Thank you very much and very good morning and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I welcome all of you to our Investor Day here in New York, where my team and I will give you what we hope will be a useful update on an insight into Barrick's performance, future prospects, and strategy. We meet at a time when the world is in greater economic and political turmoil than it has been for generations.
Great, in fact, that the etymologists have had to coin a new word to describe our situation. The word is polycrisis. We'll be using another word frequently during our presentations today, and that word is strategy. I think Barrick is one of the very few, if not the only major gold and copper miner that has a clear long-term business strategy that we are executing against in a disciplined manner.
I believe that strategy is serving us well at Barrick, as it did before in my time at Randgold. It has seen us successfully through price cycles, civil wars, and recently, the global COVID pandemic. I would ask you to take note of our cautionary statement, and it is available on our website for anyone who would like to review it in more detail. I'm gonna tell you more about the strategy and its execution, but first let me share today's agenda with you as shown on the screen here. Please note that we'll be having a 15-minute break at around 10:15 A.M. this morning, and I'll ask you all to write down questions you might have through the presentations, as we'll be doing a question and answer session at the end of all the presentations.
We've come a long way in the nearly four years since the merger, and as I shared at our recent quarterly presentation, we have achieved our key objective, which was to combine the best assets with the best people in order to deliver an industry-leading return. The business has been radically restructured and repositioned, and I'm convinced that it is now fully fit for purpose. We said our focus would be on tier one assets, and within the first two years, we led the Nevada joint venture, which created the world's largest gold mining complex, operated and majority owned by Barrick. We rescued and rebuilt the Tanzanian mines and cleaned up the environmental, social, and governance mess their previous operators had left behind. We were able to do that because of our robust sustainability policies and practices.
To complement our peerless gold assets, we're building a copper portfolio, which is already contributing to our bottom line. Strong exploration drives our continuously replacing ore reserves and resources while hunting new discoveries across our global footprint. Here's a map to remind you of the size of that footprint. Barrick now operates on four continents in 18 countries, and we're constantly looking for opportunities to expand that presence. Our team of executives will expand on this during today's presentations. Barrick's strategy is designed to create the world's most valued gold and copper company. These are some of the key achievements of the past nearly four years. In 2020, we focused on the optimization of our tier one gold portfolio and sold the non-core assets. By the year-end, we turned a $4 billion debt burden into a net cash balance.
We set a new gold standard for host country partnerships by establishing a joint venture with the Tanzanian government to oversee a 50/50 economic benefit split. In an industry first, we published our annual scorecard for ESG reporting. In 2021, we paid a record $1.4 billion out in cash to shareholders while continuing to optimize our assets. In 2022, if you add our share buyback, we should beat that.
Despite some setbacks, we are still on track to achieve our gold and copper production guidance, albeit at the lower end. We're also well on the way to replacing our reserves again, as we did last year. We introduced a new shareholder-friendly performance-linked dividend policy and launched a $1 billion share buyback program. Our organic projects will support our rolling 10-year plan, along with some real growth, as the team will show you today.
The potential to expand Lumwana is set to deliver real value, and Reko Diq will almost double our current copper production when it is in full swing. While the expansion of Pueblo Viejo will secure its tier one status for at least another 20+ years. Throughout the past nearly four years, we've also been investing in the skills and safety of our people and building our management bench strength, as Darian will spend time demonstrating why this is so important to ensure we are sustainably profitable into the future. The reinvention of Barrick is delivering the promised returns. The free cash flow from our operating mines is forecast to continue and has already given us a robust balance sheet with net cash on hand at the end of the last quarter.
Our performance-linked dividend policy will enable us to invest in our own future, as well as provide ongoing dividends to shareholders. In the meantime, as I've already indicated, this year's combination of share buybacks and dividends is expected to exceed last year's record distribution of $1.4 billion. Sustainability has been embedded in every facet of our business long before ESG became a thing. We haven't had to scramble to get on board with this new vogue. Grant Beringer is up next, and I don't want to preempt his detailed presentation, but I think it's worth noting that everything we do at Barrick is aimed at delivering long-term value to all our stakeholders, and particularly our host countries and communities.
Our sustainability ethos is stated succinctly in the block at the top of this slide. The other points illustrate my conviction that if done right, mining can be an enormous force for economic and social good, as we at Barrick strive to do. With that, I'll ask Grant to come up and give his presentation.
Thank you, Mark, and good morning, and thank you for this opportunity to talk to you about sustainability. My name is Grant Beringer, and I lead the sustainability team for the group. I came from the Randgold side of the business and have been in this position for the last four years since the merger. Before I get into the detail of my presentation, I wanted to reflect briefly on the discussions we've had with many of you over the last while and more recently over the last few days. What is clear to us is that many of you have recognized that sustainability for Barrick has always been a key part of the company, and in some regions, like Africa, we were the pioneers of a movement we're all calling ESG now.
For me personally, it was on the former Randgold sites where I learned exactly what sustainability meant from exploration to closure. The point is, we've always considered sustainability as a key part of our business, and we've always been doing it. In a way, it comes naturally to us. When Mark and I discussed this a few days ago, we were encouraged by the fact that our integration of environmental and social aspects into the business and our differentiated approach when it comes to sustainability has been recognized. In saying that, as many of you know, a key part of our sustainability philosophy has always been honest and transparent disclosure of our policies, procedures, and performance.
In that spirit, I'll also share the progress we have made on our journey to be leaders in sustainability, as well as detail our plans and priorities for the short, medium, and long term. Often, sustainability or ESG, as some of you like to call it, is dealt with by its independent components. At Barrick, we believe this approach to be one-dimensional. Instead, we recognize the interlinks between each and apply holistic thinking when tackling sustainability. What this means is when we talk about climate change, we don't just talk about reducing our emissions and future-proofing our own business. Rather, we talk and think about tackling poverty, building community resilience, and ensuring that action on climate change does not come at the cost of development. It also means we don't just think about clean fuels and renewable power.
We also consider biodiversity and the nature-based solutions available to tackling the problem, and the ecosystem services that our communities rely on. How we apply this approach is based on four interdependent drivers which underpin all our thinking. First is to create economic benefits. We do this by building and acting as partners with our host governments, communities, employees, and business partners. Next, of course, is protecting the health and safety of our workforce and our contractors.
We put in place the policies, procedures, systems, and standards to improve risk awareness and prevent incidents. In some parts of the world, like in Africa, it also means investing in programs to tackle HIV and AIDS and malaria, both on-site and in the community. Third is to respect human rights. We acknowledge our responsibility and the opportunity to contribute to realizing human rights for people around the world.
Respect for human rights is a foundational value at Barrick. Lastly, it's about managing our environmental impacts. As a mining company, our activities do impact, both positively and negatively, the environment. By applying the highest standards of environmental management, we can deliver significant cost savings to our business, reduce future liabilities, and help build strong stakeholder relationships.
These four goals are simple in principle, but together with our sustainability principles that translate our goals and our strategy into practical, on-the-ground steps, all Barrick employees and contractors can deliver real value, both for our business and our communities when executed in an effective and integrated manner. I've long said that for us, sustainability is not a corporate function with the aim of merely ticking boxes to manage external expectations. Instead, we implement and live our strategy every day on the operations where it adds the most value.
This is characterized by tangible, on-the-ground action and measurable results rather than just compliance chasing. Compliance with standards, of course, remains important. However, it is now a natural byproduct of our strategy rather than the primary output of the team. To suggest that sustainability is merely a component of our DNA would be incorrect. Rather, it is our DNA, firmly entrenched and integrated into every aspect of our business and our decision-making processes. Our sites are empowered to manage their unique sustainability aspects, to set their own targets that add value to them, and then monitor performance and constantly improve. This is regularly reviewed from water abstracted to waste recycled, safety interactions to hectares rehabilitated. Each month at every site, we analyze a range of sustainability data.
While we truly believe in a site-driven approach to sustainability, the ultimate management and accountability sits with the executive and the board. I, as the Group Sustainability Executive, reports on sustainability-related issues to the executive committee on a weekly basis. This includes health and safety performance, any grievances raised, and any challenges emerging. Above the executive committee, we have what we call the Environmental and Social Oversight Committee, or ESOC, which is a management-level committee chaired by the CEO. The committee meets once a quarter and brings together myself, regional chief operating officers, the general managers of each mine, the regional sustainability leads, and the site-level sustainability representatives. We also have an independent sustainability consultant that forms part of the committee. Quarterly, we discuss performance and any emerging issues.
The minutes from these meetings are then provided and discussed with the board at the Environmental, Social, Governance, and Nominating Committee. I must be honest, I have sympathy for many of you when it comes to ESG metrics. There are a multitude of them out there, and having so many sometimes contradictory metrics makes it hard to know what good looks like in our industry. That's why we developed our sustainability scorecard in 2020. The scorecard was an industry first and set out those sustainability aspects we believe to be more relevant for our business and mining, moreover. The scorecard serves two main functions for us. One, and most important, is to drive internal performance as we review each site each quarter against the scorecard, identifying areas of improvement.
Secondly, to benchmark ourselves against our peers and to assist yourselves in assessing performance across all key aspects of sustainability. That is safety, social aspects, human rights, environment, and governance. The scorecard and our performance against it are linked to our long-term incentive program. Overall, this accounts for 25% of our incentive scheme, the single biggest component of our long-term incentive scheme. In 2021, we improved almost all metrics.
Most notably, we exceeded our water reuse and recycling rate, achieving an 82% efficiency. We realized an increase in economic value that remains in our host countries, and this is a direct result of the effort to procure more goods and services within our host communities and countries. We continued our progress to compliance and assurance to the responsible gold mining principles of the World Gold Council and the mining principles of the ICMM.
Overall, we scored 40 and retained a B grade. Despite our improvements, this aligns with our scores for the last two years, and we believe this is a fair reflection of the progress we've made during 2021. However, we have not met all our high standards that we've set and expect of ourselves, and therefore there's still work to be done.
In keeping with our belief in continued improvement, this year's scorecard includes new and additional metrics related to aspects such as diversity and inclusion, nature, and addressing the ESG rater's concerns. These will be used to assess our 2022 performance. Moving now to health and safety. Throughout 2022, we've invested a lot of energy in improving our health and safety performance from 2021. One such initiative was our group-wide Journey to Zero Harm, which I'll elaborate on in the next slide.
We have driven down both lost time and total injuries with a 38% decrease in our lost time injury frequency rate since 2019, and a 4% decrease year-on-year for our total recordable injury frequency rate. While we drove down our frequency rates for lost time and total injuries, our safety performance has, however, been marred by three fatalities that have occurred over the year. For each of these events, we completed thorough investigations, and the lessons learned have been applied throughout the organization.
Based on our performance this year, it is clear that further improvement, particularly in terms of the severe incidents, is required. One such intervention has been the Journey to Zero Harm program. It was developed and implemented as a personal commitment at all levels of our organization to achieve our safety vision of every person going home safely and healthy every day.
The journey is motivated by our core value of zero harm, and it is underpinned by the stop unsafe work authority found in our fatality prevention commitments. Success for us is the effective execution and continuous improvement of the four foundations of safety management. Those are leadership, the setting of standards, engagement, and accountability. To further drive this improvement, as a group, we are focused on leading indicators. Although we recognize that lagging indicators still have a place, we have seen the value that investigating and analyzing the leading trends brings and assists us in identifying the underlying root causes of incidents before they manifest themselves in injuries or worse. As Mark mentioned, building and maintaining our social license to operate is a key focus. We follow three main principles to achieve this.
These are the primacy of partnership, sharing the benefits with our communities and host governments, and lastly, engaging with and listening to our stakeholders. Perhaps the best example of our approach to partnership is our Community Development Committee or CDC model. A CDC is the body that decides where and how we will invest in local community development projects. It puts the community at the heart of the decision-making process with each CDC made up of a mix of local leaders and community members, and their role is to allocate the community investment budgets to those projects most needed by the local communities. Last year, we invested more than $26 million in community development projects through our CDCs, and we are well on track to exceeding that number this year.
While we recognize that financial contributions to the communities and countries we operate in are critical, we believe true support should be more than that. It must be impactful and sustainable. With that in mind, we have moved from input to impact, and we don't just track the dollars we spend, we also capture and assess a range of KPIs to understand the impact our presence and the investments we make have had for the local community.
Some examples of this are in Mali at our Loulo-Gounkoto operation and the schools we have built, which have supported primary schools and achieved a 96% completion rate compared to a national average of only 69%. In Pueblo Viejo in the Dominican Republic, our communities now have 19 health professionals per 10,000 people compared to the baseline when we started operating of less than one.
This support and sustainable community development does not just occur in our developing countries, but it extends to our developed regions and communities too. The only variance is that the needs are slightly different. For instance, in Nevada, our I-80 Fund, a program launched during the COVID-19 pandemic, has supported 38 businesses and ensured that 150 jobs were retained during the pandemic and created a further 68 jobs.
Now that the worst of the pandemic is behind us, we have repurposed the fund and have used this to invest in bringing broadband fiber to our host communities, improving access to educational resources. These impact-driven metrics clearly demonstrate the important role that mining plays, not only in the global economy, but in the economies of our host countries. Responsible mining is therefore critical to the successful achievement of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Moving now to human rights. We are committed to respecting the human rights of all individuals impacted by our operations, including employees, contractors, and external stakeholders. Since 2010, we have been a member of and followed the voluntary principles on security and human rights in all our dealings with the public and private security providers. During the last two years, we continued to develop and facilitate in-person human rights workshops for managers and supervisors at each of our high-risk sites. Workshops were conducted in 2021 at our North Mara and Bulyanhulu mines in Tanzania, Kibali in the DRC, Loulo-Gounkoto in Mali, and PV in the Dominican Republic. This year, we have completed assessments and training at Lumwana, Tongon, and Veladero. We've also published a standalone human rights report which elaborates on the salient human rights risks.
Our partnership philosophy is no different when it comes to our indigenous partners, and we aim to build long-term capacity and legacy within our host indigenous communities. Our commitment to recognizing the unique rights and cultural heritage of indigenous peoples is set out in our human rights policy and is informed by the ICMM position statement.
We also require all our sites with exposure to indigenous peoples to develop and implement an indigenous peoples plan that outlines specific actions to engage, address impacts, and provide opportunities to indigenous peoples. Before we acquired the Acacia assets in 2019, we knew what we were getting ourselves into. At the same time, we knew that our track record of working in difficult jurisdictions and communities would aid us in turning North Mara around and gaining the social license to operate that it so badly needed.
Our focus and first actions on the ground were about restoring and rebuilding the relationship with the local community. Key to achieving this has been to ensure the local community meaningfully benefits from our presence. We also demonstrated that we fulfill our commitments we make, and in December last year, we achieved our target of reducing the water stored on the tailings storage facility to within design limits, and in so doing, earned the trust of government and the authorities. As a result, the relationship between the mine and the community has improved significantly. I can attest to that, having participated in three meetings this year with the 11 village chairpersons and local ward counselors, which Seb will go into more detail on later.
You'll also be aware from 2019 to date, we have been engaged with the LBMA through the MMTC-PAMP, our refiner, in fulfilling the review process that was requested by them based on allegations made through their responsible gold guidance process of the legacy Acacia company. Barrick welcomed this independent review of North Mara, and as such, invited Synergy Global Consulting to conduct an independent third-party assessment. The first site visit took place in November 2019, and earlier this year, Synergy conducted a second site visit and finalized their report in September. The report concluded that since the 2019 assessment, there had been additional measurable improvements in the management of risks at the North Mara gold mine, and it recommended that MMTC-PAMP continue to trade with the mine.
It went on to state that North Mara had made significant measurable progress in relation to security forces management. That the tailings storage facility and water management were no longer considered high risk. It also noted improvements in terms of land acquisition and grievance resolution. I'm pleased to note that since the independent report has been released, the LBMA have issued a public statement that concludes that they recognize the progress that has been made in relation to North Mara, and that the incident review process launched in 2019 has been officially closed. It's not just the engagement with communities that has increased at North Mara. We have also communicated with the local NGOs and brought them to the site to see for themselves what we are doing on the ground.
In fact, we have extended an invitation to a rather vocal UK-based NGO to visit North Mara and witness firsthand the positive impact we're having on the community, and where possible, work together with them to improve that further. Shifting now to the environment. Environmental stewardship is a fundamental responsibility of any modern mining company and a critical part of our business strategy. Responsibly managing our environmental impacts not only reduces risk, but it also helps us to deliver a sustainable legacy for the regions in which we operate. In this vein, we have continued to reduce our emissions against 2018 baseline, and all operational sites are now ISO 14001 accredited, a first in Barrick's history. In terms of water management, as a group, we have adopted the ICMM Water Accounting Framework and embedded this at all sites.
As I mentioned in 2021, we reused and recycled 82% of our water going to waste. In 2022, we are well on track to achieving that efficiency again. Like everything we do, however, our approach to environmental management focuses not only on the environment but also the community. The climate crisis requires us to set and meet ambitious greenhouse gas emissions reduction targets. For us, that's only part of the story. Equally important is ensuring the communities near our operations, particularly those most vulnerable, are not left to weather the worst impacts of the storm without support. The point is, at Barrick, we recognize there's more to the climate discussion than just setting targets without achievable road maps and making promises merely to achieve compliance. It has to be a holistic and integrated approach.
For the last two years, we have been working to develop our Scope three emissions calculations, and we undertook a screening exercise for all 15 Scope three categories. This exercise has helped us to determine material categories in our value chain and to direct our value chain engagement requirements, particularly with our suppliers, as 95% of our Scope three emissions are upstream. In terms of Scope one and two emissions, you may remember in early 2020, we set a target to achieve an emissions reduction of at least 10% by 2030 against our 2018 baseline that combined both legacy Barrick and Randgold data, as well as data from newly acquired assets at the time, all while maintaining a steady production profile.
Since then, we've seen a lot of companies come out and make bold proclamations on emissions reduction targets, but they lack the backup or detailed roadmap for achieving these targets. Based on our detailed review and compilation of a reduction roadmap, we have updated our emissions reduction target to reduce emissions by at least 30% by 2030 against that 2018 baseline. Ultimately, our vision is net zero by 2050, achieved primarily through GHG reduction and certain offsets for hard-to-abate emissions. It's pleasing to note that some of the projects we identified have already been implemented and have contributed to reducing our emissions by 5% when we compare it to that baseline.
These include investments in battery technology at Kibali, installing a 20-megawatt solar plant, power plant at Loulo-Gounkoto, and in the Dominican Republic, we have switched the Quisqueya power plant from heavy fuel oil to cleaner-burning natural gas. We don't rest on our laurels. We have continued to work on our emissions profile and to identify further reduction opportunities and to define our roadmap. In terms of the interim initiatives, we have committed almost $200 million to implement these projects on a 100% basis. Over to our management of biodiversity on and around our sites. For too long, there's been a lack of focus on biodiversity and its critical role in managing climate change as well as reducing poverty.
Barrick has taken a leadership position in the management and conservation of biodiversity, and during 2021, we took this one step further with the development of our biodiversity standard. The standard sets out the thresholds for utilization of our biodiversity action plans and what good biodiversity management looks like. The aim of the standard is to proactively manage our biodiversity risks and opportunities to achieve our target of no net loss of key biodiversity features in areas affected by our activities.
To illustrate how we put this into practice, I'll talk you through the commitment to conservation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and more particularly, the Garamba National Park, which is close to our Kibali mine. Garamba is one of Africa's oldest national parks and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It's also home to the DRC's largest population of elephants and the critically endangered Kordofan giraffe.
To date, we have provided over $1.7 million for elephant tracking collars, fuel for observation planes, and made improvements to bridges, roads, and other infrastructure. Since September 2019, we've not recorded a single event of elephants being poached. A truly remarkable achievement. More recently, we have taken our support to another level and will be the sole funder of the reintroduction of white rhinos into the park. Garamba used to be home to the last population of the northern white rhino.
However, none have been seen in the park since 2006, and the species has now been declared extinct. With our support, we plan to have rhinos back in the park by the middle of next year. Consistent with our integrated sustainability approach, we've also invested in the community surrounding the park through livelihood support and infrastructure development for the adjacent communities.
I'd now like to discuss the management of our tailings storage facilities. Safety is at the center of our approach to tailings management and determines how we manage our facilities. Our approach is set out in our tailings and heap leach management standard, and this aligns with international best practice. As Barrick is a member of the ICMM, I was personally part of the tailings management subgroup and was actively involved in the development of the Global Industry Standard for Tailings Management or the GISTM. We are now working to make sure our processes are aligned with the requirements of the standard. It must be noted that by the end of 2021, we had completed the consequence classification for all of our 59 TSFs and have established action plans for our extreme and very high consequence facilities.
As we strive for further improvement and to remain a leader in the industry, myself and my team have set some overarching priorities for the medium and long term, which we will roll down throughout the organization. As I've already said, nature is finally getting the attention we have always given it, and we will continue to lead in this space with the development and evolution of appropriate metrics, partnerships, and targets.
We see nature as more so and more specifically, nature loss as the next global crisis. We'll also be focusing on the restart at Porgera, where we'll implement a resettlement action plan, close out on legacy grievances, and complete a human rights assessment and voluntary principles training. Our engagement and work with our suppliers to set our own GHG emission reduction targets and set Barrick Scope three emissions reduction target will continue.
