Good morning and afternoon, everyone, and welcome to our 2020 Investor Day presentation. For those who know the team well, you will recall that we traditionally host an Investor Day every two years, with the last one held right before the completion of the Barrick and Randgold merger. Of course, much has happened since then, some of it planned and deliberate, like the integration of mineral resource management and exploration as a core driver of our business or the resolution of the legacy Acacia dispute. Others were not planned, such as record high gold prices or an international pandemic of unprecedented proportions.
Despite all the different opportunities and challenges we have faced, I trust that you will today see the business we have built is both resilient and has consistently delivered on the promises that you would expect a merger of Barrick and Randgold would bring to our owners, stakeholders, and the mining industry as a whole. We are all committed to keep these promises as we move forward, and the team is as excited as ever for the road ahead. As I trust today's presentation will show, our focus is clear, to be the world's most valued gold mining business by finding, developing, and owning the best assets with the best people to deliver sustainable returns for our owners and partners. We have a full team here today and all ready to share the progress we have made at Barrick and provide you with a view of the future.
As a housekeeping matter, we have scheduled two comfort breaks during the presentation, as can be seen on the agenda slide. Rob Krcmarov will kick off, starting with an overview of our exploration strategy across our global portfolio. Rod Quick, our MRM and Evaluation Executive, will then give a summary of the role his function plays at Barrick, as well as the projects that he oversees in order to ensure we deliver on our 10-year plan. Catherine, Mark, and Willem will then provide an operational overview of each of their regions, focusing on the opportunities as well as how we mitigate some of the risks for each of the assets. Graham will then bring this regional focus together in an outlook for the group while highlighting the backbone functions of the business that are key to achieving our outlook.
As many of you know, we test with finding and managing and advancing our talent at Barrick. Darian will share with you how we intend to attract and secure the best people to achieve our vision of becoming the world's most valued gold mining business. Finally, before handing back to me for closing remarks and Q&A, Grant will demonstrate how our business only comes together due to our industry-leading sustainability vision. I point you to the cautionary statement as shown on the screen. This is also available on our website for further review should you need to. While I was at Randgold and working with John Thornton on the merger with Barrick, I saw an enormous opportunity to add value for stakeholders of both companies and change the way mining companies traditionally carried out strategic initiatives.
Since the 1st of January last year, we drove the creation of the Nevada Gold Mines joint venture, tearing down the fences and unifying mines that should have been operating as one complex decades ago. We then resolved the legacy dispute between Acacia and the government of Tanzania, which paralyzed the potential of mines like North Mara and Bulyanhulu that are now viewed together as a potential tier 1 complex. I've previously spoken about my belief that the industry needs further consolidation, and in the case of Massawa, we identified an opportunity where an asset we own might be better suited in combination with others. To that end, we sold our Massawa project to Teranga, who then quickly put this asset into production together with their Sabodala operation.
Further validation of our consolidation strategy was evidenced with the announced merger of Endeavour and Teranga, creating a new and exciting West African gold mining leader, and we are pleased to have been able to play our part in this transaction. Of course, Massawa was not the only asset we brought to account. In line with our strategy and our commitment to the market, in total, we have generated over $1.5 billion of value for our shareholders from non-core asset sales, including the sale of closure assets, which reduce our liabilities and allow for new operators to create further value opportunities. Tier 1 assets do not recognize political boundaries, and to be a world-class company, you need to be global. While we may not operate assets in every area of geological significance, we do have one of the largest concentrations of tier 1 assets in the industry.
Of course, we are always hunting for more. This approach to focusing on asset quality is a key differentiating factor in our business model. This slide gives a better picture of our tier 1 asset portfolio, and we see opportunity to further extend our existing tier 1 mines or ultimately develop more tier 1 assets from the portfolio. The opportunity is across all three regions, such as the development of Goldrush and Fourmile in North America, which will secure Cortez's tier 1 status well into the future. In Africa, we are working on a combined complex in Tanzania as we continue to optimize North Mara and ramp up Bulyanhulu. In LATAM, at Porgera, where this mine has all the ingredients to be a tier 1 asset. Our team has done an excellent job and pushed forward across the key indicators that we established for ourselves.
I won't spend too much time going over this slide, but everyone here on the call today had a role to play in delivering on these targets, and the team will touch on some specific points as they present their sections. Importantly, Darian's presentation will demonstrate how we will continue to invest in our most important assets, our people, to deliver on these targets as we build Barrick into a modern mining company for the future. Pictures say 1,000 words, and these reflect our performance to date. Graham will touch on these charts that show the massive step change and improvement in our financial indicators, including our dividends. The numbers are a product of the strategy we articulated when we put the merger together in 2018, and which we shared with you at the same time, same event two years ago.
Whilst the strategy is clearly important, it's the execution which is key, and I am pleased to be able to share with you today what has been achieved as well as where we are going. To close off my opening remarks, I end with my usual comparison of Barrick share price performance versus the gold price and the GDX. This clearly continues to show that a combination of the best people with the best assets will deliver the best returns. Whilst we are pleased with our performance to date, you will see today we are not resting on our laurels and still believe there's more to deliver. With that, I will pass you on to Rob K, that's Rob Krcmarov, to cover exploration and growth.
Thank you, Mark, and hello, everyone. I'm Rob Krcmarov, and I'm the executive responsible for making sure that exploration delivers value to our business. I've been with Barrick for 33 years, of which the last 15 has been as head of exploration, and I'm pleased today to be sharing with you our exploration strategy and some of the exciting projects in our portfolio. Our exploration strategy has multiple elements that all need to be in balance to deliver on the group's business plan and for growth and long-term sustainability. The first element is making sure that we feed projects of a short to medium-term nature that can help improve mine plans and address or smooth out variability in the production profile. That's what's termed as brownfields exploration. We work quite closely with Rod's MRM teams to deliver that.
Secondly, there's a hunt for the next addition to Barrick's tier one portfolio. While brownfields exploration optimizes our existing assets, a new tier one discovery represents pure growth. Lagunas, Veladero, and Gounkoto, they're prime examples, and there are many more. There's also the optimization of the value of major undeveloped projects like Donlin, Alturas, and Pascua-Lama, and our teams are working to bring them to account. If they don't meet our criteria, we can still realize considerable value like we did with Massawa, and ongoing exploration and geology refinements are critical to that. Looking at the chart on the right, both Barrick and Randgold have built deep value through exploration discoveries, both as new greenfields discoveries, which I just spoke about, as well as adding serious value through exploration following acquisitions.
Historically, we've done well at this. With Goldstrike , Pierina, Loulo, Kibali, among others, all really outstanding examples of geology-led acquisitions, and then subsequently piling on the ounces, and that's represented by the gold bars, which sit to the right of the silver bars. Short- and long-term integrated planning, it makes sense for running any sort of business. Yet, it's done quite poorly in the mining industry. To be done really properly, it's got to involve all disciplines and be done collaboratively. Since the merger, and with Mark's insistence, it's been a very strong focus for us, and I'm 100% convinced that it's a really unique source of competitive advantage. The introduction of an integrated exploration MRM function at the strategic level of every mine is really groundbreaking for our company, Rod Quick will talk about that, as will all the COOs.
Now we have fully functioning geology and exploration functions at all of our mines. We're seeing good integration of exploration and MRM. We've moved to short interval control on our ore bodies, and we can measure their performance through reconciliation. We've refreshed exploration leaders and are starting to bring them into the business rather than as a standalone function, just simply trying to find gold. 3D models have been built or improved at every single site. If we're focused on the real tier 1s, you have to go where the gold is. That means going to some potentially tough jurisdictions. If you're going to do that, you'd better learn how to manage and mitigate the risks. I have to say that there's no one in the industry who considers and manages risks better than Mark.
I think his efforts to persevere and renegotiate positive outcomes in Tanzania and Porgera, for example, they are clearly testament to that. It is by engaging with governments and respecting them as partners and owners of the ore bodies who deserve an economic benefit, that we can unlock prospective new tier 1 opportunities where others perhaps fear to tread. The large yellow dots on this slide represent 10 million ounce deposits. You can clearly see that we are already in some of the world's most prolific districts. Moving on to the Cortez District. In the last 30 years, the Cortez District has emerged as one of the most prolific gold camps on the planet, following major discoveries at Pipeline, Cortez Hills, Goldrush, and more recently, Fourmile. In fact, there has been over 25 million ounces mined to date.
In this district, there's a real diversity of deposit styles, host rocks, grades, so who knows what the next one's going to look like, but we're sure that there's much more to be found. You can see some of our focus areas are in the yellow circles there. Looking at the Fourmile area in the panel on the right, you can see successive year-on-year growth represented by the different shades of blue. A little over 12 months ago, we got some fantastic results from yet another pod, Dorothy, which is shown at the top of the slide. While resource estimation's underway, we've already got a significant total mineral inventory of which we've included a little over 3 million ounces in the mine plan.
We're well on our way to approaching 20 million ounces from this greater Goldrush area, and that'll likely see us producing for decades to come. There's already sufficient high-grade inventory there to be confident that Fourmile will be mined. In fact, our mine planning software drives the plan and the schedule towards Fourmile for production later this decade. I guess what really excites me as an exploration geologist is that there's more to come. The style of mineralization is changing in character yet again as we head north, but it's definitely not closed. You can maybe see the small red dots around Sofia and Dorothy , which represent mineralization in drilling above the Goldrush cutoff grade.
There's no shortage of opportunities on the richly endowed Carlin Trend. Since the formation of NGM, our combined teams have integrated the databases and continue to further develop understanding of the geological architecture and the controls to mineralization. With this more complete picture, we've been able to cut through some of the geological dogma and to identify the next generation of exciting targets. Here you can see we've got a combination of targets, where we have both strong expansion potential, such as Leeville and along the Post-Genesis fault corridor, as well as opening up large areas of new prospectivity, like in the Carlin Basin, where we've recently drilled a hole that had some encouraging signs of mineralization 5 km from the Gold Quarry pit with not a single hole around it. That's opened up a huge area of prospectivity.
In fact, we just completed staking over 6,000 acres of land to secure all of that area. By way of example, the area to the west of Leeville, that was previously designated as a no-go zone, and that's mainly because there's a hydraulic gradient, and that was quite high. I guess more importantly, it was thought to be less prospective anyway. The geological work that the teams have done this year was able to demonstrate that the basin bounding fault, previously thought to be inconsequential with respect to mineralization, is clearly an active and important player in channeling the mineralization. In fact, our first hole intersected over 20 meters at over an ounce per ton, and that's shown near the top of the slide.
