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Stormlands model lifts Fremont gold NPV by 101%
Applying a gold price of $4,245.22 per ounce raised Fremont’s modeled life-of-mine revenue to $4.17 billion and cut the estimated payback period to five years and 11 months.
Stormlands Mining has published a case study using updated gold pricing for Lode Gold Resources’ Fremont gold property in Mariposa County, California, raising the project’s modeled economics. The property is about 240 kilometers from San Francisco and covers about 13.56 square kilometers, with a historical mine that previously graded 10.7 grams of gold per short ton before operations were suspended in the 1930s, according to Mining.com.
In the base model, Fremont’s net present value was $254.7 million at a 5% discount rate. After Stormlands applied a gold price of $4,245.22 per ounce based on public technical data, the estimate increased by 101% to $511.5 million, Mining.com reported.
The higher assumed gold price also boosted modeled life-of-mine revenue to $4.17 billion from $3.45 billion, according to the case study. Earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization were raised to $2.47 billion from $1.77 billion, the internal rate of return increased to 16.66% from 11.16%, and the estimated payback period fell to five years and 11 months from eight and a half years.
Stormlands said Fremont is undergoing exploration drilling ahead of a pre-feasibility study expected in 2027, and it noted that its model is intended to demonstrate sensitivity to gold pricing rather than replace the engineering, cost, and risk work needed for a full preliminary economic assessment. Mining.com also said the modeling uses the project’s 2026 technical report rather than an official economic assessment completed in 2023, and that the Defense Logistics Agency dropped a tender for almost 36 million pounds, about 16,000 tons.
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