I know Graham will talk to this a bit later too. When it comes to the ESG raters, we'll reinforce our novel approach to them and continue our dialogue and work to deal with the legacy issues and controversies. Finally, at Reko Diq, one of our key performance indicators are to establish our social license to operate and complete the environmental and social studies required for the project feasibility and permitting. Hopefully, it is clear that ESG, or rather sustainability, is entrenched throughout the organization.
As we've demonstrated today, our bottom-up leadership approach to sustainability is paying dividends, as seen through the performance metrics and trends we have shared with you. More importantly, that it is being demonstrated in our social license to operate throughout our operations. I thank you for your time, and I'll now hand over to Sebastiaan Bock to take you through our Africa and Middle East part of the business.
Thank you, Grant. Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and a very good afternoon to everyone that's joining us online. I'm here today to talk to you about Barrick's Africa and Middle East operations, to provide some insight on the business and, more importantly, of what gets us up in the morning. My name's Sebastiaan Bock , and for my sins, I'm a chartered accountant by profession. I joined Randgold Resources in 2008, and at the time of the Barrick-Randgold merger in 2019, I assumed the role of CFO for the Africa Middle East region. Earlier this year, I took over the reins of Chief Operating Officer. I was very fortunate to spend a lot of my time in the operations early on in my career, as well as to be very closely involved on the corporate side.
This allowed me to develop some broad experience and a well-rounded understanding across the business. Working in this business and working with Mark has been incredible. I've learned more than I could ever have imagined. The passion for talent, the great interest that was taken in my career from the start continuously pushed my boundaries and immersed me in all areas of the business. The absolute drive, the vision, and the leadership I've experienced over the last 15 years is something that's been core to my career and is ingrained in the business which I now run. It's all born out of a vision of building a world-class mining business.
Of course, much has happened since the merger between Barrick and Randgold in 2019, and I believe that the Africa & Middle East region, as it stands today, is a perfect example of the value created from both sides of the merger. The region, with its seven operating mines, constitutes the largest workforce in Barrick. We're also the largest contributor to revenue to the group.
As you can see, our five-year gold equivalent profile is significant, and it's supported by a substantial copper component, which is often overlooked. It's a complex region. We have distinctly different cultures and political environments to deal with on a daily basis, and that makes it very challenging, but at the same time, it makes it a very stimulating environment to operate in. We wake up every day with a new challenge, a new problem to solve.
This has molded this team over time to become output and solution-driven, and as the rest of the world struggle to come to grips with the current economic and global volatility, we've been very focused on finding opportunities that are inherently linked with these challenges. We absolutely live by the Barrick mission and DNA, which gives every person in our business a framework for daily decision-making.
This is what binds us together, and this is what makes us agile. The AME business is Africa's largest producer of gold. We manage two of the six tier one assets in Barrick, Kibali, which is the biggest gold mine in Africa, and Loulo-Gounkoto in West Africa. Further to this, we're looking to add North Mara and Bulyanhulu, part of the Twiga partnership, as a third potential tier one gold asset to the group as a combined complex.
At the same time, we manage Lumwana in Zambia, which is the biggest copper producing mine in Barrick, and it's now a fourth potentially tier one asset. We also operate the smaller, but the high-grade Jabal Sayid in Saudi Arabia. Ultimately, it comes down to delivery and having strategic objectives and clear action plans to deliver these, which is core to running our business. We don't change, we don't chase production and profits at all costs.
As per the Barrick mission statement, we drive value. Value that's long-term, value that's sustainable, value that's created for our owners and our partners. We do this by finding, developing, and owning the best assets with the best people. Therefore, when you look at these strategic objectives, they're absolutely aligned with these principles. We continue to improve our safety record through our journey to zero harm.
This is not only run by a separate department, it's something that's driven by line management, by the executives in the region, and ultimately, by myself. We've been very much focused on moving to more sustainable energy. We use fit-for-purpose technology in the areas that we operate in. At Kibali, there's no shortage of water. We originally installed three hydropower stations with the recently installed battery energy storage system, and we are now seeing the benefits of this in our costs with less than $0.05 per kWh in the wet season, despite the higher fuel prices globally. For those of you who've been to Mali, you'll know that the sun is something you see a lot during the majority of the year.
We're in the process of tripling our current capacity of our 20-megawatt solar farm to 60 megawatts, and we are also adding battery storage to reduce our reliance on heavy fuel oil and to help manage our spinning reserves. At Barrick, as Grant would have pointed out, we also sponsor major biodiversity initiatives designed to mitigate climate change and the nature loss risks posed by deforestations and the degradation of habitats. This is why last quarter, we advanced our investment in our REDD+ program surrounding our Lumwana mine in Zambia. The REDD+ program is a UN-backed framework which covers the role of conservation, sustainable management of forests, and the enhancement of forest carbon stocks in developing countries through socioeconomic and biodiversity-linked projects.
Since we've taken over in Tanzania, we've reestablished our license to operate through our groundbreaking Twiga partnership with the government and to deliver on our commitments to our partners and our communities. For this year alone, AME is on track to contribute more than $3 billion to host country economies, which is a remarkable achievement. I think it's important to note that we built our 10-year profile, and that's the reason why we look beyond this horizon to 15 years, as we need this pipeline to support our future 10-year plans.
Barrick's remained diligent at setting its reserve pricing through the years by not chasing the gold price like many other mining companies to their detriment. We've continued to extend and grow our production profiles, but we also focus on maintaining the quality of these profiles, which is ultimately what drives value. Excuse me.
We've recently approved the commencement of the PFS of the Lumwana Super Pit, which as Simon will show you later, has the potential ability to totally transform the AME copper business by increasing production significantly to extend Lumwana's life well beyond 2060. It's important to remind everyone, Barrick owns 100% of Lumwana, and therefore, it means it's just as significant for the group. We continue to grow our exploration footprint in exciting new frontiers like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, but we're also expanding in countries that we're already established in. One example of our continued exploration successes is the extension of Tongon's life into 2026, which we expect to continue into the future.
We're on track to comfortably deliver our overall 2022 production guidance for the region, and we are managing our costs through efficiencies, like moving from contract to owner miner. We're appropriately consolidating supply chain, setting up our contracts with rise and fall mechanism, so we don't lock in short-term increases for the long term. In addition to this, we fully leverage our SAP systems to give us real-time information so that we can manage our stockholdings optimally. We are obsessed about employing talented people that fit our DNA, and you can see this all the way through our leadership and the way we manage this business. In a challenging location, in an industry where the representation of women is generally low, it's something that really needs commitment and intervention from the top to see real results.
It's one example in AME this year was to ensure that 50% of employees going to our leadership programs at universities were women. We're, of course, a forward-looking organization, and you're only as good as your next objective achieved. In Saudi, we're working to move towards a grid in 2025 to align ourselves with the Kingdom's strategy towards more sustainable energy. At the same time, we're augmenting our Kibali hydropower microgrid with a solar farm and battery storage to be able to reduce running our diesel generators even further. We continue to invest to extend our tier-one gold assets beyond their ten-year horizons. As we got to grips since taking over our tier-one complex of Bulyanhulu and North Mara and Tanzania, we cemented and also continued to grow this ten-year profile.
The recently awarded Umm Ad Damar license in Saudi Arabia has provided a new life to our partnership with Ma'aden, who represents the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and a real tangible opportunity to create real significant value from leveraging the current Jabal Sayid infrastructure. We continue to develop our people. We are in the process of putting together a customized Barrick leadership program to assist our frontline management to make step change from being an employee to a manager. As you will witness, we have a very healthy profile of open pit and underground material in the region for the next 10 years. Very importantly, we've also improved our contained metal in our life of mine plan by more than a full year of production.
In addition to the investments needed to be made in exploration and drilling, we need investment in both stripping of our open pits and development of our underground to gain access to ore. Many of these investments are needed in the short term to deliver our sustaining our pipelines beyond the ten-year horizon and ultimately increasing our net asset values. This is also demonstrated by our historic performance in replacing our reserve base, as evidenced in the graph at the bottom of our two tier-one assets, Loulo-Gounkoto and Kibali. We also continue to invest in our tailings storage facilities to cater for further potential life of mine extensions and to maintain them within Barrick and internationally accepted standards.
Our investments into projects are fit for purpose that drive returns, while at the same time, they align to our broader Barrick initiatives, such as reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 30% through efficiencies in 2030, which Grant touched on in his presentation. The Lumwana owner miner fleet continues a large upfront investment, more than $150 million in 2023, but the resulting benefits mean that we pay this back within three and a half years, which in the context of where we're going with Lumwana is absolutely the right strategy. Looking at our five-year production profile for gold, it currently shows a drop in 2026 up to where we've currently extended the Tongon life of mine.
It's important to note that during the merger, we did not have this production profile for Tongon, 'cause as a matter of fact, the last year of production was in 2021, which is not even in this graph anymore. This just demonstrates our ability to extend the lives of these assets, and we're comfortable that we'll continue doing so. These outlooks reflect inflationary impact of key commodities, including energy, which we work hard to offset, which I touched on earlier, and Graham will go into more detail in his presentation. As I mentioned in my previous slides, we're making some large capital investments, specifically in 2023 for drilling for the extension of our mine lives and continued underground development.
We're investing in stripping at Irumu and Kibali, with the new pit shell being brought forward, which opens up possibilities of input dumping earlier in the life, and we also continue stripping at Kirumba at Kibali. At Loulo-Gounkoto, as a result of reoptimizing the open pit underground interface, we're going back to Yalea South, expanding the pushback, which now transitions the uppermost levels of the underground into open pit, thus reducing the operating cut-off grade. As a result, we're starting to strip Yalea South in 2023. Concurrently, at North Mara next year, we're putting the infrastructure in place to commence Gena pit. We also start stripping the Gena pit in 2023 after pushing this out this year when we saw some great gains at Rama. We'll also start construction of the southern extension of the TSF at Loulo next year.
North Mara will start the installation of the second crushing line and lifting the current TSF. For copper, we have an increasing production profile, which is the result of our strategy to build this business. Furthermore, there's significant potential upside outside of this five-year plan with the optionality that Lumwana brings. With a significant resource but low grade profile, Lumwana really shines when you apply the economies of scale and unlock its true value and its potential. In addition to the owner miner fleet investment for the waste mining, the current recapitalization of our all mining fleet with ultra-class Komatsu trucks and shovels enables us to scale operational benefits through improved runtimes. This also allows a significant step change.
As we ramp up mining, we maximize stripping, we increase our flexibility to allow us to achieve this growing production profile and at the same time, improve our cost profile. In addition to this, the new Zambian government has proven to be very investment friendly as part of their commitment to revive the copper industry. They've amended their regulations to reduce royalty rates on copper sales, further aiding a reduction in all-in sustaining costs. At Loulo, we're focusing on the development and expanding of underground mining for the infrastructure of the Lode 1 deeps expansion. As Joe and Simon will later on demonstrate to you, we have world-class operations because we are in a world-class destination, and this is the reason why the Africa & Middle East region is a growth engine for Barrick.
We continue to build and optimize our exploration portfolio, spread currently across eight countries, focused on the most prospective five demonstrated tier one districts and terrains. In addition to our existing projects, we constantly reviewing new business opportunities that show potential to meet our investment filters and to deliver value. The KKI next to Loulo-Gounkoto is the growing Senegal exploration portfolio, where we believe the large-scale controls of the formation deposits that hosts our tier one Loulo complex extends across the border and therefore remains.
There's strong potential of world-class discoveries in both Senegal and Mali. The northeastern region in the DRC, where Kibali is located, is a challenging environment to operate in. We've demonstrated that Barrick has the ability to excel by finding, developing, and operating tier one assets in this extremely prospective area, and we believe there's still significant discoveries to be made.
The Lake Victoria Goldfields in Tanzania is also highly prospective, yet underexplored. It's got wide areas of cover preserving near surface discovery potential. The Central African Copper Belt, where we find Lumwana on the Zambian side and Katanga on the DRC side, is a prolific copper district, and it's a fertile hunting ground for our next potential world-class copper assets. We're chasing various opportunities and potential partnerships in this area, which could be transformational for Barrick's copper business.
Last but not least, is our growing presence in the Arabian Nubian Shield. We're expanding our partnership in Saudi Arabia and across the Red Sea. In Egypt, we've established a new exploration footprint in the eastern desert. Kibali remains not only the largest but also the most automated gold mine in Africa, and it's a testament of what you can achieve with a world-class team and a world-class asset.
As Mark noted during his Q3 conference call, we completed our 21-day shutdown of the winder in early November, and we're back at full hoisting capacity. Despite this 21-day shutdown, we're on track to deliver within 2022 production guidance, albeit at the bottom end. We've extended the underground operations by another two years, and Lode 11,000 continues to deliver promising results.
The cyanide recovery plant we're constructing at Kibali is the first industrial scale application of this technology, so we're right at the leading edge on this. It's not just an environmental win for us, it also provides economic benefits in the form of additional recovery. Loulo-Gounkoto has continued its consistent performance as our other flagship operation in the region, and it will deliver comfortably within guidance. This is even more impressive as this operation is led by 100% Malian management.
Gounkoto, our third underground mine at the complex, is also on track to start stoping in quarter two of 2023. We continue to successfully replace our ounces, and we're planning to unlock long-term value through a plant expansion of at least 20% to add more capacity towards the back end of the 10-year plan to shorten the production tail, to minimize the impact of fixed costs, and to maximize cash flows. The double coups d'état carried out in August 2020 and May 2021 in Mali came on the back of widespread discontent among the population with regards to the incumbent government and their handling of the security situation in Mali. When the new regime expressed their desire to stay in power for five years, ECOWAS, which is the Economic Community of West African States, reacted strongly in January 2022.
They imposed heavy economic and diplomatic sanctions on the country, accompanied by financial and trade embargo, as well as closing its borders. We had to act very swiftly with this. We worked diligently day and night with our partners. We consulted with the in-country authorities in Mali and Senegal, as well as with the regional authority, which is ECOWAS. This enabled us to continue transporting fuel and critical goods through Senegal.
We rerouted our other supplies from Dakar in Senegal to Conakry in Guinea. We had to change our cement supply. We had to change our gold shipments. We had to change our expat travel. It shows you the importance of real partnerships in the host countries you operate in. Some of these partners have been with us for more than 30 years. We've been through civil wars. We've been through coups. We've had to deal with Ebola.
We've had to deal with COVID. We've had banking systems frozen, but not once have we ever stopped operating or even impacted production. This would not have been possible without our in-country partners and managing our business with host country nationals. Tanzania has been a fascinating story. The difference between when Barrick took over operatorship in 2019 and today is remarkable. We've recut, we've reoptimized North Mara and Bulyanhulu to advance them to a potential tier one complex, and we're on track again this year to deliver 500,000 ounces within 2022 production guidance at a 100% basis. Bulyanhulu, as we identified during the pit of these assets, has an ore body that can deliver +200,000 ounces on average and do this comfortably beyond 2,040.
North Mara, we transitioned to owner miner this year, and we've got various open pit opportunities to sustain a +300,000 ounce profile for an average of more than 10 years, and we continue to grow this. I think one of the most rewarding experience I've been part of was reestablishing our social license in Tanzania since we took over operatorship and specifically North Mara over the last year. They say a picture paints a thousand words. This shows you how far we've come over this time with these assets and how we successfully dealt with the legacy water issues on the North Mara TSF. Today, 96% of our workforce is Tanzanian. 45% of them are hired from the surrounding communities.
We've established the CDC, representing all 11 villages around North Mara, and it's a true and model partnership between the community, the authorities, and North Mara. We committed $6 an ounce of gold sales to support our surrounding communities and $70 million as part of our framework agreement and LTO commitments. We procure 80% of goods and services locally, and in 2022, we were the biggest economic contributor in the Tanzanian economy. However, the biggest achievement has been at North Mara, around which our predecessors built a concrete wall to secure them from the community. Recently, during our board trip, the North Mara management team, the AME executive, and members of the Barrick executive, including Mark, had lunch with the village chairpersons in the village and delivered our media presentation from a school in the village.
When you talk about social license, and pardon the pun, it doesn't get more social than this. Tongon remains on track to deliver in 2022 production, and as I said earlier, we don't intend to close this mine soon. We've successfully now transformed it into a multi-satellite pit operation and the key is to continue our disciplined exploration campaign to extend the life further and also to maintain our social license as we grow the footprint. Lumwana is a mine which had no future before the Barrick and Randgold merger. Today, it has a longer life, it has significantly more value, and with more to come. It's all as a result of a new management team who was focused on geology, driving efficiencies, and a reduction of costs. It's now integral to our Central African Copper Belt growth strategy.
It remains on track to deliver on 2022 production guidance, and we continue to drive growth through high exploration targets such as Kamaranda and Kababisa, in addition to Lubwe. In conjunction with our open pit investments and the super pit potential, this sets the stage for a significant free cash flow and net asset value increases for Lumwana for the years to come. Jabal Sayid is at the center of growing our footprint in the Middle East. It's an extremely efficient operation. It's well managed, and it's also on track to meet 2022 production guidance. Despite it being smaller than Lumwana, the high grade and relative low-cost profile ensures that Jabal Sayid generates significant cash to the group. We continue to drive the Saudi change to Saudi-centric organization with more than 80% of our employees being Saudis.
We've also appointed 9 women since January 2022, and we appointed a Saudi general manager in May. Now, this is what really gets me up in the morning, developing young talent and ultimately seeing them being applied across the whole of Barrick. AME is the youngest workforce in Barrick, with 63% of our employees being younger than 40. For those of you who are wondering, I unfortunately just missed the cut on that.
As Darian will show you later, our workforce is culturally diverse, and we're passionate about developing national talent. We believe expats are like professional football players, highly skilled in what they do. We use them to deliver very specific results while developing in-country skills to ultimately transition these positions into these positions over time. If you look at that bottom graph, you'll see we have a very balanced management team.
It's a good mix of young talent, experienced managers, bolstered by a pipeline of exceptional talent who we continuously expose across our business. We further amplify this in exposure when we broaden their horizons by sending all our top talent to the leading business schools globally. This is a management model which is both strategic, and it gives us the ability to scale. I came through this route, and it's undeniably molded my ability to deliver at a level which is expected in a world-class team. Furthermore, it instilled an obsessive discipline to be output driven and to drive value every day.
That concludes my presentation for today, and I wanted to finish off by saying, the AME business, and Barrick to its core, truly does make a difference in the countries and the communities we operate in, while at the same time, delivering substantial returns to our shareholders. Even more importantly, this legacy, as I've shown you today, is not something that's happened by coincidence. It's absolutely by design. I thank you for your time, ladies and gentlemen, and I'll be handing over to Mark Hill to talk to you about the LatAm and Asia Pacific operations.
Okay. Thanks, Eb. My name is Mark Hill, and I'm the COO for Latin America and Asia Pacific. Today I just wanna give you an update on our progress since we last spoke in 2020. I wanna start out with sustainability. We continue to improve our license to operate, our greenhouse gas emissions, and our environmental performance. On safety, we improved our recordable incidents in 2021 by 50%, and we're on track to further improve in 2022. We have recorded no class one or class two environmental incidents in 2022, which is a vast improvement from where we were pre-2020. To give you an example, the systems have been improved by such a quantum that even during Hurricane Fiona in the Dominican Republic this year, there was not so much as even a sediment release from site.
On greenhouse gas emissions, we have made real progress as well. PV, we converted the lime kilns in Q1 of this year. This will result in a decrease of greenhouse gases of approximately 11% or 127,000 tons of CO2. Also at PV, we're advancing our solar plant, which will provide 222 GWh of power with expected reductions in CO2 of 129,000 tons per year. At Veladero, the construction of the power line and infrastructure in Chile and Argentina is now complete, and the expectation is that we energize this line by the end of 2022. We're just waiting for one more permit. That project will reduce the diesel consumption by 40 million liters a year and the CO2 emissions by 100,000 tons per year.
We have also improved our social license by increasing the number of community development committees or CDCs at Veladero from two to six. At PV, we have sourced and provided training to the local CDCs to ensure the communities are able to deliver on the long-term sustainable projects. Due to our efforts of our various country managers, and with the support of Mark, we now have strong support in Argentina, Dominican Republic, Peru, and Papua New Guinea. We continue to work on, strengthen, and further develop the relationships in Chile and Pakistan. Moving to MRM. The MRM team continue to make advancements in upgrading our understanding of the ore bodies, which has resulted in higher confidence resource models, by tying the mineralization, metallurgy, and geotechnical controls to the underlying geology.
The detailed understanding has allowed all life of mine plans to be optimized and an accurate rolling forecast to be implemented across the business. Also, we have our execution of the success-based drill programs, which are driving key decisions for Alturas del Carmen and the El Indio Belt, while work continues to advance on the plan to deliver a Lama-Veladero strategy by the end of 2024.
We also had the successful sale of Lagunas Norte last year, which has allowed us to further optimize our portfolio and turn our focus to operating our core assets and finding additional ore bodies. Growth is still a key focus for the region, as it has been since 2019, and solid progress has been made, particularly in the brownfields area, with extended mine lives and increasing life of mine ounces by over eight million ounces across the region.