The second follow-up hole was offset by 100 meters, and while we haven't got assays back yet, it also looks really strongly mineralized. It's looking like there is a high-grade area developing out there. Moreover, some of the recent drilling has more accurately defined the position of the basin bounding fault further west than thought. What this does is it expands that area of high potential host rocks near this important ore-controlling fault. This is a really great area to be exploring in, and it'll be one of the focal areas for the rest of this year and going forward. At Turquoise Ridge, there are two huge deposits at either end of an eight-kilometer trend, both with poor geological understanding until recently, and an awful lot of potentially prospective ground in between, which we know very little about.
Since forming NGM, we've rediscovered or recovered lost data, I guess. We've combined that with re-logging and mapping and integrating lithostructural models. We've generated new targets in what was once thought to be a maturing district. On the TR side, some excellent geological work has identified the ore controls. Our understanding on the Twin Creeks side is just starting to unravel the controls there. Some of the large new areas of interest are starting to emerge, and they're shown in those yellow circles there. At Hemlo, there's been more than 22 million ounces produced from what, at one time, was three separate mines. The vast majority of production is now from sub-vertical shoots under the Williams Pit.
Yet, the recent compilation work has identified numerous areas in the dormant or legacy mines, which are considered to have good potential resource upside and we'll look to test going forward. 2020 drilling under the Williams Pit has already demonstrated growth potential, that's likely to be well into future mine plans. What's more interesting is that the large area to the west, there are some shallow holes represented by the colored dots, red's above three grams per ton, as well as a few deeper holes with mineralization. This year, we did some geophysics and cut a series of trenches up to a kilometer and a half west of the mining area, and established that the mineralization system does indeed extend out here and actually changes in character. We'll use this information to target the huge white space to the west, and test that next year.
The other significant development out here is that, we've recently consolidated a much-expanded property package to the east and northeast of Hemlo, and that doubles our land holdings in the district. In LATAM, we've re-established a world-class exploration team and broadened their growth mandate. For example, we've assembled a portfolio in Salta Province, Argentina. We've staked new ground in northern Peru to explore the Jurassic Belt. We're currently negotiating on prospective properties in the Guiana Shield, as well as, we'll see in the next slide, started to assemble an exploration portfolio in the Dominican Republic, outside of the PV joint venture. At Veladero, we're looking for higher-grade oxide mineralization to displace the low-grade ounces in the current life of mine plan. We've made great progress in the Dominican with our expanded mandate to seek more opportunities.
We've initiated an active exploration presence in the country, and that's both at the Pueblo Viejo joint venture and also as Barrick elsewhere in the country. We've established an active in-country team and secured a key property that'll enable our PV expansion project, as well as acquired and turned over some new 100% Barrick properties elsewhere on the island. We have more applications underway. At PV, we've also updated the geological model and supplemented it with an integrated structural model that has enabled us to identify new satellite targets. At the northern end of the El Indio Belt is the massive Pascua-Lama-Veladero Complex. At the southern end is Alturas, which is a multimillion ounce oxide resource. These are geologically characterized as high-sulfidation gold-silver deposits. In the middle is the El Indio cluster of mines, which is another large zone of alteration, but it's a different style.
Throughout much of El Indio's 17-year mine life, it produced over 200,000 ounces per annum at over seven grams per tonne, and it made a bundle of free cash flow. In the greater El Indio mine area, we've identified the potential for a Tier 1 camp, and that comprises four targets with multi-million ounce potential in a 15-kilometer radius. Further out, beyond the known El Indio deposits, we've also added 13 new targets to our resource triangle in this region. Elsewhere, updated geology and resource models have been delivered for the Argentine side of the Alturas project, where the benefits of a potential starter pit is being investigated. This plus 8 million ounce project has significant value, and the focus now is to deliver an updated preliminary economic assessment.
On the Bambadji property in Senegal, we've been pursuing a series of air core anomalies and following up with RC drilling and I'm sorry, I've just lost my screen here. Okay. We've been following up our air core anomalies with RC and diamond drilling and getting some really good results, which you can see on the slide there. We're seeing some large extensive albite alteration zones. I've highlighted the Kabewest anomaly in the left panel, where we're currently following up a five-kilometer anomaly. We've drilled three fences, and the first three fences indicate that there's a robust bedrock source to this mineralization. The actual intercepts shown in the red dots include highlights of 30 meters at 2.45 and 43 meters at 1.16 grams.
That was to the end of the hole. That's amongst other intercepts. In addition, shown in orange dots are where the geologists have noted wide zones of alteration and brecciation, where they suspect will be mineralized. It's currently open in all directions, and the team is really very excited, with early indications of the potential. The other thing to note is that the host rocks to the east are generally sedimentary rocks, and that's biased the exploration of the district. We're now getting signs of the volcanic rocks to the west are also prospective, and this opens up a whole new search space of prospective new rocks. Further east, the Loulo-Gounkoto properties continue to yield strong results, which position us well for significant mine life extensions.
Actually, despite already yielding multiple multimillion ounce discoveries, I think there's a lot more to come, and we're barely scratching the surface here. We've redeployed our efforts to developing a geological framework within which to target controls to mineralization, to seek bolder extensions and leaving the incremental extensions of high-grade shoots to the MRM team. Initial scout drilling on the greater than 4-kilometer long Yalea Ridge has confirmed open pit potential. As well as the overall fertility of the structural corridor, with all holes to date intersecting mineralization. The overall robustness of the system intersected to date is extremely encouraging, given that we're yet to drill the most prospective part of this ridge structure. Scout drilling has also expanded the Gounkoto South Faraba mineralized footprint for more than 3-kilometer zone of strongly anomalous geochemistry.
The anomalies are actually located along a major structural feature, I think that enhances the potential. It gives it good context. The Yalea structural corridor is a continuously anomalous trend, which extends for more than 12 kilometers and hosts the Loulo-2 and 3 deposits, and has artisanal mining along its entire length. This long section slide shows all the drill holes with intercepts above the Yalea underground cut-off grade. As you can see, the entire structural corridor lights up. The other striking thing to note is that, other than the Yalea ore body where we continue to find robust high-grade extensions, we've only scratched the surface of such an extensive mineralized system. You can see the lack of near-surface drilling at Yalea South and under Loulo-4. We're looking forward to drilling some deeper framework holes at Yalea South in the coming months.
If we can demonstrate favorable signs of mineralization and be able to put it in some sort of geological context to determine the full potential, then we'll drill for resource definition. Another example is Loulo-3, where drilling and modeling confirms an open-ended shoot. That's got more than 1 million ounces potential. That's demonstrated by some of the strong intercepts outside of the closest space drilling areas. The same stratigraphy as at Loulo-3 has been identified at Loulo-4 and at Loulo-2, 3. With IP geophysics, that's starting soon ahead of the drilling. This is really a very exciting target. The next slide zooms into the left-hand side of this slide. Looking at the high-grade Yalea Transfer Zone, extension drilling 500 meters beyond the 2019 block model continued to confirm thick intervals of high-grade mineralization, and that's associated with a newly identified limestone unit.
The results potentially augur well for large underground stopes and a continuation of this exceptional zone. A hole is currently underway to test for an additional 180-meter extension. You can see the lack of near-surface drilling to the south, which we intend addressing in 2021 with our framework drilling. Kibali is again on track to grow its mineral reserves and net of depletion , and its exploration pipeline is laying the foundation for another year of growth and a steady 10-year plan. The KZ Trend remains prospective for a good balance between open pit and underground ounces. We continue to explore and define the full extent of the main KCD mine area for additional underground extensions. We're looking down plunge and also well to the east, where we're looking for additional upside opportunities along this northeast trending structural corridor.
We're also looking at the shallow open pit potential just a mere 200 meters east of Ikamva. On the Tanzanian side of the Craton, our focus on quality geological work is already identifying, and in fact, it's demonstrating plenty of upside. In the next presentation, Rod's going to discuss our excellent progress at North Mara and Bulyanhulu. Just to recap, we've got a rich and proud history of generating value from successful exploration. Our strategy has delivered results, and we're always looking to deliver value to our owners. I'm super excited about the potential in all of the regions that we operate in, and I can't wait to talk to you about our next discovery. With that, I'll now hand it over to Rod Quick.
Thanks, Rob. Good morning, afternoon, everyone. For those that don't know me, I'm Rod Quick, the Barrick Executive for Mineral Resource Management and Evaluation. I've got over 25 years' experience in the gold industry, having spent time in exploration, mineral resource management, and the evaluation disciplines. I'm responsible for the MRM functions in the group, the evaluation of projects from scopings all the way through to feasibilities, as well as being the lead competent person for resource and reserve sign-offs. It's my responsibility to ensure our projects pass our strategic filters and that we manage the conversion of our ore bodies into profits. Our MRM strategy prescribes that our geologists own their ore bodies, and by this we mean the geological managers on the operations are key executives on the mines we operate.
They report directly into the general manager of the mine and have a functional reporting line to the regional MRM executive. With this empowerment, however, comes an accountability for the understanding and the delivery of the ore bodies. This approach is heavily focused on our understanding of the geology and the controls to mineralization. The mineral resource managers are responsible for building a sustainable business plan for his or her operation, and thus responsible for the replenishment of reserves and all the associated feasibility work. They're the gatekeepers between exploration and operations, there to ensure that our reserves pass our filters and that we don't get seduced into production at any cost. During feasibility and evaluation, the MRM is responsible to mitigate the technical risks and ensure that the mine plans are optimal. This is best done through ore body knowledge.
Having a thorough understanding of the ore body is critical to make the correct investment decisions, since the geological model, be it the geo characteristics of that model, be it the geotechnical, geohydrological or metallurgical aspects, need to drive the mine design. Our resource triangle is the core business management system used by our exploration and resource geologists. My team is responsible for the top 3 tiers, which take our targets from inferred resources through to producing mines. Once Rob's team has identified an inferred target, we will complete a scoping study to further guide drilling and resource definition. If it passes our filters, further work will be conducted to progress the resources into indicated and measured resources and the completion of a pre-feasibility study to report the initial reserves. Development decisions are taken with the completion of full feasibilities.
We've always said, "Bank the ore body before you build the mine." Once we have confidence in the ore body, the other aspects of a technical feasibility become simpler to manage. Too often, a feasibility is rushed out, only to find that the metallurgical samples are not representative of the final ore body interpretation, or the mine design is not optimal. The value curve of a typical mining project is a simple and well-documented model, moving through the phases of exploration, discovery, feasibility, and development, followed by production. Different players in the industry position themselves at different locations along the curve. We encompass the full spectrum, from finding deposits all the way through to production. Discovery and development is where the real value is generated in our industry. Once we are in construction and production, it's all about value destruction mitigation. Every KPI that is not met erodes value.
