The gold market has recently been volatile, with prices briefly slipping below $4,000 an ounce before rebounding above $4,100. Despite the swings, Robert Quartermain, co-chairman of Dakota Gold and a long-time mining professional, still sees gold as a long-term business. He noted that gold was trading at $140 an ounce when he entered the industry in 1976, so today's prices do not strike him as unacceptably high.

Quartermain has spent about 50 years in mining and is also a major shareholder of Dakota Gold. Speaking at an investment conference in New Orleans in late October, he said he had returned to the front line to advance the Richmond Hill project in South Dakota's Homestake mining district. If the project reaches commercial production, it would be the sixth mine of his career to go from early discovery to operation.

Richmond Hill is located about two miles from Coeur Mining's Wharf mine. Wharf has produced more than 4 million ounces of gold, while the Homestake district has historically yielded more than 40 million ounces, pointing to a mature resource base and a long tradition of development. A preliminary economic assessment released by Dakota Gold in July 2025 said the project would use heap leaching and is expected to produce about 153,000 ounces of gold a year. The company secured an option on the project in 2022 and is targeting production in 2029.

Quartermain compared the schedule with the Brucejack project, which also took about seven years from discovery to production in 2017 and is now one of the world's higher-grade gold mines. He said Richmond Hill's development pace is broadly similar, but the project sits on private land and its main approvals come from Lawrence County and the South Dakota state government, giving the company a relatively clear path on federal regulation.

Even after the recent pullback in gold prices, cost inflation remains central to his view of the project's viability. Quartermain said Dakota Gold is likely to use a gold price assumption of about $3,000 an ounce in the later feasibility study, compared with a lower assumption of $2,300 an ounce in the 2025 preliminary assessment. Mining development, he stressed, needs enough buffer and cannot be financed on the basis of the most optimistic market prices. Although gold has risen sharply, he said industry-wide costs have remained broadly in the $1,600 to $2,000 per ounce range, leaving miners profitable at current levels.

The project still faces practical hurdles, including financing, permits and rising costs. Quartermain acknowledged that Dakota Gold has not completed a full feasibility study and has not locked in all the funding. The company plans to publish a pre-feasibility study in the fourth quarter of this year and a feasibility study in the first half of 2027, at which point it will need to reflect inflation-driven cost changes. The 2025 preliminary assessment put Richmond Hill's capital expenditure at about $400 million. As of the end of June, the company held about $99 million in cash and had raised $75 million through financing this year, enough to carry the project through the feasibility stage.

On financing, Quartermain prefers instruments such as convertible bonds, silver streaming, royalties and forward gold sales rather than an immediate large equity raise. He said a forward-sale buyer could include stablecoin issuer Tether, which has been steadily adding to its gold reserves. Diesel prices remain one pressure point for the project. He expects oil prices may ease by the time Richmond Hill starts production, but energy costs must still be built into the plan.

His confidence in the project is partly informed by his long view of the Hemlo mine. Hemlo Mining Corp. completed the acquisition of the Hemlo mine in November 2025 in a transaction worth up to $1.09 billion. The mine has produced about 25 million ounces of gold since 1985, with part of its earlier funding coming from a $300 million gold stream agreement with Wheaton Precious Metals. Quartermain said the example shows that high-quality mines can still unlock significant value in the right price environment. He recalled visiting the concentrator during his early underground days, when it was designed to process 10,000 tonnes a day but now operates at about 3,800 tonnes, a reminder that long-lived mines require a steady supply of new ore.

Before becoming a geologist, Quartermain was a pilot. After earning his pilot's licence in 1973, he had hoped to make a living flying, but eyesight problems led him to switch to geology. Today, he is an honorary colonel in the Royal Canadian Air Force and a recipient of the Order of Canada, and he also helps the air force assess demand for critical minerals. He said North America's real weakness is not mining, but processing and refining. China recognized the importance of refining about 15 to 20 years ago and has treated it as a key factor for North American supply chains, he said. For Canada, the advantage lies in resources that remain underexploited underground.

Richmond Hill has also drawn heightened attention from South Dakota politicians. Quartermain said it was the first time in his career he had seen politicians openly discuss the need to produce critical metals in North America. Nearly 50 members of the South Dakota legislature have visited the project site to learn about the mining process and the project's environmental impact. Dakota Gold is still working on the pre-feasibility study, financing and permitting, with Richmond Hill's production target set for 2029.