The planned expansion at PV is now 77% complete, and the ramp-up should commence in February next year. Veladero phase VIIA pad expansion has delivered two of the four stacking areas, and phase VIIB construction has commenced. The Zaldívar CuproChlor project has been completed and the team is ramping up the metallurgical performance of the pad. Basically, all of these projects will increase our annual production, lower the costs, and extend the mine lives. We also have new exploration leads in both Latin America and Asia Pacific. We are busy upgrading and growing the resource triangle. The reinvigorated LatAm team is aggressively testing targets, and the Asia Pacific team is established and has commenced assessing multiple opportunities across the region.
Since we spoke in 2020, our continued focus on reducing the legacy's legacy liabilities has yielded further results with another $295 million of closure liabilities coming off our books. This is through concurrent closure in cooperation of more efficient closure plans and the optimization of our asset portfolio. Looking forward to 2023 and beyond, we're gonna continue and maintain our focus on sustainability by further improving our safety and environmental performance. We will deliver on the key greenhouse gas reduction projects, water recycle projects, and reuse efficiency, and also continue with our progressive rehabilitation plans. We'll also continue to strengthen our social license by increasing the development of our business incubator programs, water projects, enhanced CDCs. We'll also continue to optimize the regional two...
Sorry, the tier two regional assets, driving them to potential tier one status, and we'll continue to focus on growth opportunities, including project execution and the greenfields/brownfields exploration. Lastly, we'll continue to optimize the portfolio, dealing with the non-strategic assets and reviewing short-term opportunities unlocked by this higher gold price. Okay, turning to the five-year profile. Expect production to increase over the five-year window as PV starts to contribute additional ounces and Porgera restarts in 2023. A ramp up to approximately 1 million ounces attributable or 2.4 million ounces at 100% is expected within this five-year window. It is slightly flatter compared to our prior profile due to the commissioning of PV plant now in Q1 next year and the restart of Porgera moving to 2023.
Our cash cost and cost of sales profile is expected to be lower from 2024 onwards as a short-term impact of the higher consumables prices such as natural gas, fuel, and explosives, as well as the higher labor costs in dollar terms in Argentina, are expected to become less pronounced. Porgera ramping up production should also drive lower costs and contribute to the drop in 2024. Compared to our prior profile, costs are expected to trend higher than our previous plan due to the lower production that I just mentioned and the remaining effects of the higher gas and fuel prices in the five-year window.
Capital spend for the region is expected to remain steady until 2024 and then reduce as the spend on the expansion and the existing El Llagal tailings facility at Pueblo Viejo taper off and the leach pad expansions at Veladero draw to a close. As you can see, our AISC profile is expected to follow suit and decrease from 2024 onwards. Importantly, our capital profile now includes the highest spend requirements driven by the change in the tailings dam location at Pueblo Viejo, which I'll discuss in a later slide. Turning to people. Attracting and retaining the right people is obviously gonna be critical for us to support this growth we have in the region and also Barrick's future.
Since 2020, the focus has been on a younger, more diverse national workforce with over 50% of the workforce now under 40 years of age, with national percentages increasing and diversity across all sites materially improving. We are on track to exceed these goals. As you can see on the slide, PV has been the standout on diversity under the leadership of Juana, the Country Manager, and Megan as the General Manager. The last two years, we've also seen a renewed focus on talent and succession planning and building capability through initiatives such as partnerships with universities, technical schools, and other learning centers in all our operating countries. These include graduate, internship, and scholarship programs, as well as skills development programs.
Just to take one example, in the Dominican Republic, we have a partnership with National Institute of Professional Technical Training that has facilitated education for more than 400 beneficiaries this year alone. During the month of November, 69 students from the communities graduated from the different programs, and more than 90% have become employed by Pueblo Viejo. Moving to Pakistan, our team is already establishing partnerships with local schools and colleges in Quetta to grow and develop the skills and capabilities in the local community.
These programs will range from primary education right through to university scholarships. The first priority will be a teacher at Humai, which is the closest village to Reko Diq, for the students that are pictured in the slide. This creates genuine socioeconomic value for the community and a pipeline of job-ready candidates for our operations when they commence.
Moving on to PV. PV remains one of the tier one gold mines and will continue well beyond 2040 with the plant expansion and the sourcing of additional tailings capacity. Our in-country management team is fully engaged with both the government and the communities to secure the additional tailings storage. It is important to note that this is a brownfields expansion, which you'll see actually on the next slide in a photo included, and it is a credit to the team that they've been able to manage an additional 4,000, it's actually 4,700 as of today, additional workers in the plant while maintaining and improving production and setting new throughput records.
The expansion will allow the annual gold ounce profile to remain north of 800,000 ounces for the next 15 years, with some of the early years over 1,000,000 ounces on a 100% basis. This is obviously in stark contrast to where we were three years ago when the mining was ending in 2023, and the stockpile processing ended in 2030, and the average ounce of production was 500,000 ounces per year during that period. The graph does also highlight though that there's still further work to do to optimize the ounce profile in the short term. There is an opportunity to improve the five-year window with accelerated waste stripping, waste transportation optimization, availability of additional construction material for the TSF, and improved limestone and pit phase designs.
It is still a bit of a work in progress. Moving to the expansion. That's the aerial photo where you can see the construction in among the existing plant. The expansion product has been optimized and now consists of a new crusher, increased grinding capacity, flotation plant, and expanded O2 plant, which should increase the throughput from 8.5 million tonnes per annum to 14 million tonnes per annum by 2024. Under the new flow sheet, the autoclaves will be treating the same tonnage, but at a higher gold and sulfur grade. The flotation tail will bypass the autoclaves and go directly to the new CIL circuit. The change in the autoclave feed requires a bigger oxygen plant and further heat management.
We need to remove the steam and the slurry from the autoclaves, cool the solutions, and recycle them to manage the heat load. This heat management aspect is going to be the main bottleneck in the circuit going forward. Moving to the TSF. We have made significant progress this year in selecting the location and commencing the design of the new TSF. The issue has been submitted to the Dominican authorities, and we expect to receive a record of decision by mid-2023. At the site, the geotechnical, hydrogeological site investigations have progressed and will be at pre-feasibility level by the end of this year, and the feasibility level design will be completed by mid-2023. We anticipate the construction of the new TSF to start in 2025, and the starter dam will be ready for tailings by mid-2027.
Land purchase and resettlement work are also progressing well. Okay, the storage site that was chosen was chosen after reviewing more than 20 alternatives, as you can see on that map. With option 14 being selected over the more cost-effective option seven, after discussions with the local communities and the Dominican Republic government. The cost of option 14 is significantly higher than the previous base case option seven, mainly due to two reasons.
The embankment, as you can see on the slide, is more than double the length and requires 2.5 times the construction material, and there is additional resettlement cost due to the increased number of households. As I said, the PFS is expected to be completed by the end of 2022, and our preliminary costing for TSF option 14 is roughly double that of the previous base case option seven.
This increase, as well as the additional costs required for the completion of the processing plant, is expected to bring the total initial capital to roughly $2.1 billion on a 100% basis. This includes the $718 million already incurred as of Q3 this year. The estimate will be confirmed upon the completion of the PFS study and shared with the market with the release of our 2022 year-end results in February 2023. The offset to these additional costs is that option fourteen can be designed to hold significantly more material if required to allow for the addition of further reserves. Simon is gonna expand on this in his MRM section.
Moving to Veladero, following the commissioning of phase VI in mid-2021 and the early commissioning of sectors one and two in phase VIIA in July, Veladero has spent 2022 focused on improving the leaching efficiency and controlling the costs against a backdrop of Argentine hyperinflation, which has resulted in rising labor costs, contractor costs, fuel costs, and explosive costs. The federally imposed currency restrictions which impact our ability to pay our suppliers. Also in 2022, we did an in-depth review of the life of mine, and this resulted in the leach pad expansions ending at the end of phase VIII. This decision shortens the life of mine by approximately two years and resulted in the final two cutbacks being combined into one in the open pit.
It should be noted, however, that this plan retains the optionality to expand both the pit and the valley if additional resources are identified in the future. The larger final cutback, although more efficient, combined with the waste deficit that we have in 2022, has resulted, as you can see on the graph, in a dip in production in 2026. The team is still working on options to move ounces forward from 2027 and 2028 to try and balance the five-year window. MRM and exploration programs are also testing the potential of high-grade targets in an effort to advance some higher quality ounces to the pad. Moving on to Porgera. There has been obviously significant progress since 2020.
As you're aware, the Porgera SML was not extended in April 2020, and since then, the mine has been on care and maintenance, and the majority of the staff have been laid off. Barrick still believes Porgera has the potential to be a tier one asset. Since our last Investor Day, the PNG government and BNL have agreed on a partnership for the future ownership and operation of the Porgera mine, which was documented initially in the framework agreement, which was signed in April 2021, that was later superseded by the more detailed Commencement Agreement in February of this year. Under the terms, the ownership of Porgera will be held in a new joint venture company owned 51% by the PNG stakeholders and 49% by BNL.
It was also agreed that the PNG stakeholders and BNL would share the economic benefits on a 53%-47% basis, and that Barrick, not BNL, will be the operator of the mine. Barrick is now working with the PNG government and other stakeholders to satisfy the remaining conditions necessary to enable restart of the mine. The two main agreements we still need is the operatorship agreement and the new SML.
On the restart, preparations are underway for both the mobile equipment and the fixed plant areas. The open pit and underground infrastructure continues to be maintained, and key locations are made ready for the resumption of mining activities. Detailed recruitment plans are already in place and will facilitate the rapid onboarding of the required personnel. Contracts and other external agreements necessary to return to full production have been either finalized or are close to completion.
Moving to Zaldívar. As I said earlier, we completed the construction of the secondary sulfides leaching project in Q1 of this year as planned. The project should result in a recovery of the secondary sulfides, increasing by some 10%. The $50 million asset integrity and plant rebuild programs are progressing as planned. Detailed engineering is well advanced. Orders have been placed for the materials and bids are out for the execution of the works.
These modifications should enable the heap leach plant to ramp up to 20 million tons per annum in early 2024, and the plant is currently operating at approximately 17 million tons per annum. The Zaldívar team also continues its engagement with the Environmental Assessment Service and the local community on the environmental impact study and indigenous consultation process in order to extend the mining and water-related permits.
Moving to Reko Diq. Reko Diq is one of the largest undeveloped copper-gold porphyries in the world and has the potential to be a major contributor to Barrick's growth. The deposit has already had significant technical and evaluation work completed, including a feasibility study in 2010. Barrick believes it has been able to establish a pathway forward for the asset, implementing an ownership structure which reflects Barrick's operating model of partnering with host countries to share economic benefits. The model will see Barrick hold 50% of the project equity and be the operator. The federal government of Pakistan and the provincial government of Balochistan will share the other 50%. Discussions and work on the financing, as we talked about last night, of the project have already commenced.
The project is anticipated to be a major copper contributor, and the discussions with the financiers and offtakers are progressing well, as you would expect. Barrick will update the feasibility to advance the project upon its reconstitution. Technically speaking, the ore body is relatively consistent and we don't expect any notable changes in terms of the overall ore body model. The updated feasibility will focus on optimizing the flow sheet for the 40 million ton per annum base case under phase I, and the expansion to 80 million ton per annum under phase II, while maintaining the optionality to go above 80 million ton per annum. Obtaining adequate information on the community development aspects, the water and power supply options.
The industry has obviously moved on significantly on the ESG front since 2010, so we need to make sure that we capture this in the updated work. We've already started with the baseline work and the team has been in country obtaining data for socioeconomic, ecological, and water use surveys. The communities have been very receptive to this work and there is a lot of opportunity to contribute to the development of these communities as we advance the project. We have a team being set up in Dubai to run the feasibility engineering work over the next two years. Dubai is a two-hour flight from Quetta, the capital of Balochistan, so it gives us easy access to the site. As the project advances and we transition into construction, the center of gravity will obviously move from Dubai into Pakistan.
Dubai also has direct flights to all major capital cities globally, making it easier for us to attract the right people regardless of where they are located. Just moving on to other capital projects. Pascua-Lama, the focus has been on developing a better understanding of the geological drivers and more important, the geometallurgy of the deposit. During 2022, the team completed metallurgical test work on the existing samples using coarser grind sizes. The results to date have been encouraging and suggest the project could achieve a higher throughput than the nameplate at a coarser grind through the existing crushing and milling circuit. The technical team is working on a study based on this information with the ore being processed through an agitated leach circuit.
This is expected to maximize the use of the existing plan and provide a lower capital option for advancing the project. The proposed life of mine is approximately 20 years, with more than 10 million ounces of gold and 430 million ounces of silver being produced. It has the potential to add real value to the Barrick portfolio. We did identify some gaps in the geometallurgy in 2021 and had a drilling program ready to execute. However, as a result of the decision of the Chilean courts, we were unable to commence that program. The team is now focused on developing a study to share with the newly appointed Chilean government, so that we can advance the drilling and the test work. We plan to have a further update on Pascua-Lama in 2024.
In parallel, Barrick has been advancing the closure of the infrastructure on the Chilean side. Since we maintain our rights over the mining properties, the option does exist to initiate a new permitting process based on the results of the technical evaluation and ability to advance the drilling I mentioned. Also in Chile, our Norte Abierto project, a 50% JV with Newmont, continued to advance geometallurgical studies, geotech design, and processing options based on the 2019 drilling program, which was designed by Newmont's technical team and approved by the JV board.
The mine spans more than 40 years, producing some 17 million ounces of gold and almost 29 million ounces of gold equivalent, when you take into account the silver and copper by-products. The study does indicate a double-digit after-tax IRR at a planning price of $1,300, according to Newmont's technical team.
The recent hydrogeological drilling and ongoing optimization work continues to deliver favorable results as well. The next phase of the project study is planned to start in 2023. It is expected that Newmont's team will play a leading role during this phase, which will aim to update the current PFS, and the outcome of this will set the scope for the next phases of studies. I just want to close out. I've already mentioned it, but just on growth, because that is one of our major focuses. The Asia Pacific region is emerging region for Barrick as we work towards reconstituting Reko Diq and restarting Porgera.
We have a dedicated Asia Pacific exploration team and a growth team that have been established, and Joel will give you some more detail on our approach in his exploration section. Joel will also give you an update on our progress in the last two years in Japan. That's all I have. Thank you for your time, and I understand now we are going to take a last 15-minute break. Okay, thank you very much. Cheers.
Welcome back, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Christine Keener, COO, North America. I joined Barrick back in February after over 21 years with aluminum producer Alcoa, where I held various roles in finance, commercial, strategy, and operations. Most recently, I was responsible for the plants in Europe and North America, and my immediate role prior to that was leading commercial and strategy globally for the metal portion of the portfolio. I'm incredibly honored and excited to be here at Barrick. I'm already amazed at the work done by the team and where we're headed as a company, and in particular, the North American region. I'm privileged to have the opportunity to share some of that with you today. I'm starting with Barrick's number one priority, safety.
We value human life above all else, and no ounce is worth producing at the detriment of safety. I also firmly believe that focusing on safety will lead to improved production as we do things the right way the first time and fully engage our workforce. As a region, we have steadily improved our safety performance quarter-over-quarter throughout the year, although we still have a long road ahead of us on our journey to zero harm. We're embedding the Barrick DNA throughout the business with increased leadership engagements in the field, including plan task observations and critical control verifications. This is occurring at all levels, from frontline supervisors to executives. One of the programs about which I'm particularly enthusiastic and will touch on in more detail later is the development of our training mine in Carlin.
It has numerous objectives and benefits, one of which is developing knowledgeable and safety-focused employees. We've also launched our Safety in Motion program, which focuses on body movement to reduce muscle strains and sprains. It teaches our employees through exercises to make simple and practical changes in the way they reach, lift, carry, push, and pull. These exercises are done at line-out meetings ahead of a shift that also have the added benefit of putting safety in the forefront of the minds of all employees prior to going out into the field.
To mature the safety culture from dependent to interdependent, we are conducting site safety perception surveys, site safety assessments, and serious injury and fatality assessments, and then ultimately converting those findings into a strategy and action plan. There are numerous achievements to be proud of in North America since our last Investor Day two years ago.
As I'm a numbers person, I'll start with some impressive statistics. Since the formation of the JV on a 100% basis, Nevada Gold Mines has produced over 10 million ounces of gold and increased reserves net of depletion by 1.9 million ounces and inferred resources by 8.5 million ounces through near mine exploration. The ore body knowledge at NGM and Hemlo was greatly improved, supporting robust 10-year plans that you will hear more about later from Simon. This has also helped us to increase our flexibility to optimize our life of mines for long-term value creation. We've recently entered into multiple earn-in agreements that sets up the region for future growth opportunities. A topic at the top of everyone's minds in recent times is the inflationary environment in which we find ourselves.
To reduce the impact of these inflationary pressures, the teams on the ground have been working diligently to increase efficiencies. With the help of some supply chain optimizations and part-partnerships with key suppliers, we've been able to partially offset those input cost increases. Graham will expand on this further in his presentation. This is all made possible through world-class people. To usher the region to the next phase of safe performance and growth, we have new leadership for the region and for NGM, with Peter Richardson taking the helm at NGM this quarter.
We further enhanced our regional and NGM organizational structures to ensure expertise in key strategic areas, leverage shared resources more efficiently across our business, and enable Barrick North America and NGM to work together to optimize our operations. I will address the community relations in various specific projects later, although I want to highlight the TS Solar Plant now. We are in the process of breaking ground on this 200-megawatt power plant from a renewable source that is a key piece of Barrick's net zero commitment. Turning now from what we've achieved to where we're going. As we keep progressing on our journey to zero harm, we also strive to continue to build an organization that attracts, develops, and engages world-class people. We are attracting the next generation to ensure a sustainable future for the industry.
In doing so, we leverage the diversity of different perspectives of experienced and newer workers while building our pipeline of future leaders. As you know, we simply cannot exist, let alone grow, without our social license to operate. To that end, we will foster genuine partnerships in new jurisdictions that we are exploring or in which we plan to operate while concurrently strengthening our existing relationships. I mentioned the solar project in Nevada, but we are not stopping there as we continually pursue further greenhouse gas reduction projects and opportunities.
You will soon hear more about the tireless work to reduce the liabilities of our closure portfolio in the region and where possible to monetize those properties. North America is poised for growth, and we expect to create even more value for Barrick stakeholders and replace our reserves through near mine exploration programs at our tier one assets.
As mentioned earlier, the flexibility that comes from those assets will allow us to look past the five and 10-year window with sustained production and an optimized 15-year plan. Further, we are in constant pursuit of expansion opportunities, whether through greenfield exploration or external prospects that meet our investment criteria. Maximizing returns and value is first and foremost predicated on maximizing the recovery of the ore bodies we mine, which is exactly what we will achieve by continuing to build on efficiencies and production increases. There are also several site-specific objectives that I will address when diving deeper into each location. As shown in the other regions, here is the five-year attributable profile for North America with costs normalized for current gold prices.
The increasing production profile comes primarily from the Gold Rush ramp up, where the mine design was updated to minimize the impact of the longer than anticipated timeline to receive the record of decision. Escalating volume is also a product of increased crossroads production out of Cortez. Permitting impacts at Gold Rush, Long Canyon, and updated assumptions for Robertson based on our experiences with Gold Rush, together with resequencing to optimize the life of mines, have lowered our near term production profile versus the prior outlook.
However, the impact over the next five years was nearly offset by additions such as pipeline phases XI and XII at Cortez, and ounces were increased beyond the five- and 10-year windows at all our tier one assets. This demonstrates the benefit of the flexibility we have in our life of mines and agility of our teams.
This updated five-year outlook also reflects the inflationary impact of energy and key consumables pricing, which we are working diligently to offset, as mentioned earlier. Graham will discuss this in greater detail later. We will be making key investments in the business in the coming years, as you can see from the capital profile shown. Higher capital expenditures in 2023 and 2024, which lift our capital and AISC overall in those years, are broadly driven by four areas of investment. Underground development, dewatering, and drilling to increase ore body knowledge and grow our ounce profile. Processing improvements, primarily at the Gold Quarry roaster to remove bottlenecks and at the Goldstrike autoclave to convert from Resin-in-Leac h to Carbon-in-Leach . Updating our equipment, which will also serve to increase our efficiencies and production profile.
Finally, as mentioned earlier, we are breaking ground on the TS 200-megawatt solar array, with the bulk of the spend incurred next year and commercial production expected in the Q2 of 2024. This is a great example of considered investments in our journey to net zero while sticking with the Barrick investment hurdles. All of these investments contribute to our declining cost profile over the five-year period. The slight uptick in costs in 2027 is on the back of increased investments in capitalized stripping in that year, such as at Arturo Phase III and Green Lantern in Carlin, at Cut 40 at Turquoise Ridge, and at Long Canyon. These investments are required to unlock some of the ounces beyond the five-year window, which I noted were higher at all of our tier one assets.
We are actively expanding our exploration portfolio, currently concentrated in Nevada and Ontario with four tier one terrains, to look farther afield into other well-endowed belts for gold and now also copper, as we implement our recently developed copper strategy across North America. Like my colleagues in other regions, we are constantly reviewing all new business opportunities and pursue those showing potential to meet Barrick's filters and deliver value. In Canada, we are building a foundation of greenfield projects driven by an energetic team of local experts and skilled explorers. We have significant deferred tax assets in Canada, making new discoveries and or assets even more attractive from a free cash flow and net asset value perspective. Nevada continues to be at the heart of our exploration efforts.