Be it higher capital during the build, additional dilution or lower recovery during the ops. The next real opportunity for value generation is achieved through adding additional quality reserves, and this is the reason for our focus on quality assets. Those assets that have the geological critical mass and capacity that will allow us to extend life and reserves and fully sweat the capital invested. Our five and 10-year plans are constantly being updated. As our various feasibility and mine optimizations come to fruition, we are able to extend and further optimize our life of mine plans. The link between our mine plans, MRM, and exploration is a critical relationship that needs to remain dynamic and adjust to the specific needs of each plan.
MRM focuses on the operational integrity of the first five-year plan, making sure that the ounces are banked and all the geological aspects, be it grade, geotech, metallurgy, are understood well ahead of mining. This ensures that we can deliver on our operational plans. At the same time, exploration are looking at the 11 to 20-year period and making sure that we have plans in place to identify the ore that can replenish depletion over the longer term. Over that transition period, that is, in the six to 10-year period, there's an integrated approach. Where we encounter an operation where the geological fundamentals are lacking, we mobilize exploration, MRM, and all the key geological experts from the group to site and complete a total re-log and reinterpretation. Once this is set up and the control of mineralization are understood, exploration can then step back and focus on the longer-term growth.
This interactive system allows for MRM and exploration teams to refine their strategy based on the requirements of each mine or region. Our strategic filters have been developed off the back of our mission statement, which is to strive to be the world's most valued gold mining business by finding, developing, and owning the best assets with the best people to deliver sustainable returns for our owners and partners. To remain true to this mission, we need to keep true to our investment filters, which are presented in the slide. Projects need to be applied principally to gold and be within one of the world-class gold districts of the world.
We see copper as a strategic commodity of the future, and since it's often geologically occurs together with gold, we would also be attracted to a world-class copper-gold asset that passes our investment filters, or a copper asset that would enhance our strategic partnering network in a particular region. We require the right to mine and to be able to repatriate our profits, while the project needs to fit our values as a company. We are also always looking for active management participation. With regard to our financial filters, we have separated projects into 2 tiers. Tier 1 projects need to have a reserve potential that can deliver a +10 years at +500,000 ounce per year with costs in the lower half of the industry curve, delivering an IRR of 15% at a determined long-term gold price.
Tier 2 projects have a reserve potential to deliver 10 years, at least 10 years, at plus 250,000 ounces per year with costs in the lower half of the industry again, delivering an IRR of 20% at the same long-term gold price. Our current long-term gold price used for tier evaluation, capital allocation, and reserves is set at $1,200 per ounce, which we will review again once the world is through the COVID pandemic and we have a better understanding of what the new normal will be. Our mine plans for the coming year have looked at opportunities to capitalize in the short term on the current high spot gold prices. I will now turn to some of our key value-driving assets and projects, where we are busy with much of what I've just discussed above.
On picking up North Mara in Tanzania, we found a very good asset in very poor shape. The Gokona ore body, an underground mine, was being mined without any sound geological model. Interpreted horizontal faults were used to explain offsets to very high-grade mineralization, they did not offset lithologies. Catch-all lithological phrases like volcanic tuff combined a number of different lithologies together. The result was an underground mine where the ore body was often intersected out of plan when a development drive crossed it. 360-degree drilling was the standard approach to grade control, since ore could well simply be anywhere.
The block model merely joined spatially associated grades with no geological controls, and was a classic case of our not how to do things, and sadly, was not an uncommon occurrence in our industry. Our approach was to send in a skilled team of seasoned geologists together with a team of exploration and MRM geologists who re-logged 70 kilometers of core in two months and produced the 3D model for the Gokona deposit depicted in the middle of the slide. This new interpretation highlighted that the mineralized horizons are hosted in the sedimentary and andesitic porphyry package capped in the hanging wall by the mafic schist and in the footwall by the volcanic andesite. The highest grades were hosted on the volcanic andesite contacts and in the andesitic porphyry units within the central package.
With this vital geological framework understood, drilling could now focus on the mineralized loads within the central package. Projections could be made and be tested with confidence. It's a dynamic model that is continually updated with new data, and the interpretation has been extended to cover Gena to the immediate east. The key to the subsequent drill success has been that we've been drill-testing a model as opposed to simply drilling lots of meters in different directions. Furthermore, we have also ensured that the behavior of the mineralization is captured in the estimation process, and that the block model estimate trends mimic that of the observed geological trends. This leads to a more robust and deliverable resource model. Staying in Tanzania, but moving to Bulyanhulu. The Buli ore body is geologically simpler, and thus we were able to move faster with regards to getting the basics correct.
In parallel with the start-up of the underground mine, we are also busy with the total re-optimization of the underground operation, starting with a confirmation of the geological model at depth. The Deep West extensions are the long-term future of this mine and will dictate the capital options and allocations required. We thus commenced as early as possible with a deep drill program from surface to test and confirm the ore body in the Deep West block. As reported in our recent quarterly, the first seven intersections have returned an average true width of 3.7 meters at over 25 grams a ton, with further intersections completed since the quarter end having intersected similar-looking material. The pleasing aspect of this drilling is the minable widths being intersected and confirmation that the principal shoots are open with depth and to the west.
With the geological risk now reduced, our attention has turned to the extractability of the ore body. Since mining at these depths is possible, but it does require foresight and the appropriate planning. To this end, geological stress modeling is being undertaken on different mining sequences to best deal with and minimize the induced mining stresses that will be faced at these depths. Metallurgical test work is also underway with this material, which will be incorporated into an updated mine plan and feasibility study on track to be completed next year. The next two slides cover reserve replacement at the Loulo-Gounkoto complex, as well as the Kibali mine in the DRC, our 2 tier 1 assets in the Africa & Middle East region. Reserve and resource replacement at these two assets has been strong of late, and we expect another year of more than replacing reserve depletion at both assets.
Actually growing reserves while at peak production. This comes off the back of many years of geological understanding and interrogation that has only really got started at many of the legacy Barrick sites, which I'll discuss later. Getting to this sort of position takes time. For starters, you require a high-quality asset combined with high-quality people who understand the deposits and use that knowledge to specifically drive mineral resource growth and then reserve conversion. This graph represents the annual reserve numbers in bars and the cumulative gold production as the gold line. What the bars highlight is that there is never a simple continued linear growth in reserves. There is broadly and understandably a peak in reserves post-feasibility when the initial ore body is drilled out. Once mining starts to deplete that reserve, the reserve profile starts to decline.
In the case of Loulo/Gounkoto in 2012, 2015 period is a classic example when the high-grade Purple Patch of the Yalea underground and the high-grade portions of Gounkoto open pit were feeding the plant. The challenge for our MRM teams is to then stabilize this reserve depletion, reverse the trend, and start growing the reserves, which started in 2019 and will continue to 2020. This is only possible with a professional team that understands the ore body. A similar profile, although over a shorter lifespan, is presented at Kibali, where the reserves peaked in 2013 post the feasibility and then were depleted as we accessed the open pits and ramped up the large underground mine to full production. It is thus really pleasing to again see us reverse this trend in 2019, and we expect to again more than replace depletion in 2020. Moving across to Pueblo Viejo.
It's amazing to believe that looking through my 2018 Investor Day presentation, I had no mention of the PV expansion project, other to say that it was in pre-feasibility level. A lot has changed in 24 months. As usual, we started with the geology, updated the geological model, which confirmed the lithological alteration and structural controls of a classic high-sulfidation gold system. All drilling was incorporated into a dynamic model, and a rolling block model was updated and implemented, so that as we progress the technical study, we are always working with the latest resource model. We have also focused on the estimation of sulfur levels. The plant expansion is all about dealing with the higher sulfur levels that arrive at the plant with the higher throughput. With the geology banked, we could aggressively focus on this challenge, and the pre-feasibility study progressed rapidly through the options.
We started out looking at leach pad oxidation of the sulfides. We then looked at a flotation fine grind tank oxidation option to deal with the sulfur. Finally, we settled on the upgrading of the current autoclaves to handle the additional steam created from a higher sulfide feed as the preferred option, and have taken this through to feasibility design. The design will enable us to increase throughput and maintain a minimum average annual gold production of some 800,000 ounces per year after 2022, for many years to come. Our focus is now on the ESIA and the permitting of the expanded TSF facility, which will then allow us to update the reserve and fully complete the full project documentation.
Moving across to North America, Goldrush in Nevada is another one of our key growth projects, where we are busy with an updated underground feasibility which is due for completion at the end of March 2021. As we have progressed the feasibility, the understanding of the geological model and styles of mineralization have improved. The resource potential has grown substantially, particularly with the good drill results in the Fourmile deposit immediately north of Goldrush. Thus, we are looking at the bigger picture of a combined Goldrush Fourmile project. The geological confidence, however, required to bank a Fourmile style mineralization requires more drilling than is practically possible from surface. There is no doubt there are multimillion ounces in Fourmile.
The problem is that when you're hitting intersections of two ounces per ton over appreciable widths, getting the morphology correct of the mineralization requires a substantial amount of drilling from multiple angles. Small areas in ore volume make for big differences in ounces at these high grades. Our optimization work is also showing some geological similarities of the KB mineralization, which sits immediately east of Red Hill in Goldrush, to that of the Fourmile high-grade style mineralization. While unconstrained soft optimization runs schedule inferred ounces at Fourmile, KB, and Meadows in the south of Goldrush, ahead of other areas in Goldrush. What all this means is there is massive value in optimizing the entire package that is not going to be able to be included in a feasibility for next year.
We need to complete the feasibility to enable us to increase the declared reserves for Goldrush, but there is a much bigger story building here. Staying in Nevada, we're moving to Turquoise Ridge. We have an underground mine that is a massive opportunity, but it's currently infrastructure bottlenecked. Under its previous life, TR Underground was set up as a low tonnage, high-grade mine. With the restructuring of the JV and removing toll mining agreements, the cutoff grade suddenly dropped, and it now makes sense for us to feed as much of TR Underground ore through the Sage autoclave as possible. We need to get the mine redesigned to do that, and this will take a bit of time. We have started with the remodeling of the ore body, because historically, only the super high-grade central portions of the ore body were modeled, based principally on a grade envelope approach.
We spent a lot of time this year and made significant progress in constructing a geological model that incorporates the subtle sedimentary changes in the lithologies, as well as alteration, structure, geochem, and gold assays to build a robust geologically driven ore body. I'm confident, as we have shown elsewhere, that this will increase our ability to mine the full ore body and design a deliverable plan. Our first geologically driven updated grade control block model is expected at the end of this month, and this will then be expanded to the remainder of the mine. Together with building geotechnical rock mass models and integrating these to develop a more efficient mine design that can deliver higher ounces than are currently in our plan.
