ll finish the feasibility study updates June-July. We’ll then prepare our
permitting documents by say… October-November of this year. We’ll initiate the formal permitting process.
What they refer to as the need for the nepa eis_ process. We expect that to take two to three years. Once that’s
completed then we can make a construction decision and you know, this again is a very big project. We expect
to be three to four years in construction so producing gold in 2018.
Al: You're going to… Nova Gold in 2018 will, I believe that will take you to the category of the largest gold
producer in the world. Am I wrong about that?
Rick: The deposit. That certainly would be one of the largest. Nova Gold would be at that time, with our combined with
our galore creek production we would be producing close to a million ounces of gold a year and of course a very low
cash because galore as you know is fundamentally a copper gold silver project. So you take that copper production
and silver production and net it against producing an ounce of gold so you'll end up with a very negative cash cost
for producing an ounce of gold. Blend that with the 750-800 thousand ounces of gold coming out of our share of
Donlin Creek, and you're a million ounce gold producer at near zero cash cost.
Al: That has to give you a really, really good feeling to. I mean 2018 is going to be kind of capping your career,
I mean, I'm kind of projecting ahead a little bit here but you know you and I aren’t in our thirties anymore so to
speak but boy I'm telling you, Rick Van Nieuwenhuyse is going to go down as being perhaps one of the most important
miners in history that's gotta to make you feel good man.
Rick: Well we’re in a good spot we think with the markets obviously we got 4$ copper, 1300$ gold. I mean...
we’re really in a good spot and our shareholders are very solidly behind the company. We've got source
Soros... Paulson… Kaplan... are some of our major shareholders. They believe in gold. They believe in metals. So we think
we’re in a very good spot going forward here.
Al: I don't think there's any question about that. Couple things I have to say in the name I guess I should say of full
disclosure, and that is, Nova Gold is a sponsor on our the website. That means you can click on their banner and get
all the information you want. Big Al is also a shareholder of Nova Gold so you know what, I can’t be really unbiased in
this case. I wouldn’t have written the check had I thought there was any problem there but don’t construe that as
investment advice. I'm not a registered investment adviser. I'm just telling you guys what I'm doing. Rick, always a
pleasure buddy.
Rick: Good to see you again, Al.
Al: Good to see you.
To learn more visit:
http://novagold.com
http://kereport.com
http://evenkeelmedia.com
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