Though the search space is expanding westward as we target not just giant Carlin-type deposits like those found at NGM, but also other types of high-value deposits that include a handful of other Tier one examples across the state. As you can infer from the map, Nevada is high on the list of exploration destinations for good reason. Joe will expand further on our exploration efforts, highlighting the balanced investment towards future growth that will sustain the business for decades to come. Nevada Gold Mines, which is operated by Barrick and hosts three Tier one assets, is one of the largest employers in the state of Nevada, employing directly and through contractors, approximately 12,000 people on site. It is also the product of one of the largest-ever mergers in the gold mining industry.
As a whole, NGM is expected to deliver the 2022 production guidance with higher costs, primarily as a result of higher energy prices, which have a direct and indirect impact on our cost structure, including our supply chain. Beyond the five- to 10-year horizon, we have a robust growth pipeline with expected production increases from Leeville, Rita K, a new s-resource at Ren, Turquoise Ridge targets, and Robertson. I'll now go into more detail on each of the sites. Carlin is on track to deliver the midpoint of 2022 guidance for production, with costs higher than guidance as a result of higher energy prices. Lower ounce production in 2026 and 2027, as shown on the graph, is to ensure efficient processing of the higher grade Cortez ores during those years to the benefit of NGM as a whole.
This is yet another example of the flexibility and synergies created by the joint venture. As mentioned previously, we have planned investments in processing optimizations at both the Gold Quarry roaster to increase throughput by approximately 20%, as well as the scheduled conversion of the Goldstrike autoclave from resin and leach to carbon and leach that allows us to process stockpiles from Carlin South that were otherwise at the back of the queue for the roasters.
We have also recently approved a project to construct two new portals accessing Pete Bajo and Rita K, and the construction and commissioning of a paste plant and underground pipe system to deliver backfill to the Meikle section of the Goldstrike underground and Ren in the future. There is still significant underground upside potential for further ounce additions once new areas are accessed and drilling can take place from underground.
While better ore body knowledge continues to deliver high-grade intercepts around North Leeville, Ren, and new areas like Horsham. Cortez is on track to achieve production guidance for 2022, with costs higher than guidance. As we transition from Pipeline open pit to Crossroads open pit, we expect high-grade oxide ore in the Q4. The five-year production profile shown is impacted by the sequencing of the open pits, particularly Crossroads, affecting grade and the timing of refractory processing. I've spoken on Gold Rush already. However, as a reminder, under the exploration and development permit, first ore was mined in the Q1 of 2021, and we have been mining bulk sample ore ever since. Our priority remains optimizing the ramp up once we receive the record of decision.
We continue to develop the Robertson project, working on advancing feasibility and permitting work, and first production is expected in 2027. The maiden reserves are expected at the end of this year. Resource delineation at Four Mile, a significant growth opportunity for Barrick, will continue from underground when the multipurpose drive development is expected to be completed in 2025, with other future growth opportunities at Robertson and Hansen. As previously disclosed, the Turquoise Ridge complex has had a challenging year and is tracking below 2022 production guidance, primarily from availability and recovery issues at the Sage autoclave. We have now brought forward a shutdown from the Q1 of 2023 to the Q4 of this year. Higher per ounce costs are primarily driven by lower sales volumes.
Leadership changes were made that will continue the positive momentum on underground mine production performance while instilling disciplined process improvements at the Sage mill at the higher post-joint venture throughput volumes. There's a three-pronged approach to maximize the Sage mill performance. Capital investments to address legacy infrastructure issues, clearly defined and adhered to preventative maintenance and operational discipline, and employee training. Turquoise Ridge shows an increasing five-year production profile on the back of increased underground production and improved Sage mill performance, driven by the actions I just described. Lower grade from the mine sequence is the reason for the slight dip in ounces in 2027, as the underground tons mined continued to rise during that period. Underground production increases come from improved productivity and increased stope mining rather than drift and fill.
The third shaft is currently being commissioned and ramp up is ongoing towards nameplate capacity, which will also contribute greatly to the ramp up in underground. Drilling continues to identify and quantify growth opportunities at the Turquoise Ridge extension, the historical Getchell resource, and the corridor between Turquoise Ridge underground and the Mega Pit, which is the historical fence line between Barrick and Newmont, providing another example of the synergies unlocked by the JV.
Phoenix is on track to meet 2022 production guidance, but with higher costs from direct cost pressures and reduced byproduct credits and lower realized copper prices. Phoenix is a prime example of the diversification that exists at NGM, given its operating leverage producing three metals: gold, copper and silver. The synergies are further apparent as we have recently produced and shipped the first batch of sulfur concentrate to Carlin for use as roaster fuel.
We are constantly looking for ways to extend the life at Phoenix, including pit slope optimizations and increased recoveries to drive additions to reserves and resources. At the same time, we are exploring brownfield near mine opportunities to expand our copper production. At Hemlo, as we explained in the Q3 results, temporary interruptions at the end of the Q2 impacted mine ounce delivery in June and into Q3, and production is now expected to fall short of guidance. Cost pressures from increased royalty expenses due to higher gold prices, as well as higher energy prices, were partially offset by improving operational efficiencies. Since the start of 2021, most underground physicals have steadily improved. However, grade has been lower due to the available mining areas.
By continuing to methodically address legacy infrastructure constraints such as underground dewatering systems, we will deliver improved consistency and further progress key metrics. Studies are also currently underway for a restart of a larger scale open pit, which would greatly improve Hemlo's life of mine, and first production could come as early as 2027. We expect the preliminary study to be completed early next year, so stay tuned. As Joe will touch on, the recently closed earn-in with Hemlo Explorers on the Pic Project is also particularly exciting. Golden Sunlight is a great example of how we as an industry can be creative in turning closure liabilities into assets while concurrently being good stewards of the environment. We are reprocessing high sulfide tailings to eliminate perpetual water treatment while providing a valuable syngas fuel source for the Carlin roasters.
It also prevents potential acid-generating seepage from an unlined tailing storage facility. The benign tails from the reprocessing are then deposited in the open pit, which satisfies our closure plans. Returning Golden Sunlight to an operating mine also supports the community in many ways, including the addition of 21 full-time employees and the creation of a community development committee.
The project was completed early this year, and we are pleased to welcome Governor Greg Gianforte for a ribbon-cutting ceremony to highlight the benefits for the community, the state, and the industry. At Donlin, 2022 saw the largest drill program in over a decade, and significant progress was made over the last two years on improving our understanding of the ore bodies. We recently held our second annual owners workshop in Anchorage, the outcome of which was agreeing on the next steps for the project.
These were defined as reviewing a series of key trade-off studies on infrastructure and processing, assessing mining scenarios, and continuing with permitting and regulatory engagement along with our community partners. We are committed to bringing Donlin up the value chain in a financially responsible manner as we determine the best path forward for the project, and we look forward to updating you as that work progresses. At Barrick, how we close our mines is just as important as how we build and operate them.
Our business strategy incorporates actively managing closure throughout the life of mine to leave a positive, sustainable legacy and minimize financial liabilities by optimizing closure plans, completing concurrent reclamation, and monetizing assets where possible through redevelopment or divestiture. Here are some key successes to highlight. Since 2019, we have reduced the North American regional closure liability by $75 million.
We completed a monetization of the back-end right at Eskay Creek Mine for about $76 million in cash and stock in the Q4 of 2020, and have option agreements in place for three properties in Canada and the U.S. We advanced passive water management and regulatory strategies to eliminate perpetual active water treatment at four properties. Finally, as part of our commitment to responsible tailings management, Barrick has diligently advanced projects to transition closed tailings storage facilities towards a safe closure designation as defined by the global industry standard for tailings management. Since 2020, we completed buttressing of four tailings dams in North America. At Barrick, we recognize that we have an obligation to be responsible stewards of the environment, good neighbors, and conscientious community partners.
To achieve this, we proactively look for opportunities to partner and engage with our host communities, including our indigenous partners, to address community needs in a sustainable and adaptable way. Our approach to successfully partnering with our communities is simple. We foster solid long-term relationships with community stakeholders that are built on trust, transparency, and respect. These relationships constitute our social license to operate and are critical to our business model. As part of our community development and engagement strategy, Barrick focuses our investments in five primary areas. Cultural heritage, environment, health, economic development, and education. Investing in these areas helps us to prioritize and leverage our contributions, which maximizes our return on investment. It also enables Barrick to address specific community needs and align with our community business priorities.
This slide illustrates a beautiful mural that was painted by a local Native American artist on one of the water towers outside Elko, Nevada, which is visible from the interstate. Also pictured is a tour of industrial maintenance and diesel technology students from the College of Southern Nevada. I want to draw your attention to the NGM Early Learning Centers that are part of a partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs to provide childcare beginning at 4:00 A.M. and going through 8:00 P.M. to accommodate mining schedules and reduce barriers to underrepresented groups joining our industry.
This is just one example of how we continuously seek new approaches to attract diversity and broaden our access to new labor pools, which not only brings diverse thinking to our organization, but also helps us to manage our labor costs as we go beyond competing for the traditional mining workforce.
Targeted activities focused on increasing the participation of women in the industry has resulted in females making up 21% of our new hires, with women now representing 16% of our workforce. Building our talent pipeline will come from a combination of new hires and development of existing employees. Year to date, we have participated in over 100 recruiting events at schools and universities. While Darian will provide more detail on our broader employee and leadership development initiatives in his human resources section, I want to highlight two of multiple training programs launched in North America. To improve our culture and retention by enhancing our leader effectiveness, we developed Leadership Essentials and Supervisory Essentials programs, which build crucial competencies and align employee behaviors to our Barrick DNA.
As I previously touched on, our training mine at Carlin was recently developed with the first cohort graduating in October of 2022. It is a competency-based training program using a mix of theory and practical assessment, verification of competency, and planned task observations. The training mine provides structured, comprehensive training for NGM and increased quality assurance through field-based engagements. Employee engagement is another area of focus. During the most recent quarter, we hosted company picnics with over 5,500 attendees and launched DNA Awards to recognize employees who exemplify the Barrick DNA.
In closing, I am confident that the enhanced organizational structure and energized leadership team that I described earlier, along with the multitudes of other remarkable employees that we have across North America, will help to deliver the numerous growth and improvement opportunities that will maximize your investment in Barrick. To talk further about the growth potential across the company, please welcome Simon Bottoms, Group Mineral Resource Management and Evaluation Executive.
Thanks, Christine. Good morning, everyone. For those that don't know me, my name is Simon Bottoms, and I'm the Barrick Executive for Mineral Resource Management and Evaluation. I've been leading geology, mine planning, and associated operational execution within the Africa & Middle East region since the merger. Prior to that, was part of the Randgold management team. Throughout my experience, I've worked across multiple commodities in all aspects of mining, from exploration to mineral resource management, evaluation, project development, construction, and ultimately, closure.
I'm responsible for both the MRM and mine planning functions across the Barrick Group, ensuring that we stick to our strategy through all aspects of our everyday business, and more specifically, during project evaluations. Accordingly, I'm also the lead qualified person for the group resources and reserves. Firstly, our strategic filters provide the key framework that guide our investments and capital allocation in our everyday operations.
The first of our strategic objectives is, of course, a focus on gold or copper deposits, which are located within world-class geological terrains. As you will see later in my presentation, we view copper as a strategic metal, and we view gold as a critical precious metal. Geologically, both gold and copper deposits occur together within common districts, and thus we are well-positioned to explore, own, and operate world-class gold or copper assets. As part of our license to operate, we of course, require the right to mine and repatriate our profits while the project needs to fit our values as a company. Also, wherever possible, we always look to achieve active management participation. Now, with specific regards to our asset quality filters, we separate our gold projects into two tiers.
The first of which, tier one projects, are those with a reserve potential that can deliver a +500,000-ounce per annum production profile for at least 10 years, with costs in the lower half of the industry cost curve, and we require these projects to deliver an internal rate of return of at least 15% at our long-term gold price. For tier two projects, these are those with a reserve potential to deliver a +250,000-ounce per annum production profile, again, for at least 10 years, and also with costs in the lower half of the industry cost curve. For these projects, we require a higher internal rate of return of some 20% at our same long-term gold prices. Turning to our tier one copper projects.
For these, we look for a reserve potential of more than 5 million tons of contained copper, with C1 cash costs in the lower half of the industry curve, delivering at least a 15% IRR at our long-term copper prices. We've always used multiple input cost deposit type case models to set our long-term commodity prices. Our latest analysis points towards an increase in input prices of around 9% across all commodities. As a consequence, we are planning to adjust the prices that we use for capital allocation and reserve estimation to $1,300 an ounce gold and $3 a pound for copper. The result of these changes is a sustained balance of our mine plans to underpin our business.
We believe these new price points provide a robust basis that underpin our strategy of operating quality assets that are profitable at all points of the commodity cycle. We also plan to lift the prices that we use to calculate our mineral resources to $1,700 an ounce gold and $3.75 a pound copper. These adjustments reflect our long-term outlook on these commodity prices. While the gold price adjustment is proportionately larger than our reserve increase, this is because we use our mineral resource prices as a tool to position long-term infrastructure outside of and within our mines and operations. At Barrick, the mineral resource management team's key responsibility is to manage the ore body as the custodian of the full mine-to-mill process. This includes responsibility for optimization of our mine plans, managing changes, and measuring delivery against plan.
Our life of mine plans are being constantly updated, and for this, we make use of our digital data platforms, which Graham will talk to you later about. The link between exploration and MRM is a dynamic and integrated relationship, which we adjust to the specific needs of each and every individual operation. As we all know here today, discovery and development is where real value is generated in our industry. Between the MRM and exploration teams, we own the full spectrum of value generation by finding deposits and managing them through to production. As part of this, our MRM teams are directly responsible for focusing on the operational integrity of our five- and 10-year business plans, ensuring that we have sufficient geological, geotechnical, and metallurgical data ahead of us to be able to sufficiently define reliable mine plans.
This helps mitigate the technical risks within our business and better positions us to be able to deliver on our operational plans. Second, only to the development of a new mine, the next biggest opportunity for value generation within our industry is by profitably growing reserves within our existing operations, allowing us to extend mine life and increase returns on existing capital investment. This replacement strategy creates a natural overlap between the MRM and exploration teams, whereby the exploration teams focus on the identification of new targets around our existing operations.
The MRM teams lead the appropriate technical subject matter experts through the process of evaluation. Of course, any new mineral reserve additions are always supported by the completion of a full feasibility study. We operate by the principle that once we have confidence in the ore body, only then can we optimize the mine design.
This helps mitigate the development and operational risks within our business. I will now turn to some key value-driving assets and projects within the Barrick portfolio, where we have demonstrated these principles that I've discussed. In 2019, we acquired the operating rights for North Mara, which we believed to be a high-quality asset, but at that time was poorly understood, resulting in potential loss of a lot of value, particularly that within the Gokona underground operation. Since our initial 2020 remodel, we projected potential extensions to mineralization and then tested these with further drilling.
As a result of this work, we were able to redefine the open pit and underground optimum interface at the Gokona deposit as part of a pre-feasibility study, which successfully unlocked some 5.9 million tons of 4.2 grams a ton, 790,000 ounces of mineral reserves within the new Gokona push back, much of which would have been sterilized in the previous mine designs. Building upon this, a new surface access portal to the underground has also been designed, which will be developed well in advance of mining the push back to enable continuity of underground operations. Now, in order to improve our return on this new capital investment for the underground, this year we have turned to defining the depth extensions to the Gokona system, as highlighted on this slide.
The results of this work are significant, and we expect to further grow mineral reserves over and above depletion at North Mara again at the end of this year. This demonstrates our relentless pursuit to continually improve the understanding of our ore bodies and our dynamic approach to mine planning. It is only when these two factors are combined that they really drive our reserve replacement and ultimately improve our returns on investment.
Turning now to Bulyanhulu. When we first completed the due diligence, the mine was effectively closed and reprocessing tailings. At that time, we highlighted a number of key concerns, particularly around the inclusion of the Deep West inferred mineral resources on an equal footing to that of the measured and indicated resources within the Acacia mine plans, as shown on the long section on the left-hand side of this slide.
We felt that this materially overstated the value of this mine and was inconsistent with acceptable industry practices. Accordingly, at that time, we stated that we would expect to drop the overall grade and increase the planned dilution proportionately with depth, resulting in a reduced conversion of approximately 50% of the inferred ounces that had been included in the previous Acacia mine plans. Since that time, we have added over 200,000 meters of drilling, and as shown on the long section on the right-hand side of this slide, our concerns have been fully vindicated.
In the meantime, we have been focused on realizing opportunities to alleviate the impact of these changes that we anticipated back in 2019 by driving operational efficiency through optimization of mine designs and process recovery, as well as leveraging synergies between our Tanzanian operations to form a new potential tier one complex, as mentioned by Seb earlier. The combined result of which is a significant reduction in operating cut-off grade, which in turn has allowed us to design more consistent underground stoping fronts, as shown on the right-hand side of this slide. Ultimately, this results in a +200,000 ounce per annum production profile that extends out well beyond 2040. Looking to the future, we are also evaluating opportunities to bring in additional high-grade mining fronts from Reef Two into mineral reserves and accelerate their development within the mine plan.
Alongside, we are currently completing a materials handling trade-off study for the equipping of the Deep West vent shaft for ore hoisting. This could potentially remove the current constraints from the mine and allow us to increase the existing production profile. Looking now to our Tier one Kibali operation in the DRC. This slide highlights the ongoing reserve growth, which has very much provided the backbone to that of the Africa & Middle East reserve replacement strategy since 2018. This year, we expect to achieve a fourth consecutive year of more than replacing reserves. This will potentially lift the reserve levels back to that of the original 2010 feasibility study, despite producing more than six million ounces of gold to date.
This recent reserve growth has been underpinned by the definition of the new Lode 11000, which provides us with a separate high-grade mining front that effectively replaces that of the 5,000 lode, which has been the primary source of underground production since 2015. The Lode 11000 is still completely open down plunge, and as a result, ongoing conversion drilling is continuing to define the extent of these significant extensions. Outside of this, we have also identified the potential for multiple satellite underground opportunities proximal to that of the main KCD underground, some of which Joe will talk to in more detail within his presentation. Turning now to our Pueblo Viejo operation in the Dominican Republic.
Alongside the ongoing plant expansion, our MRM teams have been focused on updating the geological model to de-risk our life of mine plans, adding a significant quantity of drilling in the last year alone. This has resulted in a much higher resolution, data-driven model, where we expect to be able to upgrade approximately two million ounces of inferred resources to indicated, which together with 10 million ounces of existing measured and indicated resources, are both expected to convert to proven and probable reserves at the end of this year, subject to completion of the tailings pre-feasibility study this quarter.
This new potential reserve base is some 30% more than our original estimates, and we expect that it will offset the extra capital cost associated with the new TSF, while also delivering a truly industry-leading annual gold production profile in excess of 800,000 ounces per annum out beyond 2040. The team on-site is now turning to the definition of additional satellite ore sources that can either provide lower sulfide sulfur feed sources, potentially allowing us to further increase autoclave throughput or further adding to the life of mine, thus maximizing utilization of the new tailings storage facility. Looking now to our value foundation in Nevada. As this graph demonstrates, we've grown reserves over and above depletion by nearly two million ounces since the formation of the Nevada Gold Mines joint venture.
To put this into context, as Christine mentioned earlier, during that same period, we've produced more than 10 million ounces of gold. Importantly, adding to this, during the same period, we've grown our inferred mineral resource base by some 8.5 million ounces. This forms a basis for future potential reserve conversion, particularly at the three tier one assets that form the core of Nevada Gold Mines. Currently, our growth efforts at these tier one operations are still very much focused on further building this inferred mineral resource base, which in turn will support future conversion to reserves. As a consequence, we do not expect to replace the reserve depletion at Nevada Gold Mines in the next two years, but we are targeting to replace all depletion from the next five years in its entirety by 2026.
These large reserve additions come in intermittent periods as a result of the time that it takes to get the underground development in place to support the required conversion drilling. It is important to note that this industry leading levels of replacement is expected to come from known extensions of our existing mines, and that any new discoveries from the exploration team will only add to this further. Zooming into Carlin, both the greater Leeville complex and Ren have been significant contributors to our growth so far. We are confident that these operations will continue to deliver some of the largest growth opportunities, which will underpin the future of the Carlin complex outside of our existing ten-year plan. This growth has been driven by improved understanding of controls to mineralization and increased geological resolution within our models.
We plan to deliver this next phase of growth by closing the gap between North Leeville and Turf, and fully re-evaluating the newly identified multi-million ounce potential Archon target. We're also opening up new prospective spaces outside of our existing growth forecast, as highlighted by the recent drill results in the Little Boulder Basin to the west of the basin-bounding fault, which has identified the same down thrown stratigraphy that hosts the greater Leeville complex. At Cortez, in 2021, we added some 5.8 million ounces of reserves with the completion of the Gold Rush feasibility study. Today, this reserve base remains open in multiple directions.
As a result of us opening up this ore body from an exploration decline, we've been able to apply our observations from this underground development to refine our interpretations and define new potential extensions well in advance of transitioning to full-scale mining upon receiving a positive record of decision. Concurrently, we have also been growing the Four Mile deposit, which is currently estimated to have some 2.5 million ounces at 10.7 grams a ton in mineral resources. We expect to grow this existing mineral resource significantly, both within the gap between Gold Rush and Four Mile, and also to the north of the existing Four Mile model.