In conclusion, our next 10-year attributable full production profile has us producing just under 5 million ounces per year up to 2030, all profitable at $1,200 an ounce. These only include operational mines and projects which are covered by our current growth capital commitments, after which the plan is supported by sustaining capital. Thus, it contains none of the large opportunities that exist in our portfolio in the likes of Pascua-Lama or Alturas or Tongon. Any new discovery from Rob's team or an M&A opportunity from Kevin's only add to this profile. The plan shows strong growth up to 5 million ounces in 2023, which is our target date for the ramp-up of Pueblo Viejo and Goldrush, together with the final year of the Tongon open pit and high-grade delivery from the Crossroads pit.
All our tier 1 assets perform through to 2030, and the challenge we have set ourselves in AME is to create a Tanzanian complex from the North Mara and Bulyanhulu deposits that delivers tier 1 credentials. Tongon will need to be replaced, and the AME team are looking at various alternatives, from extending Tongon with incremental haulage ounces, as well as new opportunities to replace Tongon. The LatAm portfolio is stable at around 1 million ounces a year for the full 10-year period. We believe that this profile clearly differentiates us from our peers in the industry. We have stuck to our guns on quality over production, which has enabled us to massively reduce our debt, significantly grow our cash, and have a sustainably profitable 10-year business plan at $1,200 an ounce. Thanks for your attention. I'll now pass you on to Catherine Raw, the CEO of North America.
Thank you, Rod. I'm Catherine Raw, Chief Operating Officer for North America. I was the CFO of Barrick prior to the merger with Randgold, and before joining the company was at BlackRock in London, co-managing the world's largest mining equity funds, amongst other things. Here, I review what I outlined as the strategic priorities for North America back in November 2018. Against that, what we have achieved to date. At the time, I highlighted the district potential of Nevada and how our assets were positioned relative to those around us, specifically Newmont. The purpose of that slide, even then, was to illustrate the strategic rationale for combining these assets into one single entity. That's exactly what we did. On July 1st, 2019, Nevada Gold Mines was formed with Barrick majority owner at 61.5%. Importantly, the operator of the joint venture.
Ore body knowledge is the foundation stone that separates good mining companies from the rest. As Rod and Rob have so clearly illustrated, this is fundamental to Barrick's DNA. From the very outset of the merger between Barrick and Randgold, we sought to reestablish that DNA at our operations, and ore body knowledge was where we started with Gregori heading up Mineral Resource Management in North America, and with the help of Rod, building a culture of MRM at our operations. Operational delivery and project execution are often taken for granted. Delivering consistently and living up to our promises in every aspect of our business, whether it's the safety of our people, the environment, or our partnerships with the communities within which we operate, these are all signs of a business run well, a team that communicates, and a clear strategy against which we can hold ourselves accountable.
There's been no better illustration of this than 2020, where despite all of the challenges COVID-19 has thrown at us, we've delivered record-breaking margins and are on target to meet 2020 production guidance. The region now has a solid production profile over the next 10 years, and we're confident that we have the pipeline to roll that forward for years to come. In addition, we're unlocking value elsewhere, whether it's at Donlin or in our closure portfolio. Last but not least, overhead reductions. Given the journey we've all been on to get here, we remain vigilantly obsessive about keeping that overhead lean. When we look to the next two years, the strategic priorities remain the same. Now, instead of on Nevada consolidation, we're turning our eyes further afield to other opportunities in the region.
Our five-year production outlook has North America delivering over 2.4 million ounces for all but one year in 2022. The major change versus the plan shown to the market in our Q4 results has been a pause on Long Canyon permitting that impacts production in 2022 and 2023, as well as changes to Turquoise Ridge Underground's ramp up. Sustaining capital remains at or around current levels for the next two years as we invest in infrastructure and drilling to extend the life of our assets. This has impacted AISC, which we expect to stay above the $900 an ounce level before dropping down to closer to $800 an ounce by 2025 as capital reduces and production increases. Growth capital is driven by Goldrush, Turquoise Ridge's third shaft, and the Cortez Complex. Now for the detail.
The formation of Nevada Gold Mines and the combination of Barrick and Newmont's Nevada operations into one single entity is a feat that few believed would ever actually happen. Greg Walker and the team have worked tirelessly to deliver on the plan we laid out to the market, creating a flat management structure divided into five operations, three complexes, Carlin, Cortez, and Turquoise Ridge, as well as Phoenix, Lone Tree and Long Canyon, with new leadership teams at all operations. In less than 18 months, we've integrated exploration, mineral resource management, planning, processing, and supply chain, all operating on one state-of-the-art ERP system. This gives us the platform from which we can unlock value for many years to come. The formation of NGM also created a world-class reserve and resource base.
In 2019, we were able to replace depletion and increase reserve grades to what is more than double the industry average. Not only that, but we increased, measured, and indicated as well as inferred resources, creating a pipeline for future reserve replacement. While we came strongly out of the gate in 2019, the hard work is now underway with the painstaking development of detailed and dynamic geological models for all our assets, and we would expect it to take the next two to three years for the benefits of that better understanding to really come through.
An example, though, that we highlighted in our Q3 results of how the formation of NGM and the follow-up MRM programs are already unlocking value is in the North Post area of Carlin, where we began mining in September, and which has added 200,000 ounces of reserves through removing the artificial barriers or fences, as Mark calls them, created by the separate ownership, and which has allowed us to change the mining method, thereby dropping costs and making it economic. Nevada Gold Mines as a whole is expected to deliver comfortably within our 2020 production guidance with slightly higher costs, primarily as a result of higher royalties. 2021 and 2022 are years of investment in the future of NGM to create value and extend life. Relative to our previous five-year guidance, we've included additional drilling programs and associated development to increase ore body knowledge and grow ounces in new areas.
Investments in processing to lower costs, as well as the development of a solar facility at the TS Power Plant to provide both a hedge to gas prices on the back of the TS Power Plant's conversion from coal to gas, as well as to further reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The production dip in 2022 is driven by, as I already said, the rephasing of Long Canyon, the Turquoise Ridge complex, as well as sequencing at Cortez. Stepping back and looking at the five years, investments at Carlin, Cortez, Goldrush, and Fourmile helped to secure Nevada Gold Mines' production profile well out beyond 10 years and increase value. I'd like to emphasize that these are brownfields investments with low execution risk and high returns. Carlin is on track to deliver on 2020 guidance for both production and costs.
Production in 2021 and 2022 is impacted by a decrease in autoclave ounces as a result of lower tons processed with lower recovery due to the change in ore type processed, as well as the conversion of the autoclave from the thiosulfate resin-in-pulp circuit to carbon-in-leach in 2022. It's also impacted by the closure of the Gold Quarry concentrator, or Mill 5, originally slated for 2019, but through the merger, we've been able to extend its life by two years out to 2021. Higher capital expenditures in 2021 and 2022, which lift NGM's capital and AISC overall in those years, are broadly driven by three areas of investment. Underground development, dewatering and drilling to increase ore body knowledge and grow ounces in deposits such as North Leeville , Ren, and Rita K.
Processing improvements, primarily at the Gold Quarry roaster or Mill Six, to remove bottlenecks and lower processing costs, as well as the above-mentioned conversion of the Goldstrike autoclave in 2022 that allows us to process stockpiles from Carlin South that were otherwise at the back of the queue of the roasters. The sequencing of open pit waste tons, which are required for tailing storage facility construction to allow us to continue to produce at current levels further out into the future. Additional ounces from both Carlin underground as well as open pit operations will help secure the long-term production profile beyond 2025. These are coming from updated mining cost assumptions, which in turn allow us to lower our cut-off grade assumptions, and there is still significant underground upside potential for further ounce addition once new areas are accessed and drilling can take place from underground.
Cortez is on track to exceed 2020 production guidance with costs at the lower end of guidance. When you look at the five-year production, its profile is impacted by the sequencing of the open pits, particularly Crossroads, affecting grade and the timing of refractory processing. Robertson is now assumed within the five-year plan, with first incremental production in 2025 and its first full year of production outside of the five-year window in 2026. Sustaining capital is going to remain at around current levels out to 2024, driven by open pit stripping. Growth capital included in the five-year plan covers Deep South, ore haulage to Carlin processing, and Robertson stripping. We're targeting additional ounces through drilling programs at Robertson and Cortez Hills underground, with earlier stage generative exploration work focusing on the Pipeline-Robertson corridor.
Rod has already touched on Goldrush. I'll do my best to run through what he didn't cover. Contracted development is now complete on the exploration declines, and we've successfully transitioned to Cortez operational management in November. First ore is on target to be exposed in the first half of 2021 as part of ongoing exploration and development activities to provide information for the feasibility study and ongoing modeling. Once we receive the record of decision, we'll move forward with the construction of infrastructure to allow us to ramp up production. Over 2020, we've optimized mining methods as well as the design, which has given us greater flexibility, lowered unit rates, which in turn has allowed us to reduce the cut-off grade, thereby maximizing our exploitation of the ore body and bringing more ounces into the plan.
Going forward, we would expect to grow reserves through geotechnical analysis and further underground drilling of the Goldrush ore body. We are also looking at unlocking further value by bringing forward Fourmile ounces upon inclusion into the joint venture. The Turquoise Ridge complex has had a challenging year and is tracking below 2020 production guidance, with the Turquoise Ridge underground ramp up behind the plan. We recognized early in the year that we did not have the right leadership in place to drive the culture change required to deliver the ramp up, and by the middle of the year, we now have a GM, a new GM, and a new head of Turquoise Ridge's underground in place. The underground needs to de-bottleneck the current constraint, which is loading and trucking, to deliver more tons to the shaft.
Improvement and optimization plans are underway, and this includes a partnership with Sandvik to test four electric Z50 trucks, and their press release came out yesterday. We saw month-on-month improvements in third quarter and further tonnage increases so far this quarter, and we expect this to continue into 2021. When you look at the five-year profile, lower production in 2022 results from a drop in the overall grade at the Turquoise Ridge complex as a result of the reduction in ounces from the Twin Creeks mega open pit and Vista underground, which are replaced with lower grade stockpiles. Third shaft construction at TR Underground remains on schedule and on budget, with commissioning expected in late 2022, and that predominantly drives increasing ounces from 2023 onwards.