We plan to do this with further drilling from underground exploration drifts, which not only reduce the cost of overall conversion, but also provides more optimum drill angles for conversion of the ore body, and ultimately allows us to piece together this truly world-class system. Upon the acquisition of Robertson, we were faced with a lot of unanswered questions, particularly around the geological controls to mineralization and related processing options. Recent resource and reserve definition drilling has very much addressed this, and as a result, we expect to publish the maiden mineral reserves at the end of this year. This will provide us with an important source of oxide feed for the Cortez mill within our current ten-year plan.
Over and above this, we still see significant potential for further upside as we plan to complete further drilling between each of the three resource pits, where continuity of mineralization could potentially lead to the connection of these pits. Equally as exciting are the recent results of drilling in the distal target to the northwest of Robertson, which has identified significant mineralization along a parallel structure, which can only further add to our existing growth forecast. Turning now to our copper business. As highlighted by both Seb and Mark Hill, within the existing Barrick portfolio, we already have the right assets to be able to build a real tier one copper business, with potential for first production from both Reko Diq and the Lumwana Super Pit within this decade.
These two key assets have the potential to produce in excess of 800 million pounds or some 360,000 tons of copper per year on a 100% basis. These levels of production are achieved within our existing 10-year plan before any further planned phase II Reko Diq expansions. This development pathway truly places Barrick on the global stage of copper production without the need for making further discoveries or acquisitions, which we see as a key differentiation from our peers within the industry. Focusing in on Reko Diq, this slide outlines the core components that the updated feasibility study will focus on.
In my opinion, the most critical of which are the top four points covering the ESIA baseline data and water source option studies. While we have no doubt that Reko Diq meets all of our investment filters, we feel that in order to be true to our values, we need to complete the studies outlined on this slide to be able to define the optimum project development pathway and deliver maximum value to all of our stakeholders.
We are already well underway in the process of updating our resource models and, subject to legalization and closing, we expect to publish our updated Reko Diq mineral resource statement, which will reflect only three porphyries within one of the world's largest undeveloped copper projects. Moving across to Lumwana. This year's drilling has provided a completely new picture on the geological model of the Lubwe deposit.
The results of this drilling have provided the foundation that enables us to unlock the forgotten value within the Chimiwungo Super Pit. As shown on the cross-section, the newly defined Lubwe starter pits provide a low strip ratio, high grade ore source that can potentially be mined and fed alongside the concurrent pre-stripping of the Chimiwungo Super Pit. Ongoing step out drilling is underway to confirm the size and scale of the larger Lubwe system that we expect to be blended with the higher grade Super Pit for later in the mine life. We've completed a number of mine plan scenarios with associated plant expansion and capital estimates, all of which have identified potential for 40-60-year mine life, with significant increases in free cash flow as well as improvements in NAV, despite the additional capital requirements.
On the back of this, we expect to incorporate mineral resources that reflect the potential size and value of the Chimiwungo super pit, together with that of the Lubwe starter pits at the end of this year. We are also commencing a pre-feasibility study in support of updated reserves, which is targeted to be completed by the end of 2024. This will be accompanied by a full update of our operating outlook and associated capital profiles for our copper business. The overall results of the mine plan updates that I've highlighted to you today are reflected here in our 10-year production profile, which sustains our production for yet another year and has us growing our attributable production to some 4.8 million ounces a year by 2027.
All of which has come from within our existing operational portfolio and is profitable at $1,300 an ounce, which is a true reflection of the quality of our assets, and this really sets us apart from our peers within the mining industry. This profile does not account for any of the large brownfields growth opportunities that I have highlighted to you today or any potential exploration discoveries that Joe will talk to you next, both of which could only further add to this already industry-leading growth profile. Moving now to our copper profile. This shows our updated 10-year attributable base case production, which now maintains an average annual production of nearly 500 million pounds per year as a result of further extending the Jabal Sayid mine life, as highlighted by Seb earlier.
Here is a snapshot of the dramatic growth expected in our copper production profile as a result of both Reko Diq Phase I and the Lumwana Super Pit expansion, which delivers an average attributable copper production in excess of 750 million pounds per annum from 2030 onwards. As mentioned earlier, this development pathway firmly places Barrick on the global stage of copper producers and potentially grows further to an average attributable production of nearly 1 billion pounds per year with the Phase II expansion of Reko Diq in the five years immediately beyond this profile. This slide puts our base case copper business into the context of our already industry-leading gold portfolio as a gold equivalent using our long-term commodity prices for conversion.
As you can see, we have a steady profile producing some 5.7-5.9 million ounces equivalent a year for the next 10 years. Finally, I will leave you with this view, showing the result of incorporating our development profile for both Reko Diq and the Lumwana Super Pit expansion into our gold equivalent production outlook. As you can see, this lifts the H2 of our 10-year plan to an average annual attributable gold equivalent production of 6.5 million ounces.
We believe this development pathway from projects within our existing portfolio, together with the brownfields gold opportunities that I've highlighted to you today, provides an industry-leading growth potential and truly fulfills our mission statement of being the world's most valued gold and copper mining business by finding, developing, and owning the best assets with the best people to deliver sustainable returns to all of our stakeholders. Now, I will hand you over to Joe, who will provide an insight into our exploration opportunities that we expect to bolster the next 15-30 years of this profile.
Thank you, Simon, and good morning to everyone here. I'm Joel Holliday, and I'm the Barrick executive responsible for ensuring that exploration adds value to the business through discovery and growth opportunities. I joined Randgold as a geologist in 2004. I have been in Mark's executive team as an exploration lead since 2016. I took over as Barrick's head of global exploration almost exactly a year ago. I'm pleased to be sharing some key points of our exploration strategy with you, as well as a summary of some of the exciting projects in our portfolio. Many of you will be familiar with our exploration strategy and will recognize our geologically focused long-term and highly successful approach to growth, which has multiple elements that all need to be in balance to deliver the group's business plan and optimize value creation.
The first element is discovering near mine projects of a short to medium term nature that improve our mine plans and production profiles. Our brownfields exploration teams are active at all of our operations and work closely with Simon's Mineral Resource Management or MRM teams on a pipeline of near mine targets, many of which will eventually be developed to contribute to the successful depletion replacement program, which Simon just explained in the coming years.
I can't stress enough how important this exploration and MRM relationship and workflow is in ensuring the successful delivery of answers, and it's one of the things that enables our growth and operational sustainability. Secondly, there is the hunt for organic discoveries, with first prize being the next addition to Barrick's Tier one portfolio. While our brownfields exploration optimizes our existing assets, a new tier one discovery represents maximum value creation.
As you probably know, Barrick has made a number of these discoveries in the past, and we absolutely expect to do so again. Our greenfields teams are exploring across an exciting global portfolio in most of the world's most endowed geological terrains. I'll take you through some examples of the targets in both of these categories later in this presentation. There is also the optimization of major undeveloped projects such as Donlin, Alturas, Norte Abierto, and Pascua-Lama, where Barrick's geology teams are working to bring them to account and realize maximum value for our shareholders. Lastly, but importantly, our growth teams are continually evaluating third-party opportunities which have the potential to meet our investment filters in jurisdictions where we can build and operate a long-term business.
The chart on the right of this slide shows how Barrick has built enormous value through exploration, both as new greenfields discoveries, as well as adding serious value through brownfields exploration following acquisitions. Historically, we've done well at this with Goldstrike, Loulo-Gounkoto, and Kibali, amongst others shown here, all outstanding examples of geology-led value creation. In fact, the total amount discovered, which is displayed in this graph, is an amazing 235 million ounces, and this is not by any means an exhaustive list. One key to sustainable and long-term value creation in this industry is the careful stewardship of a robust project pipeline of near, medium, and long-term opportunities in the portfolio from within which our next projects develop.
As with any investment portfolio, we constantly reprioritize and either advance or eliminate targets as they're evaluated, and we use the resource triangle to manage and compare the performance of our exploration investments. It's a dynamic process, and there have been some significant changes since our last Investor Day. There's no shortage of exciting opportunities, and the exploration and MRM teams have been successfully promoting targets towards the top of this triangle, as you can see from this project list.
Importantly, our exploration budgets do not increase to accommodate our expanding portfolio. Expenditure is therefore controlled by budgetary as well as technical discipline, which results in lower priority targets being removed quickly from the portfolio and expenditure being directed towards only the very best targets. However, it certainly isn't getting easier finding tier one ore bodies and having a well-established strategy is only part of the story.
Not all places are equal in terms of prospectivity, and certain special parts of the globe have been treated favorably by ore-forming processes. Of course, these processes have no care for politics or ease of access. As Mark explained, to be a world-class exploration and mining business, one has to be fully global and be prepared to go where the world-class deposits are. Which is why we've moved into new jurisdictions across all our regions and have restarted our Asia-Pacific exploration, which I'll touch on later. Under Mark's leadership, Barrick has shown that it can form equitable partnerships with governments and stakeholders where others have struggled. We have a distinct competitive advantage compared to the rest of the industry in this respect.
As you've heard, we fully evaluate a country's fiscal, regulatory, and legal frameworks before entry, and we only operate where we have security of tenure, fiscal stability, and the right to mine what we discover. The red dots in this map show our main operational areas, and the large yellow dots represent plus 10 million ounce deposits. You can clearly see we are already in some of the world's most prolific districts.
Lastly, before I move to the project summary, I'd also like to mention that having a highly skilled and motivated team is no less important in exploration than in any other part of the business. In the last year, we've replaced the exploration VPs in all but one of our regions, along with a good number of our senior geologists. The energy and talent across the team now is really world-class.
With that introduction complete, I'd like to take you through a brief summary of some of our more important exploration projects starting in the Africa and Middle East region. Seb has already summarized our exploration activities here, where our exploration teams are active on both greenfields and brownfields targets across eight countries, which accounts for a large part of our global exploration portfolio. Over the last two years, we've had significant exploration success around our operations and have materially grown our greenfields exploration portfolio with new projects in Senegal, Tanzania and Egypt. Simon spoke about Lumwana, our copper operation in Zambia, so I won't spend time talking about it here.
However, it is worth reiterating that in addition to the exploration around our AME copper assets, Lumwana and Jabal Sayid, which is a critical part of our business, our exploration teams are also assessing opportunities across the Central African Copper Belt. To be successful in exploration, it's essential to know where to persevere and when to stop. The Loulo District in Mali and Senegal is certainly a place where our perseverance has paid off, and we continue to find new zones of mineralization in this over 20 million ounce endowed district. With our mines here in great shape and continuing to grow reserves net of depletion, exploration has been redirected and our efforts are focused on evaluating early stage targets along the key structures in the district, highlighted in red on this permit map, to develop the target pipeline further.
In what is an impressively geochemically anomalous district, and one where we are sure there is still more to be found, we have in the last two years discovered numerous zones of mineralization with strong drill intersections reported both in Senegal and in Mali. We never stop learning, and as we continue to work on the targets listed here, we're also evaluating different technologies which have the potential to reset the maturity on our mining leases as many of these key structural corridors remain untested at depth.
The Yalea mine is testament to this opportunity, where drilling at the base of this world-class deposit continues to identify new upside as the controls to mineralization change with depth. Like the Loulo District, Kibali in the northeast of DRC is another very special place with a total endowment well north of 20 million ounces.
There is some detail in the next slide on the Oere target which I've circled in red here. Across the Kibali project, we're evaluating multiple plunging high-grade shoots which have the potential to be mined from underground. Recent drilling on the deeper extensions of these targets has confirmed high-grade mineralization at Kalimba and Mangou Hill, and the Gorumbwa and Agbarabo targets also have the potential to be included in this portfolio of plunging deposits. I've included this more detailed slide of the Oere deposit at Kibali because it is the perfect illustration of the importance of persevering in the right districts, which I mentioned in my introduction. Oere was initially what can best be described as a weak and discontinuous geochemical anomaly on the KZ trend, a fundamental group of structures along a basin margin at Kibali.
As drilling has progressed on the target, it has continued to improve with both grade and true thickness increasing with depth. The deepest drill intersections are only 150 meters from the surface and are the best results yet, with coherent and continuous high-grade mineralization in ironstones confirmed in multiple holes. It's an exciting reminder of the potential even in our more established districts where we've been operating for many years. The lesson again is that when you're in a proven and established world-class district, the ongoing generation of new ideas is key and will be rewarded with new discoveries. Conversely, persevering in less fertile districts is a massive opportunity cost, and I think we really understand this important principle at Barrick.
The geological work in Tanzania over the last two years has been transformational, starting with the re-logging and remodeling of the North Mara, Nyabigena and Bulyanhulu deposits, which form the basis of the rescoping of both of these operations, as you heard from Simon. Following that, we secured an extensive regional portfolio, which you can see here depicted as blue polygons, which we're currently screening with regional geochemistry mapping and geophysical surveys.
Closer to Bulyanhulu, we're evaluating an extended land holding in the belt for satellite opportunities, which is already beginning to return some interesting results as the targets are developed. The brownfields exploration also continues around our mines, and we're building a very healthy portfolio of targets, both beneath cover and along strike of the main deposits, which I'm sure will eventually contribute to our depletion, replacement, and mine life extension.
Jabal Sayid in Saudi Arabia is a VMS-type deposit, and these deposits can be small but high grade, generating very robust cash flows. They also typically occur in clusters and can present multiple exploration opportunities if correctly interpreted. As you can see from the slide, our brownfields exploration has been extremely successful in defining high-grade extensions to known mineralization, including some spectacular recent results shown on this long section from what we think is a deep feeder structure at Lode 1.
We have some new and untested targets along strike from the deposits as well, which will be the focus of next year's exploration. Earlier, Seb mentioned that the important relationship with our joint venture partner, Ma'aden, has developed beyond the mine for the first time with the award of the Umm Ad Damar exploration project to a 50/50 consortium between our companies.
We now have the opportunity to deliver further satellite deposits to the Jabal Sayid mine while we work together to extend the joint venture further. In the last two years, the exploration team in the North American region has been re-energized with a strong mandate to expand in the U.S. beyond Nevada, to restart Barrick's exploration in Canada and add the evaluation of copper opportunities as part of our global copper strategy, as Christine explained. In Canada, we've built a new team and portfolio which has been a real success with our geologists now in the field on our fifth option agreement property near Hemlo, which was signed last quarter.
In the US, in addition to the exciting brownfields targets, which I'll talk about next, the team has secured three further option agreements, not only in the Great Basin area, but also in the Walker Lane epithermal district in western Nevada, which are already returning really interesting early results in terms of alteration and mineralization of prospective lithologies. A dedicated new business team is actively evaluating all opportunities across the continent, as always, with a clear focus on our strategic filters. The exploration teams continue to work through an enormous portfolio of exploration targets distributed over 50 kilometers along the famous Carlin trend in northeast Nevada, shown in this slide. In what is one of the world's highest grade and most endowed gold districts, the key structures, as I've mentioned previously, form the main framework for our targeting.
The thick blue line in this slide represents the eastern limit of the most prospective lithologies in the district, which you can see controls the location of both our deposits and exploration targets. Higo Other recent drill intersections, like those in the Little Boulder Basin, have confirmed the presence of open high-grade mineralization. The search continues for the next giant deposit, which I'm sure is somewhere within the map on the screen now. Carlin exploration, as you probably know, is slow and expensive due to the thickness of barren cover on top of the prospective lithologies.
You need first-class technical people and some very strict discipline to get the most from your exploration budget here. Not to mention a touch of good luck while persevering and being bold and innovative in our thinking. In fact, I've just been with our exploration teams in Nevada, and I'm excited about the targets being developed there, including the recent discoveries of several mineralized hydrothermal systems beneath cover.
These are large targets which will take time to fully evaluate, but if there's one place in the world where we should be taking some risk with targeted drilling through cover, this is it. Over in the world-class Cortez District, the huge and largely untested Gexa geochemical anomaly, which is circled in red in the top left of this map, is potentially indicative of the presence of a significant system concealed beneath cover.
We've started framework drilling on this target on the Swift Project, which has already ticked all the boxes in terms of the features which are important indications of being close to large Carlin systems. We'll use these to keep vectoring to targets for further drilling. We also continue to drill on the Dorothy target at the northern end of the Four Mile deposit, where high-value, high-grade breccias can easily be missed between adjacent drill holes at the current spacing. I'm sure the ongoing infill drilling programs at Four Mile will discover more high-grade deposits. Simon has already mentioned the drilling success at Robertson, which you can see towards the top of this map. It's amazing that after decades of mining, the understanding on the controls of mineralization at and in between two truly giant deposits has been lacking.
In recent years, with the consolidation of these properties, we've made some exciting advances in developing a proper geological framework to guide our exploration. We have recently been carrying out a geochemical drilling program across the area, which has identified a priority target at Fence Line, which is strongly anomalous in Carlin pathfinder elements, and also has the strongest gold mineralization we've seen in this exploration program.
In the map on the slide, you can see the target area between the two main deposits, while the cross-section on the right shows the Fence Line target, which is located to the west of the mega pit. We are close to completing this work, and we will use the results to start targeting the deeper prospective lithologies with diamond drill. This will be another exciting project to keep an eye on as we progress it.
I should also mention that we've just drilled the first deep hole ever beneath the 20-million-ounce mega pit, which intersected all the indications of fertile feeder structures beneath the deposit, which hold really exciting untested potential for the future. The Latin American exploration team has been through an extensive review and restructuring since our last investment presentation, which has included material changes in both the team and the portfolio across the continent.
The strategy has remained focused on providing optionality to the two operations in the region, which has delivered some interesting results, which I'll talk about in the next two slides. At the same time, our greenfields teams have been active in the five countries shown on the map, and the target portfolio has been heavily filtered to what is now a solid foundation on which to rebuild our exploration business in the continent.
The LatAm region is a great hunting ground for both copper and gold assets, and the team is now fully aligned, integrated, and focused on the priority target areas within the portfolio. While, as in all our regions, a dedicated new business team is evaluating all opportunities within what we all recognize is a dynamic political environment. At Pueblo Viejo, or PV, in the Dominican Republic, the team has delivered some really exciting results, developing several new targets around the main deposit. These had not been identified from previous work and are only now being drilled for the first time, so it's going to be very interesting to see what's intersected. The Arroyo del Higo and Zambrana North targets both have the potential to host high-grade mineralization similar to the one-million-ounce high-grade Cumbre satellite deposit.
While at Main Gate, alteration and mineralization in prospective lithologies has been intersected beneath barren cover sequences, shown here in blue, which opens up a large untested area close to the main PV deposit. Our greenfields teams are also active across our wider Dominican portfolio, and while at an early stage, we are generating interesting targets with encouraging results from our surface work at several projects. At Veladero, we've reworked all the exploration data from the ground up and reprioritized the portfolio in what is a mature district for large high sulfidation systems. Right now, Morro Escondido is the most compelling of a number of recently generated targets and has the size and grade potential to be a mine satellite deposit. It's currently being drilled and early observations are encouraging, with wide zones of alteration and mineralization being intersected.
Beyond Veladero, we continue to evaluate the wider portfolio in Argentina and recently had some interesting high-grade drill results from our Quebrada project in the Salta province, which we're continuing to evaluate. Finally, after many years of absence and in a region which has seen far less modern exploration than most, we are investing in exploration in the emerging Asia-Pacific region. It's a large area, but has enormous growth potential and hosts many large gold and copper deposits with the potential to be future tier-one operations, including our Reko Diq and Porgera projects. This year, we've started building a new Asia-Pacific exploration team supported by a dedicated growth team, and together, they've been prioritizing countries based on favorable geological prospectivity and the other investment filters mentioned previously. We'll be hunting for both exploration and new opportunities in these priority countries.
Meanwhile, in Japan, following the screening of 27 projects across the country over the past 2.5 years, we've rationalized the portfolio to nine properties, with the aim now being to advance the remaining prospective targets to their decision points through drilling and geophysical surveys to be carried out in 2023. To recap, we have an established and proven exploration strategy and a motivated and re-energized exploration team.
There is plenty of potential in our portfolio, which includes projects in some of the most endowed and prospective parts of the globe, and the team is producing excellent exploration results. We're expanding our exploration portfolio whilst maintaining strict discipline over risk and quality, and we're a fully integrated part of the Barrick team with a strong mandate to add value from our CEO, who has arguably delivered some of the most significant geologically-driven value creation in the industry in recent years. It's certainly a very exciting time to be in Barrick, and I look forward to updating you on the results from these and other opportunities in the coming months and years. I'll now hand over to Darian Rich, who is Barrick's HR executive. Thank you.
Hello, everyone. I am Darian Rich. I'm the Human Resources Executive for Barrick, a role I held prior to the merger and since the merger. To build a modern mining business at the top of the field, we need the best people to run our portfolio of best-in-class assets. Having the best minds and leadership are crucial to finding innovative and sustainable solutions to business challenges and embedding a high-performance culture. Our human capital management scorecard tracks our progress across four key HR pillars on our journey to building the world's most valued gold and copper company.
Our objectives are to be the most sought-after employer, attracting the world's best talent, to have the best people in the right roles, to have people who live our DNA, act like owners, execute our strategy, and seek continuous improvement, and to have union partnerships that enable us to deliver our business objectives. We put our people first and hold ourselves accountable. Our human capital scorecard accounts for 10% of long-term incentive awards for our executive and non-executive partners. We have achieved solid progress against our recruitment priorities in 2022, which involves driving the employment of younger candidates as well as women through targeted campaigns. Women represent 23% of our new hires year to date and 12% of our global workforce.