Looking at the life of mine plan, the removal of the toll mining agreement with Newmont, as Rod has said, has resulted in lower processing costs, which has in turn allowed us to lower cut-off grade, adding resources to the life of mine and unlocking significant value. Phoenix is on track to meet or exceed production guidance with lower costs aided by higher by-product credits in 2020. At Lone Tree, we're bringing in additional ounces into the five-year plan from the Brooks and Buffalo Mountain deposits, which will be processed at the existing heap leach facility. Open pit reserve and block model updates, along with design changes, have extended the mine life by two years out to 2032. Given the Phoenix Mill is now at full capacity throughout the life, we're looking at options to increase production through gravity as well as heap leach.
Long Canyon has delivered exceptional margins in 2020 and is expected to exceed production guidance at the lower end of the cost range. 2021 production is expected to be slightly above 2020, with another year of exceptional margins if gold prices stay at current levels. We've paused the federal NEPA permitting process to review the planned phase II open pit mine life extension, which includes a review of the groundwater model and water management strategy, given we identified gaps in the previous analysis. On current working assumptions, we have first ore in 2025, with the completion of surface operations in 2028 and residual leaching expected to carry on for another couple of years. Having said that, we're also reviewing alternatives to access the ore body underground, which could change these working assumptions.
Having established Nevada Gold Mines as a self-contained Nevada company, I wanted to take this opportunity to highlight the contribution NGM has already made to the state of Nevada. Our total economic contribution is more than just the taxes we pay, and this triangle helps to shed light on just how much NGM contributed in just the first 12 months of operating. In addition, with the onset of COVID and as a partner to the state, we recognized we needed to step up and provide COVID support, which has totaled just over $12 million year to date. This includes the launch of the I-80 Fund, providing COVID relief to small businesses along the I-80 corridor in July with a $5 million investment from NGM, as well as being the largest single donor to the state's COVID-19 task force set up by the Governor's Office, of which we're a member.
Other statewide initiatives I wanted to highlight focus on education with a $2.2 million partnership with Nevada Department of Education and Discovery Education to deliver a virtual learning platform for all schools in the state. We source our college interns from UNLV and UNR and maintenance training corp interns from Great Basin College out of Elko, and we're in the process of setting up a similar program out of the College of Southern Nevada. As I mentioned earlier, we're converting the TS Power Plant inherited from Newmont from coal to gas, which will reduce greenhouse gas emissions, as well as developing a 100-megawatt solar facility with the potential to double capacity as we permit for a full 200 megawatts. As Rob has already touched on, our understanding of the Hemlo ore body has improved significantly over the last couple of years.
New MRM and exploration teams working together have developed an improved understanding of what is controlling mineralization, and that has resulted in an increase of underground grade by 21% year to date, as we are better able to capture the higher grades in our stoping. We have embarked on a multi-phase drilling program targeting the Upper C-Zone West and C-Zone Deep to add resources by 2022 that could establish Hemlo as a tier 2 mine. At the same time, we've taken a broader look along strike to identify remnant mining opportunities in the historic Golden Giant and David Bell mines, and we'll also be drilling at depth where the ore body remains open.
Moving to operational performance, for 2020, Hemlo is expected to deliver at the upper end of guidance, albeit with higher costs due to higher royalties, both the result of higher gold prices, but also through greater production from royalty-bearing ounces. It's been a challenging year for Hemlo. Adam and the team have done a great job adjusting and adapting to the ever-changing situation. Barminco had been expected to mobilize underground in March, but were unable to do so because of the travel and visa restrictions resulting from COVID. This delayed the ramp-up from the underground. While we worked in the background with Barminco to get the visas and travel permissions, Adam and team debottlenecked the process plant, brought forward open pit ounces, and along with the benefit of higher grades previously mentioned, have delivered a strong result without a significant impact on future production.
Barminco are now finally fully mobilized and the underground ramp-up is progressing. 2021 production is expected to be in line with 2020. With the closure of the open pit, the new portal accesses the upper C-zone, providing a third mining front, increasing flexibility, and allows for the ramp-up of the underground from 1.1 million tons of ore in 2020 to a steady state of 1.9 million tons per annum from 2022 onwards. Planned drilling, as previously highlighted, has the potential to add resources to extend the mine life out past 2030. Regionally, as you'll see from the press releases this morning, the acquisition of Hemlo East and adjacent properties expands prospective ground along strike, and we have established a preliminary foothold in the eastern part of the Norman Lake area.
With the merger of Barrick and Randgold, it created an opportunity to reassess, along with our partners NOVAGOLD, how to tackle the risks associated with Donlin Gold project, which is undoubtedly one of only a handful of gold deposits with the potential to deliver production over multiple gold price cycles yet to be exploited. We believe there are three areas that need to be understood and risk mitigated in order to improve returns and thus its value, and ultimately to enable the project to be developed. These are the geology, the execution risk for delivering the project given its scale and location, and the funding or capital risk associated with it. Our first priority has been to improve our understanding of the geology by closing gaps identified in the previous geological model.
In 2019, several steps were taken to improve the model, and a 23,000-meter diamond drill program was completed this year to validate that model, determine ore controls, and extend shallow, high-grade mineralization, all with the ultimate goal of increasing our confidence as we move this project towards feasibility. This slide shows a cross-section looking northeast through the ACMA area of the deposit and illustrates how the geologic interpretations have changed with the new information received so far from the 2020 drilling. You can see the lithological model so far correlates well, and there is potential upside in the identified mineralized structures highlighted in purple. Based on the assays received to date, the mineralized structures are proving to be more abundant and higher grade than previously recognized.
Over the winter, we'll incorporate this new information to further refine the model, which will probably require a further drilling program in 2021 to validate. The final model will be used to update our resource estimate, which currently stands at 39 million ounces of measured and indicated resources at over 2.2 grams a ton. Finally, for our closure assets, Patrick and team's focus has been to unlock value, mitigate risk, and reduce liability. Barrick's new closure standard's key objectives, developed by Grant, who'll speak more later, are to find passive solutions for long-term water management, to prepare sites for a beneficial alternative use and possible divestiture, and to ensure that tailings storage facilities meet or exceed international safety standards. We are delivering against that strategy with divestments in 2020 generating close to $76 million of value, with further upside from the royalties retained.
We're moving ahead with the Golden Sunlight Tailings Reprocessing Project, which will convert sulfide tailings into up to 200,000 tons of sulfide concentrate per year and supply NGM with sulfide feed source for its refractory ore processing while using the leftover benign material as pit backfill. It not only reduces Barrick's environmental liabilities, it cuts closure costs at Golden Sunlight whilst also creating more value for Nevada Gold Mines. In addition, we're reviewing all our tailings storage facilities, both existing and closed sites, against the ICMM Global Tailings Standard and ensuring each facility has its own risk mitigation plan, whilst also developing alternatives to active water treatment per the company's new closure standard. With that, we'll go to a short break, returning at 10:30 A.M. Eastern, so in 15 minutes' time. We'll come back for Mark Hill, COO of Latin America and Asia Pacific.
Thank you.
Okay. Well, it's gone half past, I'll get started. I'll just introduce myself. I'm Mark Hill, the Chief Operating Officer of LATAM and Pacific. My background, I'm a mining engineer, started my career in Australia at Olympic Dam, spent several years in Adelaide in the early nineties as a chief engineer, before working in East and West Africa, mainly in operations, but later in projects as well. In 2005, I moved to Barrick in Canada, working in the projects and evaluations group. I was there for approximately seven years and left to join a private equity firm for four years and returned back to Barrick in late 2016. I took up the role as Chief Operating Officer post the Randgold merger with Barrick.
As everyone said, it's been approximately 2 years since we last spoke, and it's a good opportunity to give an update on what we said last time with our strategic goals and what we've achieved against those. I'll start out with sustainability. Historically in this region, we performed quite badly on the sustainability front. With a renewed focus and a strengthened team over the last 12 months, our performance has improved significantly. We've seen a greater than 50% reduction in total reportable incidents, and we've had no Class 1 environmental incidents across the region. We've also seen significant reductions in greenhouse gas emissions, and this is gonna continue to fall over the next 12 months. Probably the biggest and most significant shift in LATAM especially is our renewed relationships with our both governments and communities.
Due to the efforts of our various country managers and the support of our CEO, we have now renewed our social license in all countries, and we have a particularly strong relationship in Argentina and Dominican Republic, and we continue to work on our relationships and strengthen them in PNG and Chile. Moving to MRM. In 2019, we established the MRM teams at all sites and re-empowered the regional exploration teams. These teams in 2020 have updated our understanding of our baseline geology for all of our deposits and mines and corrected resource models in line with best practices, tying mineralization, metallurgical, and geotechnical controls to the underlying geology. This detailed understanding has allowed us to optimize all our life and mine plans and produce an accurate rolling forecast that we've implemented across the business.
One of the areas we highlighted two years ago is growth, which is a key focus area for this region. We've made some solid progress, particularly in the brownfields area. Now all of our mines, we have extended the lives, we've successfully increased the life of mine ounces across the whole region by approximately 8 million ounces since we last spoke. We've also got major projects underway. Construction at the PV expansion, the Veladero Phase 6 expansion, and at Veladero, the copper ore project. All of these projects are aimed at increasing annual production, lowering the operating costs, and extending the mine lives. The funding in place for all of these projects.
Under the direction of Leandro and Rob K's exploration group, as you heard earlier, we have replenished the resource triangle and are busy with the drilling programs in the region. Moving on to regional optimization. It was very clear two years ago that we needed to optimize not only the asset portfolio, but many other areas of the business. In the last 18 months, we've dealt with the non-core assets like KCGM, Lagunas Norte, and Cowal. As part of the optimization, we've also right-sized our country offices. We've reduced the headcount by approximately 50%, and the majority of those positions were moved back to the mine sites, enabling the mines to run their own business. This change has obviously helped us in this recent pandemic, where we've managed to maintain our operations through this period.
Of the people remaining in the country offices, a large proportion are actually exploration and project staff working on the regional growth opportunities. Not a traditional overhead. The other thing we were working on was obviously the liabilities in the region. Whilst growth was a priority for the region, there was also a need to deal with these legacy liabilities. To this end, we have re-engineered the closure plans in Peru, which has resulted in a greater than 20% reduction in costs, and we've lowered the holding costs at Pascua-Lama by over 50%. We've also simplified the corporate and tax structures across the region. The sales processes for additional non-core strategic assets continue. Looking forward, what will we be focused on? We're obviously going to maintain our focus on sustainability.
We want to further improve our safety record and our environmental performance and continue to strengthen our social license. We want to continue to optimize our tier 2 assets and drive them to tier 1 status, and we'll talk about that a little later. We want to focus on the growth opportunities, including project execution, which is critical for us in the next two years, and the greenfields and brownfields exploration. We'll also continue to optimize the portfolio, dealing with the non-strategic assets, reviewing the short-term opportunities that may be unlocked by this higher gold price environment, particularly in Peru. Okay, so on the screen now is our five-year outlook. So it shows a modest growth, assuming that we get the Pueblo Viejo SML renewed. The region is basically re-baselined in 2021, with significant growth capital being spent at Veladero, Zaldívar, and Pueblo Viejo.