Our employee age shift progress remains steady with approximately 57% of the workforce under the age of 40 and 19% under the age of 30. 37% of year-to-date hires are under the age of 30. Our business leaders have highlighted their efforts to successfully drive these recruiting initiatives. Hiring locally is part of our DNA. One of our key sustainability contributions is local hiring, and through our focused efforts, 96% of our workforce and over 78% of our management positions are local national hires. We prioritize local hiring as part of our mission to transform natural resources into sustainable benefits and mutual prosperity for our employees, local communities, and host country governments.
The In-Reach recognition program in AME, the Barrick DNA Awards in North America, and the DNA training in Latin America and Asia Pacific highlight the importance we place on our organizational culture with our employees and prospective candidates. Our investments in people range from apprenticeships and internships to group-wide programs designed to develop a foundation of operational knowledge and management skills, tailored executive and management development programs, mentorship, and on-the-job training. I'll highlight a few of these learning opportunities. Our Compass and Young Professional Development programs provide structured training for early career technical employees through our work rotations in all our operational technical departments within a mine site. The Barrick Greenfields Talent program provides new engineering graduates meaningful, direct underground mining and supervisory experience as a solid foundation for their mining engineer careers.
Our Finance for Business Leaders program develops financial acumen across the organization to help our employees and union leaders have an ownership mindset and integrate financial business needs into their everyday thinking. Our business leaders emphasized our progress of enrolling women in development programs. They also emphasized our supervisor leadership building program and our important partnership with learning institutions locally, regionally, and globally.
We've also highlighted our unique, comprehensive, competency-based training program at the Carlin Training Mine that quickly demonstrates our DNA and focus on safety to new employees. We feel employees perform at their best when they feel engaged and part of one team with one mission. We are committed to creating an inclusive environment where all voices are heard, all cultures respected, and a variety of perspectives are not only welcome, but are also essential to our long-term success.
Inclusion is embedded through a variety of important processes and activities at Barrick. Our flat organizational structure provides the executive team with direct access to line operations and enables them to better understand the issues. Our annual executive and regional team effectiveness sessions create a shared understanding of and commitment to Barrick's high-performance ethos. Our quarterly executive site visits facilitate rigorous discussions focused on business execution, safety, and environmental performance, status of key projects, and an important opportunity to interface with emerging high-potential talent. Our employee town halls, hosted by the CEO and operational leaders, provide updates on our strategy and encourage feedback from our employees across all levels of the organization. Over the past 10 years, the Barrick Board Compensation Committee has invested time to solicit shareholder feedback on our approach to executive compensation.
Concurrent with our discussions with you today, over the next three months, Grant Beringer and I are joining our lead independent director, Brett Harvey, and our independent director, Chris Coleman, who chairs the Board Compensation Committee, for individual shareholder engagement discussions among our top 50 institutional investors for additional feedback regarding our actions taken this year on sustainability, governance, and compensation. Our messages are. We are committed to the delivery of our strategy and the creation of long-term value in a sustainable and responsible manner. We align business performance and sustainability objectives with incentive plans and compensation outcomes at all levels in the company, and we promote our unique and market-leading share ownership culture across the organization.
We have completed our implementation of a global HR information system that underpins our human capital management framework and provides a number of key benefits to the business to drive better decision-making about talent placement, employee capabilities, development, mobility, succession planning, and administrative efficiencies. A modern mining business needs people who share its vision and its values, and are entrepreneurial, agile, tuned into technological and societal changes, and profit-oriented. At Barrick, we are building an effective multicultural, multigenerational workforce aligned to a changing world through our talent framework. The executive team and key senior leaders routinely discuss our talent capability critical to drive business priorities across our operations and projects by ensuring we have the right skills and the right jobs to take Barrick into the future.
As you have heard from our business leaders today, we offer many great opportunities for our employees and our leaders to build essential technical and leadership skills to equip them to be agile in the face of business challenges and prepare them for future roles. Those who wanna make a real difference in this business and their communities, please apply. At Barrick, hard work, successful execution, energy, and an openness to new ideas will serve those with ambition very well. Thank you for your time. I'd like to turn over to Graham Shuttleworth, our Chief Financial Officer. Thank you.
Good afternoon. For those who do not know me, I'm the CFO of Barrick, a role that I assumed at the time of the merger with Barrick in 2019, and prior to that, I was the CFO at Randgold for 12 years. In addition to reporting, planning, tax, and treasury, I oversee supply chain, IT, systems, integration and risk. Today, I'll be covering most of these functions. Over the next few slides, I will share with you the important initiatives we have achieved, those in progress, as well as the overall outlook for the group.
The overriding message that I want to leave with you today is that an investment in Barrick is without equal in the gold mining industry. As my colleagues have already outlined, Barrick has the most tier one operations of any gold miner. This ultimately translates into superior returns for all stakeholders.
We cannot control the gold and copper price. Rather, to be successful, we must manage the costs, and in doing so, we seek to maximize the value of our ore bodies. However, I'm not going to tell you that we are insulated from the cost pressures that the industry is facing today. What differentiates Barrick is our assets, our approach, our systems, and our people, and that is what I plan to talk about today. That is our competitive advantage. Lastly, I want to return to some of the objectives I talked about in our 2020 investor day and to show you that we deliver on what we say. With that introduction, I will begin with this picture of how our returns are leveraged to metal prices. Our focus is on achieving the plan, both production and costs.
That ensures that when the gold price or copper price rises, we deliver that upside to all our stakeholders. Our tier one assets drive these superior returns. For every $100 increase in the gold price and $0.50 per pound change in the copper price, we increase our average annual attributable cash flow from operating assets by over $400 million. Of course, in the current year, our cash flows have been impacted by lower metal prices, higher costs, and higher capital. What is different at Barrick is how we manage these cost pressures. The cash flow you saw on the previous slide are driven by this underlying production and cash cost outlook, which is the roll-up of the previous regional outlooks and includes the group G&A costs.
This five-year plan is the product of having six Tier one operations, and our past track record of replacing what we deplete is an important aspect of what differentiates us from our peers. Rather than expensive M&A to replace production, with relatively modest capital investments, exploration, and drilling, we are able to sustain this profile, not just over five years, but 10 years and beyond, as you have seen in Simon's section. Maximizing these ore bodies and spreading their upfront capital costs is the key to success.
Lower costs translate to lower cut-off grades, which maximizes the economic value of the ore body. While there have been some headwinds in our key growth projects, including global supply chain challenges and ensuing construction delays at PV and permitting delays at Goldrush, these two projects continue to be the main drivers in delivering incremental production growth.
Our updated production outlook reflects these changes in the near term, together with the resequencing we have done across the portfolio based on our work to continuously optimize the life of mine plans. Since we last shared the five-year plan with you, we have also seen significantly higher energy prices act as a multiplier across key inputs and commodities, resulting in upward impact on our costs. Around half of the cost increases we have seen in 2022 are driven by higher energy prices and the multiplier impact across most consumables.
As we have explained to you previously, we run our business plan on a cost model, and given some of these cost increases are expected to remain, we are likely to adjust our reserve price assumption from $1,200 an ounce to $1,300 an ounce for 2022 as a recognition of the cost increase in the long-term break-even cost. I should also point out that the higher operating costs also feed into our CapEx profile, as around 40% of our total CapEx over the 5-year plan is essentially capitalized operating expenditure in the form of waste stripping and underground development. For 2023, we've increased our key input assumptions to levels that are similar to our actual 2022 costs, and have assumed a moderation of these impacts commencing in 2024.
For instance, our WTI oil price assumption for 2023 is now $90 a barrel, which compares to the average price year to date for 2022 of $97 a barrel. In 2024, we expect that to reduce to $70, slightly above the $65 long run assumption we had been using at the start of this year.
As my colleagues have already pointed out, some of the increased CapEx reflects the required investment to strip our open pits, develop to access underground ore, expand processing facilities such as at NGM and PV, as well as to develop greener and cheaper sources of energy across our portfolio. Not all of the expenditure we are making within this five-year window will show immediate benefits, but all of them are expected to add value to our NAV, which is why we will be making these investments now.
We do not run our business for the short-term demands of some shareholders or to maximize short-term gains at the expense of long-term value. Rather, we plan to be sustainably profitable, and it is this strategy which will differentiate our performance over the medium and long term. What's pleasing to see in this graph is the steady growth we see over the period, and I expect that the opportunities my colleagues have already identified and shared with you today will further support this trend. Among the majors, I believe this is unrivaled, especially when you consider the quality of the asset portfolio. The group copper outlook paints a similar picture to gold, noting this is before the benefit and capex of the potential Lumwana Super Pit or Reko Diq, which Seb, Mark, and Simon have touched on.
As you have already heard, we are investing in our copper business, which we see as having very significant potential to increase its NAV. Some of that investment is included in this five-year profile, albeit the benefits are beyond this timeframe. This profile also includes the one-off cost of moving to an owner mining strategy at Lumwana, which will deliver cost savings as well as higher availabilities to better position the operation for the potential Lumwana Super Pit. Turning to the costs, you will recall we shared these breakdowns with you two years ago. As you would expect, we have seen some significant changes, especially in the current year. The top graph compares our cost breakdown from 2020 and 2021 with what we have seen over the nine months of 2022 on a $ per ounce basis.
What you can see is that fuel and energy and consumables have collectively increased about $90 per ounce in the space of a year. Some of that is a function of lower production and a higher proportion of fixed costs, but it is predominantly the cost of energy that has driven this rise. High energy costs are impacting us in many ways, directly via our procurement of diesel and across the group, and to a lesser extent, natural gas at PV and NGM. Indirectly, where energy is a significant input in the production process for some key consumables or in respect of products produced directly from petrochemical sources. Lastly, due to the cost of freight and land transport, given our long supply chains and bulk commodities.
Labor costs, inclusive of what is embedded in contractor costs, still represents the largest part of our cost base at around 40%, although relative to 2021, those costs have been moderate versus consumables and energy. Notwithstanding our transfer to less carbon-intensive fuel sources, energy and fuel costs have increased following the conflict in Ukraine, and consumables is where we have seen the largest increases. When we look at the split of our costs across the jurisdictions where we operate, you will see that around 45% of our cost base is in the U.S. Notwithstanding this, the reality of our cost base is that it is largely US dollar-driven, either by virtue of dollar-driven energy costs, imports where the underlying supply costs are dollar-based, or in some cases where we pay salaries in dollars.
Unlike many of our competitors that have benefited from local currency devaluation in countries like Australia, Canada, or other emerging markets, around 90% of our costs are U.S. dollar-based. Dollar strength is not helping us, but this could be a headwind for others when the dollar weakens. I thought it would be useful to share with you the next layer of cost granularity that we have across our business, courtesy of the significant system investments we have made over the past three years. This is just one example, being Nevada Gold Mines, and it provides a breakdown of the two largest components of our costs, being consumables and fuel and energy, that have seen the highest increases, and collectively they represent around 50% of our costs. We have a further layer below this capturing individual items we procure.
The key point I wanted to highlight is that when we analyze this in conjunction with quantities, we can quickly get an appreciation of what relates to price and what is consumption-driven. As an example, for NGM, when we look at our year-on-year cost for diesel, we have calculated that $76 million is driven by price. Offsetting that, we actually achieved a reduction of $10 million due to lower consumption.
To better manage our costs, we invest time in identifying the underlying drivers of higher costs, which requires an understanding of the cost structures for our key suppliers. This enables us to have an open book discussion with our suppliers, as well as an ability to predict where the cost pressures are likely to manifest in the future, so we can react proactively. Mitigating the effects of inflation remain at the forefront of our efforts.
With some signs of falling raw material pricing on the horizon and downward price movement for shipping underway, we are rebasing our supply agreements in line with these falling indices. Looking ahead, forward curves for fuel and gas remain higher than 2021 pricing. Accordingly, we have built the higher short-term pricing into our life of mine forecasts. From a consumable and spares perspective, we have started to see a reduction in the cost of some commodities as we are renewing our agreements. Pricing can be sticky and requires constant work and effort combined with agility. Since the merger, we have restructured our supply chain function with a focus on a decentralized leadership team overseen by a small but highly skilled corporate team to drive strategy and integration.
This is not dissimilar to the way we run other business functions across the group, as is evident in the way we have restructured our corporate G&A costs, which I will touch on later. Consequently, we have been able to reduce our cost base with suppliers, reduce our inventory holdings, and consolidate our logistics across the globe, all of which has allowed us to crystallize the synergies and opportunities we set out to achieve three years ago. Our global footprint spans across five continents with a total annual spend on goods and services of around $6.5 billion on a 100% basis and approximately 7,000 active suppliers in our system. On the back of our systems investments, we now have the ability to leverage our global supply chain, which is fully integrated between the regions.
At the same time, we have also built significant internal coverage and flexibility over the past three years with three dedicated supply chain and logistics partners strategically positioned within the regions. This has shielded us from the worst of the logistics bottlenecks, such as that seen during the pandemic, and we have the ability to switch our supply between continents. The current supply chain challenge of rising inflation compounded by the Ukraine conflict has had a significant impact on our business, not just in terms of fuel and gas prices, but also the cost, and importantly, availability of key input commodities. To mitigate this inflation and manage supply risks, we are identifying technical levers that could drive further efficiencies in our business, along with a thorough understanding of our key cost drivers.
We have pooled our buying power to ensure that we have appropriate fixed price agreements with key suppliers. We are also cultivating alternative suppliers, particularly in developing countries, as backup to our main supply chain partners and as a cost-based benchmark. Our long-standing policy of local procurement in host countries, which now stands at 65% of our global procurement, is serving us well as a hedge against inflation, particularly in terms of cost of logistics, tariffs, and inventory. Core to our business model is optimizing our working capital. We have set the discipline of managing mine operating suppliers' inventory across our operating sites through key KPIs that are owned by operational leaders.
Since the merger to the end of 2021, suppliers' inventory reduced by 25%, mainly due to empowering our people to take accountability, aligning common spares inventory across the operations, leveraging a larger supply base with improved contractual terms, and focusing on demand planning and planned maintenance. Notable is the downward trend in our suppliers' inventory in 2022, despite the strategic decision taken last year to increase the stock held for commodities to counter the global volatility of both the logistics and suppliers. At present, we are holding around five months stock for key strategic commodities. You will recall from our previous Investor Day that after the merger in 2019, we set a target to reduce our annual cost base in North America and Latin America by a combined $200 million by the end of 2020.
We exceeded this goal and in addition, reduced the AME region's costs by a further $60 million. Subsequently, we added a further target of $80 million for 2021, which was met, including savings achieved through the complete restructuring of our Tanzanian assets after the Acacia transaction. This year we are targeting cost-based reductions of a further $80 million, focusing on our secondary and smaller suppliers as well as specific business optimization projects. In four years we have generated specific annual savings to our cost base of almost $500 million. Some of our biggest wins were with our main equipment suppliers, where we have completely restructured the agreements with our key OEMs. This includes building on existing relationships. For example, Sandvik, where we have been working in a collaborative partnership to mutually improve our efficiencies and returns.
In terms of leveraging our buying power, we've built partnerships with new suppliers, achieving significant savings on both consumables and services. A key responsibility for supply chain is ensuring and adding to our license to operate, in part by expanding our local footprint in the host countries where we operate by building real long-term partnerships. Although it predates the merger, in the past six years, we have tripled local partnerships and suppliers at our operations in Africa and seen measurable improvements in Latam and North America over the past three years. Our focus remains on expanding our business to all local communities, including in Nevada. In AME, one of the most direct contributions we have been able to make to our license to operate has been through our business development programs.
This project provides business services to SMEs and entrepreneurs for the purpose of growing those selected companies and creating employment in the region. As an example of its success, since rolling it out in Tanzania, we have grown the mine's local content spend from 26% to more than 45% in just over two years, with 73% of total spend in Tanzania. We have subsequently rolled this program out to both Latin America and North America. Another strategic objective for supply chain is to work with Grant and the sustainability team to set our internal Scope three emission targets and to engage with our top suppliers to identify opportunities with them to reduce our Scope three emissions.
Having identified the area where we can get the best immediate returns, we have started to engage with our top suppliers to understand their current reporting maturity and to assist them in identifying reduction commitments and opportunities, which in turn will reduce our Scope three emissions. Turning our attention to our digital transformation journey. When we last met, we were in the middle of our drive for system simplification and unification, and had just wrapped up the first SAP implementation at NGM. I'm pleased to report that six months ago, we completed our SAP rollout of a single global instance. At the end of this project, we have now replaced seven different ERP systems covering 14 operating sites and multiple regional offices and closure sites across over 250 individual entities.
This was done within budget in a little over two years, about half the industry norm for a project of this size, and in the midst of the pandemic, which obviously added a whole lot of additional challenges. We have also implemented OneStream, which brought all of these operating sites into a single platform for financial modeling and life of mine planning, and allowed us to decommission several legacy systems. This, coupled with the integration to SAP, was a game-changing improvement which decreased the time between month-end close and internal publication of consolidated results by more than 50%. Similarly, we decreased the amount of time it took to generate new life of mine plans into a consolidated group view by more than 70%.
Since 2020, our HR teams have also migrated from multiple systems to one global solution and recruitment platform, and the sustainability team has rolled out IsoMetrix to all operations. Another critical component of our digital landscape is our global data platform. Having learned from past mistakes, we have built this database from the ground up to cater for specific strategic use cases rather than to try and cater for everything, everywhere, all at once. The global data platform is where we pull data together, either from multiple sources when we want to combine them, or where the source systems don't have the data and analytics capabilities that we are looking for. The last two years was about laying foundations.
The key global systems which are now in place and standardized across the group give us a launch pad on which we can rapidly build and improve further. We have all the building blocks for the next generation of reporting and analytics, as well as making the information available more widely and readily accessible to frontline managers in the business. Having our systems integrated gives us opportunities to unlock further value in the business itself, and we already have multiple programs running in this regard. An exciting example to illustrate our innovation opportunities is through our partnership with Sandvik, who supply the majority of our underground mining equipment. We have successfully piloted a remote monitoring service and are busy kicking off a global rollout.
These drills, trucks, and loaders have a host of sensors on board and can continuously provide large volumes of data like temperature and pressure readings, acceleration and speed, to name just a few. By mining this data using algorithms and looking for trends or hotspots, together we can identify conditions which could lead to a component failure before it happens. Warnings are communicated from Sandvik to the site maintenance teams to schedule maintenance or, if urgent, to pull an asset out of operation. Furthermore, the fact that they have such a large pool of data means we benefit from all the lessons learned from information gathered across many sites. They can also monitor operator performance and provide scorecards measured against best practices to help reduce wear and tear on equipment and improve fuel efficiencies.
This should lead to an increase in the average time between failures for components, even in an aging fleet, as well as decreased unplanned equipment downtime and improved operator efficiency. Initial trials suggested a 30% saving in maintenance costs. Our simplification journey is not just on the systems side. You may recall that one of our post-merger activities was around our corporate simplification, including reducing the complexity of our group structure, both intercompany equity and loans. This year, key initiatives include the rationalization of the corporate structure in Tanzania.
Upon final approval from the government of Tanzania, this will eliminate 26 companies in countries that otherwise could potentially give rise to cash leakage. I should also highlight that in May this year, we published our first tax contribution report to drive greater transparency around the complex topic of international tax, which if you haven't already done so, I encourage you to read. This, ladies and gentlemen, is the reason why I make the point of talking about our systems and corporate simplification, as ultimately this is what drives our ability to keep our G&A costs below our peer group. Even outside of the mining industry, there are not many groups that can boast the year-on-year reduction we have achieved in absolute dollars.
For 2022, we are again on track to be below the 2021 actual costs of $151 million. We realize that many governments are looking to increase the tax burden on the mining industry. While we recognize that we are not immune to these challenges, it is worth highlighting that in our countries of operation and exploration, we have bespoke agreements such as the Dominican Republic or Tanzania, or have recently negotiated changes to the tax rules, such as the U.S., Nevada state taxes. We are therefore confident that in these countries we can continue to invest and operate successfully. Over the past two years, we have made measurable progress in resolving previous challenges, including in PNG and Pakistan, as Mark has already touched on.
At the same time, we continue to forge new partnerships, for example, in Egypt, where we are working with the government on a new investment framework to further develop the industry. To finish my presentation, I thought it would be appropriate to focus on returns. In 2021, we introduced an innovative return of capital to boost shareholder return. Earlier in 2022, we announced programs to enhance overall returns to shareholders, and we've been executing on these initiatives during the year. Our dividend policy lays out the base dividend that we expect to be able to pay to our shareholders throughout the gold price cycle and provides clarity on the upside potential when we're generating significant cash. We also established a $1 billion share buyback program for opportunistic repurchases.
As at the end of October, we had repurchased $322 million worth of shares under the program, buying back approximately 1% of our outstanding shares at the time the program was announced. Combined with our next dividend payment scheduled to be made in December, the return to shareholders in 2022 in the form of dividends and share buybacks is expected to exceed the record $1.4 billion of distributions made in 2021.
Recently, we have looked to opportunistically repurchase portions of our outstanding long-term debt and during the Q3 repurchased $56 million of notes below par, leading to debt extinguishment gains and on a go-forward reduction in annualized interest payments. Earlier this week, we launched a tender offer process to repurchase additional debt, and we'll report the results of that transaction later today. With that, I will hand you back to Mark to wrap up today's presentation.