That leads to unlock a greater than 1 million ounce production region with a declining cost, tier 1 cost profile. What is not pictured here is that this is maintained for over 10 years, ensuring longevity in the region, and it provides us a good base for further exploration and greenfield success. Moving to Pueblo Viejo. Rod spoke about Pueblo Viejo, but I just want to highlight that obviously Pueblo Viejo remains one of the premier tier-1 gold mines in the world. Will continue to out beyond 2040 with the planned expansion project and the sourcing of additional tailings capacity. The key to unlocking these additional resources is securing the additional tailings capacity, and our in-country management team is fully engaged with the government and the communities to progress this project.
When we've completed the expansion, it will mean we have 800,000 ounces for greater than 15 years on a 100% basis. Some of the early years will be over 1 million ounces at 100% basis. PV will remain a world-class operation well into the future. Also, the MRM team has done a significant amount of work to drill and model not only the pit resources, but also the limestone reserves and the stockpile models, which are a critical part of managing the operation. Historically, they have been responsible for unseen fluctuations in our profiling grade and ore mining. This work is now complete, so we have a high confidence mine and processing plant going into the future post this expansion project. I've put in the process flow sheet here just to give everyone a high-level indication.
The expansion project has been optimized several times, as Rod spoke about, and now consists of an additional crusher, more grinding capacity, a flotation plant, and an expanded O2 plant. This allows us to increase the throughput from approximately 8.5 million ton per annum to 14 million ton per annum by 2024. As we said, it has evolved through several iterations to come to what we think is the optimal solution on a capital and operating cost profile. Under the new flow sheet, although we're milling a lot more tonnage, the autoclaves are still treating the same tonnage, but will have more gold contained and more sulfur. The flotation tail will bypass the autoclaves now and will go straight to the CIL circuit, a new CIL circuit, with detox prior to disposal.
The changes in the autoclaves is we are obviously feeding higher sulfur grades, which we need to oxidize, hence the bigger oxygen plant. We have to manage the additional heat that this oxidation reaction generates. We need to remove the steam and the slurry from the autoclaves, cool the streams, and recycle them to manage the heat load. Basically, going forward at Pueblo Viejo, the heat management aspect will be a major bottleneck in the circuit or the limiting factor in the circuit. Moving to Argentina and to Veladero. Veladero was the only asset in the region that was significantly affected by the COVID pandemic. The restrictions and the social distancing requirements in the country resulted in a 50% reduction of on-site workforce while we modified the camp to comply with these new requirements. During that period, we obviously want to maintain production and environmental compliance.
The project teams working on the Phase 6 expansion and the power line from Chile were demobilized, which meant that we missed the summer construction season to complete the early works, the liner works , that would have allowed us to continue the construction over winter. We began remobilizing those project teams in September, and the revised date for the Phase 6 pad commissioning is now second quarter in 2021. Previously, if you recall, that was the end of 2020 it was going to be completed. What this has meant is that due to the fact that the current pad will reach capacity by the end of 2020, there will be a five to six-month period where stacking and leaching will be restricted. The impact of this on 2021 is to drop the ounces from greater than 500,000 ounces to less than 400,000 ounces on 100% basis.
During this period, the mining fleet will be focused on the waste stripping, and we'll advance that waste stripping, which will provide us some additional flexibility when stacking resumes in the mid-year. As stated previously, the life of mine for Veladero has been extended to greater than 10 years through the combined efforts of our MRM expansion drill programs and the mine planning re-optimization. The MRM drilling is still ongoing, testing further expansion opportunities for the Veladero pit, while the exploration programs are being advanced at the nearby satellites in the Veladero and Pascua-Lama camps. This is to confirm the target size, the metallurgical characteristics, so we can make a decision if they're potential feed for Veladero.
If so, these targets have potential to extend the life even further, add incremental ounces to the annual production, and more importantly, bring forward some higher quality ounces, offsetting some of the lower grades towards the end of the current Veladero life of mine. This leads to this slide, which is how we get Veladero to a tier 1 asset. It already ticks two of the boxes. It has a greater than 10-year life, which we expect to extend further. We produce more than 500,000 ounces per annum. The third pillar of a tier 1 asset is obviously the cost structure. We're working on that to lower the overall cost.
We're currently with the grid power project, which will not only lower operating costs, but importantly provide a stable long-term, low-cost, low-carbon power supply that allows us to continue to pursue further cost reduction initiatives such as pit electrification and the ore conveyor projects. As stated on the previous slide, the MRM and exploration programs are targeting higher-grade ores, which also drive down the cost. Moving on to Papua New Guinea and Porgera. As you're all aware, the SML at Porgera was not extended in April 2020, and since then, the mine was placed on care and maintenance. The majority of the staff have been laid off. I think we have 600-odd staff left on care and maintenance and security.
Barrick still believes that Porgera is and will be a tier 1 asset or has potential to be, with the possibility of extending the mine life to beyond 20 years based on the drilling program that will commence in 2020. The future production profile is also consistent with a tier 1 asset with a production level well above 500,000 ounces per annum. Mark Bristow made two trips to PNG in the last six weeks to negotiate a way forward for Porgera directly with the Prime Minister. A Barrick team, including myself, remained in Port Moresby for over a month between the two visits to continue negotiations with the government. We made significant progress before a sudden parliamentary challenge on November 13, which has scrambled the politics, and this is going to take some time to settle down.
We are still confident negotiations will resume and an agreement can be reached given the positive statements from all stakeholders and all sides that it is critical to get Porgera restarted. Moving on to Zaldívar in Chile. We've started construction of the secondary sulfides leaching project, which will increase the copper recovery of the secondary sulfide ore by approximately 10%. The new infrastructure and modifications to the existing solution extraction process will cost approximately $189 million, and it will reduce our operating costs by greater than 10%. The project will also add an additional 309,000 tons of copper production over the life of mine. The status of the project, currently, the engineering is 100% complete, fabrication 80% complete, and construction has only just started and is approximately 5% complete. The construction and commissioning will be Q1 2022. Moving to Peru.
As I said earlier, the focus has been at Pierina and Lagunas on re-engineering of the closure plans. This has resulted in significant cost reductions, and also we've optimized the residual leaching that has produced an additional 15,000 ounces year to date. This takes the total residual production to 80,000 ounces year to date, end of October. That makes a significant contribution to the high metal prices to offset the concurrent closure activities that are occurring. Additionally, at Lagunas Norte, we have commenced a sales process.
Whilst the CMOP and PMR projects did not meet Barrick's investment criteria, we are confident that Lagunas' large mineral resource base, totaling some 4.3 million ounces in M&I, will prove attractive to other industry players. Considering the elevated gold price environment that we're in, the MRM team continues to look for short-term opportunities such as leaching, restart options, stockpile reprocessing, and enhancements to the leaching operation. All, obviously, with a view to try and reduce the cost further. Prior to commencing the sales process, both MRM and Exploration were active in a review and design of conceptual drill programs to target additional leach ore and the testing of the sulfide full potential. This has now been placed on a temporary suspension while we await the outcome of the sales process. Moving on to the projects.
In Chile, the team have been working on two projects, Pascua-Lama and Alturas . Pascua-Lama, the focus has been on developing a better understanding of the geological drivers and the geometallurgy of the deposit. We already know that the resource size is world-class. The objective is to have a better definition of metallurgical domains and different treatment routes for the ore type. The split between these different treatments will significantly impact the overall economics of this project. We've also identified some gaps in the geology, and we've just started a drill program this month, 9,000 meters, which is obviously aimed at closing that gap and giving us a better understanding.
The goal is by the end of next year, so the end of 2021, to have brought the project to account and understand where it sits in the Barrick portfolio and taking a decision on its future. In parallel, we are working on the environmental and legal side of the Chilean half of the project. In September this year, the long-running sanctions process came to an end, with the final appeal largely upholding the earlier decision of the regulator with respect to fines and the closure of the old project. This enables us to go ahead with the planned closure process for the Chilean side of the project, which will take some time, and we've established a working table with the relevant government authorities to ensure the process is executed smoothly and with the cooperation of all the parties.
The option exists for us to initiate a new permitting process. This will depend on the results of the technical evaluations that I was speaking about previously. Moving on to Alturas/El Carmen . At 75 kilometers south of Pascua-Lama. The project, like Pascua-Lama, spreads across the Chile-Argentine border. It has a resource of over 8 million ounces of gold. It's amenable to heap leach. This resource definitely has the potential to be moved into a tier 1 or tier 2 project for Barrick. With a significant exploration program already carried out, we're now turning our attention to filling in the geological model gaps. As we have been doing with the Pascua-Lama, we'll be initiating a 7,000-meter drilling program over this summer season.
The objective is to strengthen our current understanding of the fundamental geology and metallurgical characteristics of the deposit, and like Pascua-Lama, will reach a decision point at the end of 2021 on whether we want to push it forward with the development and advancing of the project. In Chile, this project is a 50% JV with Newmont, recently completed an updated scoping study, in order to reevaluate after the drilling programs of 2018 and 2019. The preferred scenario out of that study is a open pit mine with 150 ton per day processing facility, combined with an oxide leaching during the first 10 years of production. The life of mine spans more than 40 years, producing some 17 million ounces of gold and almost 29 million ounces of gold equivalent, considering the silver and copper by-products.
The study indicates a double-digit return after tax on the IRR basis at $1,200. The project is currently completing geometallurgical studies and a drilling program to increase the size of the geothermal aquifer will be commenced. The next phase of the study planned for 2021 and beyond will refine the current study to a PFS level. That's all I had for LATAM and Asia Pacific. With that, I'm going to hand it over to Willem at AME. Thank you.
Good morning, afternoon. My name is Willem Jacobs. I'm leading Africa & Middle East. At the time of our previous presentation in November 2018, we in the new Barrick, specifically us in AME, had our work cut out for us. There was a lot to get done. It is therefore fitting that I start this morning with a scorecard of what we were able to effectively deal with against all the undertakings we made at the time. We negotiated and implemented the framework agreement with the government of Tanzania, which was signed on the 23rd of January 2020. We also took Acacia private with effective day of the transaction being the 14th of September 2019. In the process, together with the government and the relevant authorities, we have dealt with all the important issues. We sold the concentrate that had been locked up.