Thank you, Graham, and big thank you to the rest of the team for sharing who Barrick is and how we plan to continue the development of our business on the solid foundation that we have built over the past just under four years. The team, as I'm sure you will agree, has given you a very comprehensive and detailed overview of Barrick and where we're going. All I would like to do in conclusion is to again remind you of our 10-year production outlook for gold and copper, which includes the potential estimated production from Reko Diq and the Lumwana Super Pit over this period. Without a doubt, a clear value creation story in line with the objectives we set ourselves back in 2019, in which we are committed to grow further.
As you know, we are currently buying back our shares as we believe out of all the opportunities we have reviewed, our shares offer the best value investment right now, especially given the quality of our underlying assets and the potential for further growth. I would suggest that we are the most qualified to make that decision. It's a compelling investment case which is neatly summed up here. Among our peers, I believe that we are the best placed to create value for our strategically driven gold, copper and exploration businesses and to deliver that sustainability for our shareholders and our stakeholders. I thank you all very much for joining us today.
Just plotting out the next short while, the plan is to take a quick 15-minute break for everyone here at the stock exchange to get some lunch and return to their seats, after which we'll be taking questions. We'll start with those that have dialed in by telephone, then those who have joined virtually, and then those who are in person. You'll have some time to eat your lunch, hopefully. We'll see you back in 15 minutes. Thank you.
What you gonna start with? All right, we're gonna take some questions. We can kick off. Lois?
We're gonna kick off with the telephone questions.
Okay. I'll just ask if there's anyone on the telephone that would like to ask questions. I see some have posted the questions, so we'll read those next. If you are on the phone, you wanna ask questions, I think it's you dial star zero, I assume.
Yeah. You dial.
Is Chorus Call on? Operator, are you on from Chorus Call?
There are currently no questions on the phone line.
Okay, thank you very much. Lois, are you gonna read those questions?
I am. The first two questions from Mike Parkin and James Hyman are similar, but I'll read them both out. "Can Sebastiaan comment on the news out of Mali this week with respect to the creation of the state-owned mining company? Any color you can provide would be appreciated." And then the next one is, "Mali's transitional government signed into a law creating a state-owned mining company, Société de Recherche et d'Exploitation Minière du Mali, as part of the state's efforts to generate more revenues from the mining sector. Do you have any comments on this, and has the government consulted Barrick on this?
Yeah. I'll answer that. We've just come from Mali and in fact we held a conference in Mali, invited everyone, government officials, opinion makers, 'cause the question that's been asked in Mali is, does gold glitter for Malians? We had this debate, and we shared the facts. You know, Barrick and its predecessors have made enormous contributions to the tune of $9 billion to the treasury and economy. You know, when you look at Barrick and its predecessors' contributions and receipts from the mining investments, those payments, both in taxes and royalties are significantly in favor of the Mali government. We shared that with the audience.
We had many debates about the importance of mining and I'm not sure everyone appreciates Barrick's assets. Loulo-Gounkoto represents 7% of the GDP of Mali. We touch many people's lives, and we were able to share that. Just to give you some background, the current interim government has been running an audit of the mining industry. We have been audited already, and the independent auditors, we know them. They are qualified to conduct these audits. We've been assured that there's a desire to understand the contributions that mining is making to Mali. Of course, like any audit, to see if there are any gaps or people that perhaps are not complying.
We don't see it as sinister. It certainly wasn't managed in any sinister way. It was very professionally done, and we answered the questions and provided the various support to our answers. Yesterday or the day before, the government also enacted a legislation to form a state mining company. I would point out when I first arrived in Mali back in 1992, there was a state mining company. Then, again, since then, the gold mining industry has grown significantly in Mali, and Mali gets between 10%-20% under the mining code of equity participation in the investments. There's always been a debate about where that money goes because it sort of gets lost in the treasury.
At the same time, there are a number of small-scale miners and again, we've been working with the Mali government to create corridors and bring the illegal miners into a controlled environment. Again, when I first arrived in Mali, there were corridors. You know, when the gold price went up, lots of those things went out the window with the previous governments, and they ended up in the hands of major mining companies. We've been working on that as well with the state because the amount of illegal mining in Mali is exceptionally high, and the government doesn't actually benefit from it. Of course, it leaves significant environmental degradation, which has to be addressed.
It's polluting the international river, Falémé, which is an international boundary as we speak. From what we understand, the intention of this new state mining company is to facilitate the mining smaller scale projects and try and consolidate and initiate small scale mining enterprises as a first focus. Of course, you know, like everything, people think mining is easy, you know, the intention maybe is to try and do it a little bit more commercially, but I'm absolutely convinced that the government will soon find out that, you know, the revenues that the Malian government receives from mining are significant, both directly to the treasury and certainly from Barrick, and indirectly through, you know, indirect taxes, et cetera.
You heard from the team today that we put a lot of time into developing local content and supporting the economy, and we don't have. Even our contract miners now are largely Malian. Again, our executives are Malian, our service providers are Malian, and so there's a big drive back into the economy. I assume you're asking it in the sense that you're concerned that it might be sinister, and I don't believe it is a sinister move.
Okay. Thanks, Mark. We have a question from Martin Pradier of Veritas Investment Research. He says there was an article in the Financial Post about pollution in Veladero yesterday. Can at some point the company address those allegations?
Grant, do you wanna make a comment there?
Yeah. I think what we know about. We acknowledge the article that went out. You know, we believe it was perhaps premature on the Financial Post part. The fact that we've been working with the UN human rights office as they contacted us with these allegations. We responded in full to the UN on the allegations. We refute the allegations and are monitoring data
Shows that not only are monitoring data, but the data that the government have collected over a period of time, has also shown that there are no instances of non-compliance and no impacts associated with the Veladero mine. That response is yet to be published on the UN's website. We would have hoped that they would have waited until that response was on the website so they could get all the facts and details associated with the event.
Yeah. I would just point out the government has actually filed a response as well, refuting all the claims, and I believe that's on the website, Grant.
Yeah, that was uploaded today.
It was uploaded. This is a classic example. Financial Post gets fed something, reaches out to us, we explain to them that we're aware of it. We have responded to the United Nations rapporteur and that it's gonna be posted and that we suggest they wait until it's published, and they didn't. Then they publish this, and now they've got to deal with, you know, information that's not appropriate. Again, the government report is very clear and points out there have been no uncontrolled spills. There was one out of containment spill back in 2015, and that didn't go anywhere.
The other thing that Grant and the team do, that his team in Veladero is that we jointly sample with the community, specific sample points all the way down the river. Those, the community use reputable laboratories to do their analysis, and none of those have come up with anomalies. You know, that's the fact, and I hope that answers your question. Thanks, Grant.
Can we have two questions on Donlin? They're a bit different, but I'll read them out together. One from Carey MacRury from Canaccord Genuity. Can you talk conceptually about what you are considering at Donlin, a smaller plant than the 50 kiloton per day outlined before, and the potential CapEx? And then the other question is from Robert Cook. He says, "Will Donlin Gold be given priority in the portfolio due to the safe country status and huge potential? This asset is surely a game changer for the company.
Just some facts. When we arrived with the Barrick and Randgold merger and looked at Donlin, there was no geological framework to the global estimate, gold estimate, and we couldn't point to where the gold was. We set out on a phased drilling program without knowing the size of the ore bodies, their deportment, their continuity, you actually can't size a mining fleet, which means you can't size the tons that you can mine, which means you can't size the processing facility. The whole thing is, you know, we know that. First thing, understand the geology. Second thing, do a proper mine plan, and then you can do the rest. We've done that, and we've got a number of holes. Can you recall how many holes still are we waiting on, Simon or Christine?
Yeah. We're still waiting on more than half the results to come back. At the moment, I mean, as Mark's pointed out, we essentially now feel we have better understanding of the geology, but we now need to re-optimize the mine design and look at what is the truly optimum development pathway. We're not at the point to commit to any sizing yet. The key is that look where we've not only drilled, but we've also opened up clearings where we've got visual exposures of the mineralization.
Having that exposure is, actually looking at it now, when you consider the proposed mining fleet, there might be changes in the way we would approach that in order to potentially maintain the grade and minimize dilution. These are studies that, as Christine pointed out in her points, that we're gonna be ongoing in the next year.
That's what we plan to do. I would just point out, a lot of people ask this question. You know, we've worked very hard. The Donlin team has done an excellent job in its social license. We have absolutely no problem, and we think it is a key component. The 50% that we own is an important part of our inventory. You know, having a 50% share of a 30-40 million ounce gold resource is very valuable to us. Right now, on the basis of what has been done in the past, doesn't fit our investment criteria, but as we know, all of us here in the gold industry, this changes, and this is a significant deposit. It's real. It is double refractory, so it needs autoclaves.
We are busy doing the test work because maybe we could vary that flow sheet, but we haven't done enough, and we're gonna redo some of the test work. This next year, so we're waiting for these results. When we got the results, we'll remodel and be able to then do a preliminary assessment of mining shapes, the minimum mining block size, et cetera, which will set out the foundation for the whole revisitation of the project. At the same time, we will continue into next year after the winter, some evaluation on and trade-offs, and one of the big ones is power and how we manage power to the mine.
Right now, the capital tag on this thing is significant. We think that it's appropriate to revisit that. We can't finalize or revisit it in any detail until we've got the mine planning sorted out, the size. Because that'll prescribe how many ounces we potentially can produce in a year. That's the basis on which we're working. We've just been up there. We met with our Native American partners, who are the owners of this mine, and it was very constructive, very engaging. We also met with some of the critical logistics enterprises, which will ultimately be our most important partnership because this is a very remote part of Alaska.
We are engaged with both the state and the federal government. At the same time we will be, next year, progressing with some of the outstanding permitting and the renewal of some permits. The next big permitting has got to be the geotech for the permitting of the tailings facilities. You know, we are progressing this project, but at this stage, it's got a way to go before, you know, it would fit Barrick's portfolio. I think for our shareholders who are listening in, and analysts, we are absolutely comfortable with our part of the Donlin project, and we have no intention of giving it up. Guys?
The following question comes from Keith Trauner from GoodHaven Capital Management. Why is the use of cash to repurchase relatively low coupon and very long-term debt a better use of funds than potential investments in new properties or share repurchases? Does that affect dividend calculation?
What we've really seen is, over the last year, we've seen rates move in a way where we've seen the price of our notes has moved favorably, and we're now in a position where we can buy back our debt at below par, which we see as something that creates value. We're taking advantage of that opportunity, you know. As I said in my speech, we balance all of the uses of capital. This is a use of capital, but we keep a measured approach to this in the same way that we are using some of our capital to buy back shares. As Mark has indicated, we see a lot of value in our shares at the moment, so we are using some of our capital there.
At the same time, we've continued to pay dividends to our shareholders, and we have the dividend framework that which sets out the dividends that people can expect. We're very comfortable that through the cycle, we'll continue to be able to pay that base dividend. As I said, when we have higher cash, we'll be able to pay the performance dividend. The debt buyback itself has no impact on the performance dividend calculation. The calculation of the performance dividend criteria is a net debt number. So to the extent that we use cash to pay down debt, it's a zero-sum impact. In fact, it's actually a slightly better impact because we're buying it back at slightly below par, so we land up with a slightly higher net cash number. Yeah, it has no impact on the dividend calculation.
Thank you. Graham?
We have a question from Brian MacArthur, Raymond James. You have talked about some of the CapEx in your five-year plan is for benefits beyond five years. Can you please quantify that amount and tell us what it is related to? Is it mostly the Lumwana Super Pit and Reko Diq? Thank you.
I'll pass it on to Graham, but you know, this is for me, it's incredibly important that people understand this is a long-term game. What we've done is we've added significantly to the life of our mines. We roll it forward all the time, every month. With our rolling plans comes, we roll the capital forward. We are working, and that was the objective, is to work to a plan like we had in Randgold Resources, where we always knew what our NAV looks like. The way we motivate our executive management on the mine is part of their remuneration is hooked to NAV growth. What's interesting now is that we're pretty much there, as Graham said, as far as our ability.
Like we had, you know, from exploration all the way to mine planning, all integrated, costs, everything. We do that all the time. I would also point out philosophically, you know, just doing M&A, everyone says, "Where's your growth?" This industry, again, like it did in 2013, 2014, thinks that you go and buy something, you grow. What happens and what you've seen recently is a whole lot of people have bought at a premium at the top of the market again. This is the discipline that everyone claimed. All you do is you pile up the production, and you don't have the runway. I would argue that Barrick is a standout organization. We did three big deals back in 2019, all at market.
We spent the last three and a half years making sure we build out the runway, which we've done now. We've definitely created value, NAV value, cash flow value, whatever. As Graham pointed out, you know, the last year and again this year, we've delivered more cash and value than we've seen in Barrick in the past. The reason we're buying our shares is because that's not reflecting the value we're creating. That's what it is. I'm not sure that Graham can dive into all the detail that you're asking.
But again, our job is to make sure you get your models right, and we don't practice an approach where we tell you a bit and expect you to make up the rest. We'll be available to work through and make sure you get the numbers that you need to tidy up on your models. I'll pass through to Graham and see what he can do in the short while.
Well, I think, you know, you've really covered it, Mark. It's the money we spend in that five-year window that allows us to keep rolling out that ten-year platform. If I had to try and highlight the sort of key points where we are spending additional funds relative to where we were a year ago, it would probably be three areas in Loulo, in the capital that we're spending there, the owner mining strategy and the feasibility study for the super pit. The second one is at PV, where we obviously talked at length about the investment that we're making in the TSF, and that obviously gives us life beyond 2040. Then the other area is on the green energy projects that we talked about at length. Those are probably the critical areas.
I think you often hear us talk about internal rate of return. You know, lots of people use return on capital, and then they write off capital. Our view is that, you know, that's the way we look at it. We always go back to the original feasibility study when we look at how we're performing. The real best way to create value is to build a capital base and extend the life of the reserves that utilize that capital base. That's effectively what we're doing. The two copper projects we shared today, those are organic growth opportunities.
It's, you know, the Reko Diq project is like a discovery, and accessing that, potentially, you know, 40- to 100-year opportunity 'cause we've only got 4 porphyries in that plan, and there are 14 that we've identified. You would have seen on Simon's map, there's a few more than just 14. You know, it's very important we focus on that capital base because it'll pay dividends for a very long time. That's the same as we see in Loulo-Gounkoto. If you think back, we bought Loulo-Gounkoto, as Simon also showed, it had 500,000 ounces. Today, we've been mining it for 18 years, and we've got more than 10 years ahead of us. That's another bit of capital is the pushback on the Yalea Loulo pushback. That strip is included in the capital as well. Simon, do you wanna comment?
No, I think you've covered it.
Okay. Thank you.
We've got no more questions, Mark, online or on telephone, so maybe you want to.
Okay, I'll move to the audience here. You're welcome. Anyone, please ask questions. I see Tanya's reached for her...
Thank you. I have three questions, if I could ask. The first one is just on, we talked about the gold reserves and resources and what they look like at year-end 2022. Can someone comment on what the copper side looks like in terms of reserve replacement and/or reserve growth?
Two?
That's my first question.
Yeah. Second?
Oh, my second question was actually for you, Mark. Given we have all of this copper growth, and I think we're going to over one billion pounds with all the expansion, et cetera, do you see the need to do anything else in copper in Barrick? Is copper still a strategy on the M&A front? It's my second question. My last question's on Porgera. What makes you so sure at this point to include it in your guidance, 'cause you've been excluding it for some time, so clearly something has changed for you to put it in. Thank you.
Thanks. Simon, are you ready for that copper answer?
Yep, both Lumwana and Jabal Sayid, we expect to more than replace depletion this year in reserves. It will be. It's not gonna reflect, as I pointed out earlier, the value of the Super Pit. The value of the Super Pit potential will be reflected in the mineral resources. Obviously at Zaldívar, we're at the moment just depleting, so that's not somewhere that we expect to replace depletion.
I'll answer the next two questions. Thank you, Simon. You know, we again, you know, everyone's scrambling on copper. 2018 September, we very clearly laid out the roadmap for Barrick, and we recognized the importance of copper. In fact, Reko Diq is the first of those porphyry. Like the gold-copper or copper-gold porphyries that bring, you know, both gold and copper growth to the company. Going forward, Joe's team, and you heard from Simon, we see that our strategy will be driven by asset quality. You know, that's what's gonna drive our strategy. We are absolutely clear about the fact that we wanna maintain our focus on tier-one assets.
That I would point out is tier-one assets as per our definition, rather than the multiple mutilations that people have given the definition over the last couple of years. That's our focus, Tanya. We'll see as it goes. You know, right now copper is 20% of our bottom line, and maybe it's gonna grow, but closer to 30% with our current plans. It all depends on, of course, the copper and the gold price. That's the way we look at it. Again, you know, on my view, we talk about this often, is that mining company. The gold mining industry has lost its premium because it's got no optionality. The latest round of deals just take away more optionality from the industry. That's what we're building, is optionality.
You know, the Nevada Gold Mines story is a key one in that. Again, building back optionality in the industry is hard. Took us, you know, 15 years to do it in Randgold, and then you saw. You know, we outperformed most any other listed company for 10 years in Randgold on performance. You know, we are a much bigger organization now. We have really good assets, and I'm absolutely convinced that we'll build back that optionality in our business. Already, you know, if you look from last year to this year, our NAV is better. We'll continue to add to that. Then-
Sorry, just to be clear. As long as it's a tier-one asset in your definition.
Yeah.
You would add additional copper?
Absolutely.
All right. Thank you.
Porgera, so what's changed is we've actually formed the new Porgera company. We've got the board. The directors have been appointed. The last time we were there, we had that meeting. We formally incorporated the company, which allows us to go forward now on applying for the mining rights, the SML 11A, which is a clean mining right. The next steps is once we've got that done, BNL, that's Zijin and Barrick, will vend the exploration license into NewCo or the new Porgera mining company, because you've gotta own the underlying exploration rights to apply for a mining right.
You know, if you watch that process, this is the process that we pointed out should have happened a couple of years ago. Once we get that, we need to engage with the, what's the forum called? Grant or Mark Hill?
Development Forum.
Development Forum, where we consult with the communities and the landowners, and we agree on how everything gets apportioned as far as the 15% carried equity that we've agreed to. Also remember there's other equity that adds to that 15% to take the Porgera to 51. I would just point out that the deal is the government has 51% equity, we've got 49. We split the economics of the capital 53-47. That's the number. Our share of Porgera will yield a high cash portion relative to what you would normally expect in the old structure because it's structured so that we equalize. We sweep all that equity other than the carried 15% to keep that for 40.
47% portion going. It takes a few years. It's gonna take a few years to get there because we're gonna also sweep to get back the money we've already spent. The outstanding issues at the moment is the operating agreement. One of the other agreements is, as Mark pointed out in his presentation, Barrick is, Barrick to not be an operator. Barrick is the operator, and we are engaged in finalizing that operating agreement. Hopefully, Mark's there at the end of this month with the team, and we should be able to, we hope that we'll make progress on that. Once we've got that done. In the meantime, we have started what we call pre-start work, making sure that the mobile equipment is operational.
We've dry commissioned the processing facilities and, you know, we've dealt with a lot with the pit mud rushes that were threatening the bottom of the pit. The site is in reasonably good shape to be able to fast-track the restart.
Just hanging out. There's no timeframe change, which was that to try and start it like at the end of Q1 and then take six-seven months to ramp up to full capacity. Has that changed?
You know, one thing I've learned in Papua New Guinea is, we've got the watch, and the Papua New Guineans have the time. So-
And-
Tanya, I'll just add to that. I mean, just to make the point, if you look at the graphs, you'll see that they are hatched for an obvious reason because there is uncertainty associated with this. Your assumptions are correct, but of course, we'll be updating you as we go along, you know, when we have more information.
Okay.
Thank you.
Pleasure.
Mark, thank you for the presentation. We know that your projections or your guidance is not contractual, but your promise to the shareholders that you might have projects on the way or an objective or a hope. If we were to look at the 2027 to 2032 timeframe, including some of the things that are not 100% documented or permitted, would that add another million ounces at the end of the decade?
On equivalent basis, Simon?
Sorry.
I'm just you know, we're going towards 6.5 million ounces equivalent on that basis that you're pointing out. The current gold equivalent, I don't have that in my head.
The current gold equivalent for next year is 5.5 million ounces.
The answer is yes.
Yeah.
1 million ounces.
Yes.
Give or take.
See, Joe is wanting to answer the question.
I was looking at the charts that were up when Graham was presenting, and they show that all-in sustaining costs dropping slightly next year and then falling to around $1,000 an ounce in 2026. Two questions. One is, are you not seeing any cost inflation in 2023? And then secondly, what are the key drivers that get your cost down to $1,000 an ounce?
Okay. Before Graham gets into the numbers, the way we've looked at it is that we've looked at 2022, and we've blended those costs. We've modeled them on our view into 2023, and then we project. We actually model those projections out in the five-year plan. I'll ask Graham to take you through the logic of that.