We are dealing with the North Mara water situation and cleared some 15,000 illegal miners around the Bulyanhulu mine perimeter. We have been in Tanzania now for one year and are starting to develop a solid relationship with the government, which we believe will allow us to make success of our investment in this country. In West Africa, we settled our long-running tax dispute with the government of Mali amicably and brought Massawa to account in a transaction with Teranga, cementing our foundation for a junior to go to places which has since gone on to announce further consolidation through the proposed merger with Endeavour. As Mark referred to earlier, we also extended the life of Tongon by an additional two years out to 2023, breathing new life into the Côte d'Ivoire.
We were able to sell Morila the Gorilla to Mali Lithium, which in turn has plans to carry on with gold mining and processing, which will extend the life of this asset and allow the country and the communities to reap the benefits for a longer period. I'm also very proud to show today what my team did with our copper businesses. Through managing cost and pushing up mining and throughput rates, the copper grades and cash breakeven points at Jabal Sayid and Lumwana were lowered significantly, with both businesses making cash contributions throughout, even at the lower end of the volatile copper price swings we saw earlier during this year. Our efforts were focused on integrating the legacy Barrick operations into the same work method as a tried and tested Randgold approach.
Much progress has been achieved in all operations, with mostly possibly the Tanzanian operations still needing some more attention. All the region's operations, both gold and copper, are expected to perform within guidance. Tanzania land received much attention in 2020 since it was such a highly politicized aspect in Tanzania and so frequently quoted in the international press before the going private transaction. I can say today that all historical land matters have been settled. Compensation has been paid, and the last cleanup of land-related matters are underway at Bulyanhulu. I am pleased to report that Bulyanhulu is restarting the plan, with the first underground ore processed through the plant this month. Despite the challenges presented by COVID, the recent coup in Mali, the elections in Côte d'Ivoire and Tanzania, and the dysfunctional DRC coalition government, putting our license to operate front and center continued to yield results.
Mark and the Africa & Middle East executive continued with constructive engagement through meetings with the president of the DRC, the prime minister, and other ministers of the military junta in Mali, as well as senior government officials in Tanzania over this period. We also made solid progress in reducing the region's carbon footprint by connecting some 20 MW of solar power into the Loulo-Gounkoto microgrid and shrinking our emissions in Central Africa even further through the introduction of battery technology that reduces the spinning reserve of Kibali. We moved to the regional strategy, we as a group decided to refocus. The Africa & Middle East team refocused its strategy, which essentially pivots around elevating our Tanzanian complex to a tier 1 asset through the activities of a renewed and invigorated exploration team, further rationalization of the cost curve, and enhanced operational efficiencies.
As always, our focus on the reserve and the resource replenishment through both organic greenfields exploration and brownfield growth programs remain unwavering. We are targeting growth avenues and assessing opportunities in copper and gold, especially in the countries we have physical presence, and therefore an advantage. As an operational man, I cannot leave out operational excellence as a specific objective, and I've come a long way in some areas, such as mining rates, dilution, paste delivery, and runtime over the last two years, but recognize that we still have much to do, especially in Tanzania and Zambia. The AM region has a very solid 10-year plan, which Rod has already touched on. Our five-year plan is however equally good, with production at 1.5 million ounces until 2023 and in excess of 1.3 million ounces thereafter with the ceasing of Tongon.
We have a number of options and plans to replace the gap that Tongon will leave, and I feel confident this will be achieved. Our focus here remains on replacing our high-cost assets with lower-cost ones as they move to closure and constantly improving the quality of our portfolio rather than simply pursuing lower grades at higher costs. The graph is attributable, you'll see that the two heavyweights, Kibali and Loulo-Gounkoto, play a significant role in the region from a production perspective, as does the Tanzanian assets, where we are developing a tier-1 asset in combining production from North Mara and Bulyanhulu. When we look at the five-year plan for copper, the picture is equally pleasing. The picture of the group's copper portfolio is especially pleasing and includes Zaldívar for completeness, noting we are not an operator of that mine.
We are increasing the production over the five-year window, especially at Lumwana. Much attention is being given to enlarging the geological footprint at our operating sites. Lumwana is a volume-based business, and we have already dropped the mining cost during 2020, well below $2 per ton, from over $4 a ton in 2018 on a consistent basis. Our cost profile remains level over the five years and our capital spend disciplined, with capital stripping at Lumwana really accounting for the bulk of the expected capital spend. In summary, the copper businesses are in good shape, and hundreds of millions of dollars of value has been added to Barrick with the turnaround achieved at Lumwana, and the step change in underground mining at Jabal Sayid, together with a significant potential for growth of the current mineral reserve upon completion of the Lode 1 pre-feasibility and exploration at Jabal Sayid.
We continue to monitor the situation in Zambia, which could present opportunities for us to leverage our existing position. If we move to Kibali and the DRC, Kibali continues to go from strength to strength. The mine recorded record gold production in 2019, on a 100% basis of 813,000 ounces, and is again trending to the top end of our production guidance this year. The world-class technology advanced underground mine continues to raise the bar and truly sets the standard among top-notch underground operations, providing a strong cornerstone for solid production in years to come. In addition, the life of mine model has been improved with growth of the open cast mining profile alongside that of the underground operations for another 10 years, providing excellent flexibility, which has become a hallmark of the mine's success.
Our commitment to the environment and our surrounding communities remains solid with innovating and leading the way, reducing our emissions, and a number of excellent community projects creating lasting value for future generations. Exploration and brownfields reserve replacement work continues to yield sustainable growth and will add ounces for many years to come. Moving to Loulo-Gounkoto in Mali. It has continued its consistent performance as our flagship operation in the region. As you are well aware, Mali's political situation this year was very fluid, to say the least. The fact that our operations and their production guidance remained unchanged is a testimony to our strong relationship and license to operate in that country.
Looking forward, we've made solid progress in transitioning Gounkoto into an underground operation and have successfully commissioned our 20-megawatt solar plant on schedule and in spite of COVID, which will bring further cost reductions and environmental benefits. We are also set due to embark upon a new pre-feasibility study for the complex's fourth underground mine at Loulo-Three in 2021. Moving to Tanzania. After a year in the driver's seat in Tanzania, we've accomplished a number of our goals, and we're in good shape to achieve the remaining ones. Through extensive rationalization and embedding our philosophy of understanding our ore bodies, we turned around a business which was on the path of failure and added significant value to it. We partnered with our host country through contracting and uplifting local businesses, appointing nationals in key positions, and further equipping them with the required skills through training.
Through the establishment of Twiga Minerals, we have made good on our promise of equitable distribution of value. With the government receiving already more than $300 million, and the payment of maiden dividends of $250 million on the back of the successful sale of the concentrate, while at the same time participating in the management of the national asset. Our goal of fostering and preserving the environment also remains intact, with the North Mara Water Management Plan developed, approved, and being executed as promised. The journey of brownfields growth has also had a robust start in 2020, with further significant additions anticipated from both Gokona underground and Gena open pit. Moving to Tongon, I can say Tongon had a very solid year to date. Production comes as the plant consistently keeps improving, setting the mine up to end well within its guidance at year-end.
As a direct result of the work performed by our MRM team, we have managed to add a number of additional ounces from satellite pits and further cut backs to optimize the mine's profile and extend the life of mine, which now extends to 2023. At Lumwana copper, the results at the Zambian copper mine speak for themselves, where we have managed to return the low-grade mine to solid cash-generating levels through driving efficiencies and lower costs. In spite of the substantial improvements made so far, we remain convinced that the best is still to come from Lumwana. With our focus firmly on minimizing plant downtime further, while we assess plant expansion options to lift the mine's throughput and bring value forward.
At Jabal Sayid, the mine has reaped the benefits of a number of operational efficiencies and improvements, driving a step change in its production profile to date and supporting the current production run rate going forward. We've successfully concluded a number of key projects in the year which set us up for continued success at the Saudi operation, such as acquiring key power infrastructure, completing the TSF extension, and extending the underground fleet workshop. Our focus here remains on continuous improvement of efficiency and our life of mine production profile. With underground improvement projects such as the underground fuel and service bay expected to be commissioned in quarter four 2020, while at the plant, the classification removal project, as well as flotation cleaner circuit upgrade, are planned for the near future. As mentioned earlier, pre-feasibility test work and extension ready for Lode 1 extension is well in progress.
This brings me to the end, and I will hand over to Graham.
Good morning and good afternoon. For those who do not know me, I'm the CFO of Barrick, a role I assumed at the time of the merger with Randgold. Prior to that, I had been the CFO of Randgold for 12 years. In addition to reporting, planning, tax, and treasury, I oversee supply chain, IT, risks, as well as systems integration. Over the next few slides, I will share some important initiatives we have been driving, as well as the overall outlook and direction for the group. There are three key things I want to cover today. First, what differentiates Barrick. Second, what have we achieved relative to the targets we set two years ago. Lastly, our drive towards simplicity, why this is important, and where we are going. I'll start with a few KPIs to set the scene. All gold companies highlight their gold price leverage.
However, what distinguishes Barrick is the quality of our assets, as well as our flat and agile management structure. What does this mean? We have six tier 1 mines, which means they each produce more than 500,000 ounces of gold per annum, sit in the lower half of the cost curve, and have a minimum 10-year life. No other company in the industry has that concentration of tier 1 mines. We also have agile and knowledgeable on-site managers who have kept costs under control, notwithstanding the headwinds of higher royalties and operational inefficiencies due to COVID. All else equal, the combination of the two means that for every $100 per ounce increase in the gold price, 96 of this is converted to the bottom line based on our sensitivity analysis.
As you can see in this slide, since the formation of the Nevada joint venture in mid-2019, our costs have remained stable, and with increasing gold prices, we have delivered record cash flows for our owners. This highlights the power of that leverage that I just referred to and is based on five years of cumulative free cash flow from our operating gold mines at various gold price assumptions. For instance, at an average gold price of $1,900 per ounce over the next five years, our operating mines would generate around $19 billion of free cash flow on an attributable basis. Moving closer to our cost drivers, I thought it would be useful to break these down by function and spotlight a few key changes. Firstly, you have heard earlier today about our clean energy and efficiency projects and the extent to which we plan to reduce carbon emissions.
Year to date, fuel and energy now represents 15% of our total cash costs, whereas this was 19% in the prior year. This reflects, in part, the benefit of the investments made, such as the conversion of our power plant at PV from heavy fuel oil to natural gas. We expect this part of our cost base to reduce further following commissioning of the Loulo Solar Power plant, the Veladero Clean Power transmission line, and the new solar project at NGM. Second, labor and contract services collectively represent 42% of total cash costs year to date. Much of what you have heard today, and will see in the next few slides, is around our effort to reduce manual work and to invest in technology which will make our business more efficient and reduce our cost base.