Yeah. That's right, Mark. Joe, as I said in my speech, when we looked at costs for 2023, we expect them to have similar input costs as what we're experiencing in 2022. The best and the most relevant benchmark for all of our costs is oil. That has the most direct impact on our costs because as I mentioned, big chunk of our cost is oil or it's oil-related or it's petrochemical-related or it has supply. You know, it has something to do with oil. That is really your benchmark. When we look at our costs and our cost profile, we look at that forward curve of oil, and that kinda drives our outlook on costs.
As I said, for 2023, we're assuming a $90 WTI oil price, which compares to the actual year-to-date for 2022 of $97. You can see it's pretty close to where spot is today. We're basically assuming spot oil prices for next year and similar input prices for 2023 as 2022. Then in 2024, we assume that the oil price comes down to $70. Similarly, we have the same kind of reduction in our inputs on our key commodities, whether that be cyanide, lime, all of those other key drivers of our costs that we've seen increases during this period. We expect them to moderate, and they come down. That is reflected in those graphs.
You see that curve as those input prices come down because we think that is the likely scenario, and it's all linked to those key indices. We look at those input indices, we look at what the shape of them is, and we use that to drive our cost profile.
Joe, on the other part of the cost is, of course, labor. You heard from both Christine and Darian that the industry has sort of chased the shrinking pool of mining labor, particularly in the US. We haven't. We've focused on bringing in new entrants into the mining industry, and very successfully, as Christine pointed out. We believe younger people are more energetic. You know, I mean, they are our future. Part of our strategy is we want, you know, we wanna really work at making sure that our business is accepted by the future generations. The best way to teach oneself how to do that is to have younger people in your organization.
You'll see how we've shaped even the age profile of my executive. You know, it's significantly shaped now. It's the same. We don't push out. You know, we're one of the few companies that keep people. We don't have a retirement age. We keep people if they wanna work because we wanna capture that expertise. But you know, at the same time, with particularly with the turnover in Nevada, we've been able to affect that strategy without you know, retrenching anyone and it's very material.
Yeah. The only other point, Mark, just to sort of point out the obvious, Joe, but as you saw that there is an increase in production profile, so that in itself also drives down those costs. You know, more ounces, lower costs.
The other point that we'll track with the market during next year is if you look at what we've been able to do in Lama and bring those mining costs down, it's opened up a whole, you know, a whole new phase of Lama. We are moving more aggressively into some owner miner projects. With that extra capital, we expect to see improved efficiencies. You know, it's my expectation that we'll be able to sharpen up on some of our costs as we go.
Richard. My question. Sorry. My question has to do with technology. You talked about the Sandvik monitoring. Some of these technology things are ones that smaller companies talk about that I hear about. Ore sorting for one, autonomous trucks, which is being used in iron ore, continuous mining is being tried. Are these or any other technological progresses making any kind of impact on your operations? Where do you see the next step change for technology helping out?
The Sandvik example is spectacular. You know, just accessing with the help of Sandvik. You know, we've got a global partnership with Sandvik. By accessing the data that they collect on those machines, you know, we've increased the availability, significantly dropped the maintenance costs and more importantly, dropped the overall operating cost by 32%. We do have autonomous vehicle-mining vehicles, both open pit vehicles and underground haulage and Kibali's, all autonomous. We are very advanced. Most of our mines have tele-remote mining now. It's very important, particularly in places like Africa, because you can skill up the operators very quickly because you've got the computer memory to help. We can...
We can offer jobs to women who are traditionally much better drivers than men anyway. We see that effectiveness, and I've got no doubt as we progress that work in Nevada with Christine's, you know, initiative of accessing a bigger. That's the same to my point. If you can, you know, we focus back in Nevada employment, and if we can open up that employment to qualified people, including women, that really opens. It keeps our pressure because it's not FIFO. We're just doing away with FIFO wherever we can. Fly in and fly out for those who don't understand it. The technology, we're now at the stage, as Graham touched on, where we've got real-time data all the time.
For instance, we were down in Veladero the other day. We had an argument about price levers and cost levers with the management team. We were able to get our people in Toronto to run side-by-side models in a couple of, you know, 45 minutes. We were able to sit down and actually unpick and agree on where we need to focus. Those things are very powerful. We've got back to where we were in Randgold, where you have as Graham said, he rolled it out in two years, and we rolled it out with expert assistance, but building our own super users that work in the line and so help our people to maximize the use. For our daily sheets, we see daily sheets every day.
With the way it's presented now, you can quickly look and see if it's red or green. Our weekly reports and our monthly reports are all drawing from that database, so there's no finger trouble anymore 'cause no one's typing in numbers. We have a much better handle on our business, both operationally and cost-wise. We'll continue to do that. I think the other thing is clear. The transition away from hydrocarbons is very real. We already have reduced our exposure by about 25%. We're well on track to get to our 30% by 2030. All those projects are already in design, and they will all deliver 15% returns. They are very important commercial undertakings as well.
We've moved into things like, you know, developing stability technology for the electricity supply in like Zambia and Tanzania, where traditionally we moved away from the utility and generated our own diesel power. Now it's much more effective to access that fully renewable grid and just work on the stability of that supply. We use batteries really. That's the plan now is to put batteries in to make sure that we stabilize the supply. And then on the big pieces of equipment, you know, we've got Reko Diq. The Lama project is right now, there is no indication that, you know, 400-ton trucks, mine trucks, are gonna be powered by anything other than diesel-electric at best. But except, trolley assist is rapidly becoming a significant alternate. But
It does many things. It's you speed up the machine when it hooks onto the trolley, and you stop your diesel engine running. At the same time, there's, you know, for the mining industry and for us at Barrick, we can reduce our emissions by just increasing our efficiency. All this data we're talking about, like the Sandvik project, we've learned so much from that, and we can really drop emissions just by improving our efficiencies of every vehicle that operates on across our organization.
Thank you.
Chris.
Oh, thanks. This kind of follows up to Joe's question. It's a multi-part question. In terms of the All-in Sustaining Costs declining, is part of the All-in Sustaining Costs like next year that you were talking about some stripping and some underground development that's gonna take place next year, but maybe not in the subsequent years. That's the first part of that. Is the decline in All-in Sustaining Costs all gonna be a factor of declining energy and consumables, or are these other factors in there? Just big picture from a capital perspective, does the capital guide, the growth CapEx, does that include Reko Diq, and does it include, I guess it doesn't include Lumwana, but if Lumwana does and could Lumwana enter in that timeframe? What kind of scope of CapEx are you thinking about?
Chris, if you look at it, you know, we're getting there. Production going up, costs going down. That answers your question. You know, that's what we're showing you on that graph. Again, in the Nevada Gold Mines graph, you get a little lift up in capital. It addresses the point that you make and that we're putting in some additional capital to ensure that. That is for the next five years. It's not for year five. What is the second one?
The second one was just in terms of does the growth CapEx include Reko Diq?
Oh, yeah. Just the feasibility study, I believe. Graham?
That's correct. Yeah. The capital includes the owner miner fleet at Lumwana and the feasibility study. It's sort of preparing us for the super pit, but it doesn't include the super pit capital itself, nor does it include the Reko Diq capital. It just includes the feasibility study for Reko Diq.
I'll just give you, there's a very good example of that at their own owner fleet. That's for the current pushback to the 2042 pit. What we've done is replaced the contract miner, and that replacement, it's got a payback, Seb? Three and a half years. It's a significant business decision because it really does save us a significant amount of money.
Could Lumwana and Reko Diq enter into the capital picture within the next five years? The Super Pit and-
The answer is absolutely.
Do we have a sense of the scope of the Lumwana Super Pit capital?
Yeah, that's only 26, hey? Seb, when do you start stripping for the Super Pit?
That's only at the end of that profile, 2027.
Twenty-seven.
You really start seeing it coming in.
Okay. All right.
You know, the strip that Graham's talking about is the 2042 pits.
Right. Okay.
That's still past-
Okay
the five years.
And then-
We're also looking at the various starter pits and how we optimize that cash flow, trying to access higher grades earlier to pay for that strip. It's still in an optimization phase.
Just quickly, just on the Reko Diq, what would you say the biggest risk is operationally outside? You know, we just spoke a lot about geopolitical, but you mentioned water there. It looks like it's the desert, you know, like what about hiring the right kind of people? What do you think the bigger power, you know, a source of power, something like that. I mean, what do you think the biggest risk is?
Well, the biggest variable, potential variable is power, and I'll explain why. Ideally, you want to have a power that's sourced locally. There's wind and solar. This is like wind and solar headquarters. Then it's the base load after that. Is it gonna be? There is some stranded oil fields that are big enough to support the mine for a long part of its life, that's owned by our partners, the state-owned enterprise. They're all oil and gas businesses. That's the one option. The other option is there's a rail head that goes all the way to Karachi, and can we look at supplying heavy fuel initially via rail to the site?
Of course, there's a trade-off with generating power at the coast and overhead lining it back to the mine. The debate there is your startup of your construction and how you manage that. The final one is, there's a young volcano within, you know, 30 kilometers. How far is it, Simon?
Yeah, like 40 kilometers.
40 kilometers. There's a hole in it, so some geothermal work done, and it looks as though it gets to the magic 180 degrees Celsius or so. It's in the borehole. The borehole was drilled a long time ago. We're busy working with the Balochistan government to do that because if we could do that, it would change. It's a game changer. If we could find, you know, if we proved up that there was geothermal potential in that area. Those are the real trade-offs. The other, the water. We've already done, Grant and his team done studies on the aquifers. No one's really looked at the deep aquifers. We're gonna do that seismic work. We're preparing for it now.
Ultimately, our philosophy is we will source desalinated water from the coast and pipe it alongside our concentrate slurry pipe back to the mine. Because we've learned so much from Chile, it's a responsible way to build these big, long life mines to do that. You know, that's philosophically, but we've got to do all that work. As far as building the mine goes, it's just a big concentrator. It's not complex at all. The concentrator is very clean. You know, all the people that we've engaged with on funding structures are very happy with that concentrate. I mean, they're excited about it. And so we don't see the construction part as being a risk at all.
Then the people side, we're comfortable we can do that like we did in the DRC, like we did in Mali. You know, we don't. We are very comfortable with our ability to train people. As I've said, I was trying to explain to the board the other day, if you're going to countries like parts of Africa, not South America as much, but Africa and where we are in Balochistan, the intellectual curve, it's a bell curve, is almost intact because most people there are economically captured. If you access them and select the really smart people, it's amazing how quickly they become. We just appointed our first Congolese general manager at Kibali, and his name is Arthur Kabila.
He came to us as a student, and he's now the general manager, and he's a very smart guy. I mean, he's driven a lot along with a number of his colleagues, the whole, our understanding of microgrids and things like that. He's a very, you know. We've got many examples. Chiaka Berthé, you know, who's the West African head, operations head. Those are all people that have come out of that training program.
Thanks.
Anita.
I have a couple questions. First, Graham, when you showed that free cash flow chart, I just wanted to clarify, did you say $400 million for every $0.50 on copper, and $400 million for every $100 per ounce on gold, or was that combined?
No, that's combined. It's roughly an 80/20 split of that number.
Okay.
Between gold and copper.
In the sustaining, the total capital number that you guys have for next year, or I guess line on the charts that you have, for next year, could you give us a split between sustaining and development?
This is the same question you asked me last year.
Yep. Well, it helps us get to our AISC number, right?
Yeah. Yeah. I can give it to you.
But not on-
not now.
Okay.
I just don't have it.
It's actually starting to become a reality because up until now we haven't grown our production, so you know, technically it's all sustaining but, Graham is gonna supply it.
Lastly, could you give us the leverages? If we're trying to, you know, flex what our assumptions are for next year on gold price, you guys have used $1,650. Could you give us an idea of $ per ounce for every $100? Same thing for oil price.
We will do that when we give you our guidance in February as we always do. Remember, we give you much more granular guidance for 2023 when we come out with our results for the Q4. We'll give you that. My expectation is that those sensitivities that we showed you before are not gonna be massively different to what we've shared with you before. You know, the $6 for every $10 change of barrel is probably gonna be there or thereabout.
Lastly, could you give us an idea what the total capital that you're sort of ballpark envisioning for the Super Pit at Lumwana is?
Seb, do you have that number?
Yeah. The different scenarios that we've run at the moment vary within the ten-year profile between $500-$800 million. Over life of mine, obviously there's long-term sustaining capital. Again, we need to. This is part of the PFS, is we need to define the the size and scale of that plant expansion, which will then identify where that capital number will sit in that range.
Thank you very much.
Thank you, Mark. If I could just contrast another company's carbon emissions strategy just for your reaction. Fortescue's truck fleet is gonna wind up and need replacement in a few years. In 2026 to 2028, they're going to go to battery electric trucks with storage batteries, but they're going to have some trolley assist, they're gonna have some conveyors, and they went so far as to build a 10% mine capacity expansion. If there's too much sun and too much wind one day, they won't rely on batteries. Some days they'll produce 10% more because the sun shines. As you may know, Andrew Forrest wants to have zero carbon emissions in 2030.
What do you think of strategies like building in 10% more truck fleet and mill capacity so you can do more when the sun shines and the wind blows, and other adaptations for those who have climate change strong priorities? I know that you're busy just trying to mine gold too, but this. I mean, this is. I was on the Fortescue trip last month, and this is some of their findings.
Findings or dreams? Because I've never built my business on, you know, dreams. Let me, you know, Fortescue, I'm sure has, as we know, Andrew has great aspirations. From Barrick's side, if I just walk through our operations, you know, we're down at $0.045/kWh in DRC. We're on a blended basis through the year, and we're really getting close to the high water periods where we don't have any spinning reserve for our power. That is very significant. In fact, if you were trying to run that power station on diesel today, you know, we wouldn't be making much money. As you'd see, Kibali is one of our lowest cost producers.
If you move to Zambia and Tanzania, we just linked North Mara to the grid. We're putting everything back on the grid. If we're using batteries to create capacitors, you know, effectively capacitors to manage the supply security. In the Dominican Republic it's all gas. We have dual-fuel turbines. They're big ones. We feed it into the grid as well. We don't see any ability to change that in the short term. The work in Argentina, we're linking Veladero to the Chilean grid, which is all renewable, and so we'll take away all the hydrocarbons there. In Nevada, we are building.
We're building, as you heard, solar power extra facilities in all our operations, including Dominican Republic. We've learned a lot about, you know, these grids. We don't just sort of make up something. In Nevada, we're putting in a 200-megawatt solar power plant. There is no current technology that can drive big trucks on batteries. That's a fact. Neither is there any technology that can allow big trucks, we're talking 400-ton trucks, to run on hydrogen. You know, they run. We've got it, but you can't. At the moment, if to just fill the tank, hydrogen tank in a big truck, you use 50% of the contained energy. You know, there are lots of aspirations.
It's only now that we're seeing people starting to wrestle with the technology. Trolley assist works, and you can have batteries and trolley assist, but you know, in big iron ore mines, it's plausible because you can design your mine with long ramps that are there forever, and you can manage it with trolley assist. Then you can have the batteries and all the other bits that you can because you can charge the batteries from the trolleys if you know, if you get that. So the next big technology that we are already engaged in is modular nuclear cells, and being able to support our power facilities and again, if you look at Donlin, that would be a perfect solution.
That technology is rapidly being developed. You now have 150-megawatt modular plants. People are starting to appreciate it's the cleanest energy you can have. No one's really done the study of recycling battery material. Today, all the batteries we use are just a gazillion small batteries. They are not big batteries. They are big. We've got 30-megawatt batteries, but they're just made up of little batteries. No one's worked out how you're gonna reprocess that. The same with wind turbines. You hear horror stories about how difficult it is to recycle the steel and the actual turbines on those big winders.
There's a lot of work to go. I think the positive thing that I can tell you with our team is that everyone's talking about it now. We are engaged with our OEMs, you know, because we're saying to our OEMs, "You wanna sell us a 40-ton truck? It's a 30-35-year life equipment. What are you gonna do by 2030 to deliver something that's more aligned with our objectives?" Right now, the answer is we're still working on it. You know, I hope that answers your question.
Thank you.
Yeah.
Mark, from what you hear, what would the cost be of that 150 megawatt modular atomic plant?
Now, we've still got a way to go to get it to commercial production.
You can't be talking about billions, could you?
No.
No. Okay, thanks.
Hundreds of millions.
Okay. Good. Thanks.
Chris.
The all-in sustaining cost for the copper business next year, you have going from $3 a pound to $2.50. What causes that?
Seb, do you wanna answer this? Efficiency.
Just going from in the copper business.
3-250.
The, the-
That's All-in Sustaining Costs.
All-In Sustaining Costs.
It'll be strip and
With a capital.
Yeah.
Sorry.
No.
No, because the energy price is gonna be the same, right? You're saying?
All-in sustaining.
Why is-
Are you talking about the back end?
No, I'm saying if the energy price is gonna stay the same, you know, forecast to stay the same from this year to next year, why is all-in sustaining cost in the copper business going from $3-$2.50 per pound?
'Cause we're significantly increasing volumes, efficiencies.
Okay.
It's all basically effectively that opening up that pit.
Okay.
That's effectively what we're doing.
Chris
Sorry, one other thing.
We got new equipment.
One other thing is I pointed out, outside of the new equipment is, we've had that regulation kicking in now where they've reduced the royalty on the copper sales. That's coming in from the beginning of next year. That's also impacting it.
I think, Chris, if you look at those graphs, that's why we stack those graphs. You can see the capitals coming down.
Right. Okay. Yeah. There's also benefit from the CuproChlor project that we invested in Zaldívar this year. Next year we should see the benefit from that.
Yeah.
Justin.
Thank you, Mark. Just one quick one. You noted quite a big financial return from the transition to owner mining from contract mining. Are there other opportunities for that in the near term? And is that where you see Barrick in the long term, 100% owner? And do you see the industry moving in that direction as well to position for the next boom?
I think, you know, it's interesting. We're owner miners in AME, and mostly we have come from contractor. We're just moving into owner contractor and AME because when you look at Nevada Gold Mines and our other, you know, traditionally Barrick mines in the Americas, they're very efficient owner miners. We're transporting that knowledge and technology to Africa, and we're doing the switch on mining. You know, our advance rates in Africa are a lot higher than advance rates in, for instance, Nevada Gold Mines. It's not completely comparable, but we've already shown the significant improvements in Africa, and we've got a way to go because it's the sequencing.
You know, what I did in Randgold is we brought in the Aussies, and they are the best when it comes to Aussie contractors, and they taught us how to mine underground, and then slowly we took that business over. The U.S. underground mining has a lot to go before they are at world's sort of best in class. That's a significant opportunity. Even the work that the team have done in Nevada, we've put a lot of time into geotech, which was pretty much absent when we arrived there. We've changed the mining layouts, we changed the mining method. Again, if you do the geotech well, and you do your support properly, you can mine long hole open stope with black backfill rather than cut and fill, which is very expensive.
We've changed a lot of that layout. We still got work to do to get our advance rates, daily advance rates up to where we think we should be. We've got some of the team from AME, actually, as we speak, has just been across to work on Goldrush because that's the right place to start at when you're starting a new mine. You happy with that?
I've got one. Do you see the industry moving that way, too? Sorry, just let me finish.
Sorry?
Do you see the industry moving in that direction as well?
Oh. Yeah, I think, yeah. I believe so. You know, certainly we are. I mean, as you know, we've moved that way with construction as well. You know, we have a different model in construction. Again, you know, it gets down to the ethics as well as how you pay your people. Traditionally, the miners often went outsourcing because they didn't have to pick up the deals that the labor law prescribed to mainstream, the mainstream part of the business.
Again, those are all critical aspects in this modern world if you wanna be a real partner to your country and your community. We've shown if you invest in skills, you get the returns. I would assume that's what would happen. I mean, Australia is a very contract-oriented industry, so I can't really speak for that. From our experience, we're definitely going that route. There's something on the
Yes, just the last one from Kerry McCurdy again, Canaccord. You focused on organic growth, but as you've noted, nothing seems to fit Barrick's M&A criteria. What would an ideal acquisition look like for Barrick?
Another Barrick. Or another Acacia. You know, I think. Look, we look very hard at longevity, returns when we look at a transaction. You know, Nevada is a great example. We did that deal, it was a no due diligence deal. We got surprises as we went into the merger, but the quality of that portfolio is such that we've been able to work those out. Today, we have a serious organization. As Christine pointed out, we've mined 10 million ounces. We've distributed $6.5 billion, and we've replaced 18.5 million ounces. We added, not net, but added. It's a significant, you know. You don't do that. The industry doesn't do that often.
That's a great deal. It's been a fantastic deal for us. The problem is there are not many tier one assets. As we've seen in the industry, I remind you when we started the engagement with Barrick, 2015, gold was $1,100. This industry was broke. We look good at $1,800, we don't look so good at $50. I'm talking on behalf of all my colleagues because we are all over an M&A opportunity. We do have. You know, we continually look at everything. We've participated in just about everything that it has the potential size to be to fit our business. At least like a two tier two asset.
Joe's team has now built some really good acreage around our mines and in the sort of regions where we know there are tier one opportunities. Again, we'll see how those go. You know, as I think we've proved to you, when we find an opportunity that fits our criteria, which Simon shared with you, we do it. We'll do it, you know, any style that we have to to get it done. But, you know, we're not interested in getting bigger for the sake of being big. We are definitely committed to growing our value as far as market size against the cash flows. Right. Anything else? Everyone's saying it's time. Thank you. Thanks, everyone, again. I appreciate it.