Last, the point I want to make is around royalties, which is included in the other section of these pie charts, with the increase reflecting the higher gold price. The other part of our cost base where we have made significant inroads is corporate G&A. Note this chart excludes stock-based compensation, which is a function of our share price and forecasted separately. At the start of 2018, prior to the merger, our guidance for corporate admin was $275 million, whereas our 2020 guidance is $130 million, a decrease of more than 50% in the space of two years. From our year-to-date results, you will see we are trending but below this 2020 guidance. How did we achieve this? The story last year was about efficiently reshaping our corporate office to those functions that are more efficient when centralized, such as strategic matters, financial reporting, legal, IT, and HR.
This year, our savings were achieved through a review of contracts entered into in the past. For example, one area where we achieved much success was placing ownership of certain software back in the hands of the business rather than as a corporate function. Another area of cost reduction was through our corporate simplification work. This is not the most obvious or visible of initiatives, but again, is indicative of our strategy to focus on core assets. There are three key areas where we are working on. Firstly, entity reduction. Barrick is a function of many corporate transactions, which over time has resulted in extra subsidiaries that all come with compliance costs and tax exposures. In the past, very little was done to address these structures. For example, we have spent over $1 million per year on audit fees in relation to statutory accounts.
By the time you include compliance and legal fees, this quickly adds up. Since the merger, we have eliminated 28 entities to streamline our corporate structure. The next area is subsidiary management, where we can't eliminate companies arising from our history, we need to manage them more effectively. Consequently, we re-domicile the vast majority of these to a regional hub. This has the effect of saving costs, increasing control and oversight of these legal entities, and over time, the ability to further reduce the number. As an example, the former Acacia alone had 38 subsidiaries. We intend to reduce it to around 10 given the framework agreement with the Government of Tanzania. Lastly, loan restructurings. Legacy Barrick had significant intercompany loans that were highly inefficient from a tax perspective.
Far this year, we have refinanced and restructured several loans, which have generated annual savings of approximately $20 million. Along with corporate simplification, we have also been working on simplifying our business systems and applications landscape. This was an area that was long overdue in Barrick, and the merger with Randgold, followed by the Nevada joint venture and Acacia transaction, only added to the complexity and necessity to get it done. To give you an idea, by the time we completed the Nevada joint venture, we were operating on seven separate global ERP systems. There was also a host of different business planning and reporting solutions across the group. This clearly had enormous inefficiencies and high costs.
The urgency to unify business systems was driven by the almost immediate benefits that would follow, including insight into data to enable agile decision-making, a single source of the truth, greater automation, reduced costs, and a proven and scalable model. To be successful in our digital transformation efforts, our sites and regions are leading the way to apply a few core principles, including executive sponsorship of key initiatives, design simplicity, and empowered decision makers and super users to increase agility and take ownership after going live. This slide shows the progress we have already made with the unification of key business systems, as well as some of the work planned for next year.
Using the ERP system as an example of our approach, we identified early on that bringing the Newmont SAP and Barrick Oracle system together under a unified platform was a top priority and would serve as a good testing ground for the entire Barrick group. I'm pleased to say that this pilot project was completed on time and budget last month. What is most impressive is that it was implemented in the middle of the COVID pandemic, and therefore, a testament to the team effort that was required to overcome these challenges. Now that the SAP model, as well as our project implementation approach, has been proven in Nevada, this should set us up for success in rolling out this solution across the rest of Barrick in a series of waves over the next 15 months, as you will see on the following slide.
By the end of 2020, we expect to have unified all the disparate legacy reporting, planning, ERP, environment health and safety, HR, and payroll systems inherited from Acacia, Newmont, Equinox, as well as legacy Barrick and Randgold. Ultimately, this will increase the quality of our data and controls and free up more time to analyze and importantly, act on the data to improve our business. As mentioned, here is our global SAP implementation roadmap. As you can see, the LATAM as well as the AME deployments will run in parallel, targeting all sites to be completed by the end of 2021. In addition to the obvious benefits for financial reporting, a unified ERP system strategy directly benefits other key functions of Barrick.
For example, the direct link between supply chain and planned maintenance, one of our biggest spend areas, will enable efficient working capital management and optimum maintenance of our mining fleet, plant, and equipment. Importantly, we will be in a better position to realize and sustain procurement synergies and increase the efficiency of our assets. In addition to our systems unification project, a consistent drive to simplify and standardize is at the core of Barrick's IT principles to ensure we keep the business securely connected and agile. Barrick's technology team has successfully managed the added complexity across our global operations over the last two years. On the right of this slide, you will note a few KPIs to give you context to the challenges we face. Our strategy is to adopt a centralized approach to manage different disciplines.
This allows for an agile delivery model, maximizes investment in technology by working with key partners across different capabilities, drives standardization across regions and sites, reduces costs, and ensures responsible and secure execution with fit-for-purpose technology choices. Moving on to something a little more holistic in scale. The use of the word digital evokes several different responses from people. I thought it would be worth touching briefly on what this means for Barrick. For us, digital is the use of technology, new and existing, to enable Barrick employees to improve how they perform tasks, to make decisions, to automate processes, and to drive operational efficiency. Barrick's global data platform is at the core of our digital strategy and drives the way in which data gets in the hands of managers to enable improved visibility and decision-making.
While systems unification with SAP, HR, and payroll is an important aspect of integration, this is only one step forward towards a much larger need for a universal solution to have all core applications speak one language, inclusive of mine planning, operations, and other monitoring systems. By using tested technology in the Azure cloud, which sources data from core applications, we are creating common data models that allows the business to standardize how applications integrate and share information, including daily, weekly, and monthly reporting. In other words, instead of someone manually integrating data from several disparate systems to generate reports to facilitate analysis and decisions, this inefficient step will be eliminated. Rather, the platform will allow us to combine data across functions, across operations, and across regions to allow Barrick to effortlessly produce the right information in a bespoke format.
Since the merger, we have restructured our supply chain function on the same principles employed at Randgold, with a focus on decentralized leadership teams, which is overseen by a small but strong corporate team to drive strategy and integration. Our focus remains on driving a responsible supply chain which is integrated into the rest of the business, with the emphasis on building real long-term relationships with our partners and to move away from the previous transactional supply chain model. As a result, we have been able to restructure 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 two years ago. Core to our business model is optimizing our working capital.
We have set the discipline of managing inventory across our operations with KPIs that are owned by our operational leaders. From the post-close merger balance to the end of 2019, inventory reduced by 22%, mainly due to empowering our people to take accountability, changing the culture to move away from the conventional, "I need as much buffer stock as possible," leveraging common spares and inventory between regions and operations, and leveraging a bigger supplier base with improved contractual terms and conditions. At the onset of the merger, we set a target to restructure our cost base in North America and LATAM by a combined $200 million per annum by the end of 2020. We are well ahead of this goal and are now forecasting $220 million of savings by the end of the year.
Looking ahead, we believe we could deliver further savings, including consolidating our logistics in the Americas through our local partner and saving a further $30 million per annum by assuming responsibility for logistics rather than paying for embedded freight within our purchases, and further leveraging our cost base for an additional $100 million in annual savings over the next two years as we discover new opportunities and consolidate suppliers and logistics. In addition to the Americas, following the takeover of Acacia, we identified the opportunity to reduce costs by a further $50 million per annum, and we are well on our way to delivering these savings by leveraging the same principles. Part of our social responsibility is to expand our local footprint in the host countries where we operate, a strategy that has historically proved to be very successful.
Over the past six years, we have tripled local partnerships and suppliers in AME, and within LATAM, we have made a step change over the last two years. Our focus remains on expanding our business to all local communities, including in Nevada, which is currently at approximately 30% of total spend in NGM. The reality of our industry is that we face a multitude of risks, from geopolitical to health, safety, and environment, plus many more, and our success depends heavily on how we manage these risks. Shareholder value can be created through accepting risk responsibly and effectively managing it. Consequently, we have worked on aligning our risk management approach with our strategic objectives and values to ensure that this is deeply embedded in our business. Our primary focus has been on an integrated approach with the emphasis on an ownership and awareness culture across all levels.
Since the merger, our goal has been to combine the best from both companies' risk management methodologies, from embedding an awareness and accountability culture at our operations to implementing group-wide standards and oversight. In short, we have moved from simple risk avoidance to an approach where we can better identify, quantify, and manage our risks. As you are all aware, there has been an increased emphasis on ESG and these related risks, including climate risks and opportunities, form part of our strategic thinking and risk matrix. For example, our continued investment in a majority national-led workforce at our mines allows us to better deal with geopolitical risks as they arise. Our commitment to sustainability through partnerships in our host countries, including providing commercial opportunities to the local economy and communities, further strengthens our license to operate and reduces risk.
Our ongoing commitment to reducing material risk exposures includes implementing engineering and elimination controls. We carry out annual third-party risk engineering audits across all our sites and utilize these results to improve our risk controls and prevention methods. This also drives down the cost of our insurance by identifying risks that we can engineer out of our processes and by showing our commitment to risk management through transparency. Turning now to liability management, Barrick's remaining debt profile is long-dated after all the early repurchases that have been completed in the past six years. There are no material maturities for well over a decade, and our weighted average maturity is 19 years. Given record low market interest rates and the cost of our existing debt, we are unlikely to buy back additional debt in the near term.
We have continued to reduce debt, with net debt down to $0.4 billion as of the end of quarter three, representing a reduction of $10 billion in under six years, and expect to be net cash in the new year. The continuing improvement we have made to our balance sheet was also recently recognized by Moody's as they upgraded Barrick's credit rating to Baa1. At the end of quarter three, we have $7.7 billion of liquidity, including $3 billion from an undrawn credit facility on favorable terms. As a result of our strong liquidity and robust cash flows, Barrick has been able to sustainably raise our base quarterly dividend three times in the past year to $0.09 per share, which is triple the level that was in place at the time of the announcement of the Barrick Randgold merger.
We continue to work on formalizing our dividend payout policy, which we expect to share with the market in the new year. Our focus is on maintaining a base level dividend that is sustainable throughout the cycle, which we believe the current level is, and proposing a bonus dividend based on a % of free cash flow over and above the base level, subject to certain minimum cash and maximum net debt levels. This, we believe, will allow us to continue to invest in our business, protect the business in the downturns, while still returning excess cash to our owners when gold prices are higher. To wrap up my presentation, here is our five-year gold outlook for the group. As you all recall, it has been 12 months since we first released our five-year outlook.
You have heard Catherine, Mark, and Willem talk about their regional outlooks. This brings the complete picture together. Now that we have embedded our DNA and approach to mineral resource management into our planning process, we will update the five-year outlook every year. You will note that there's been minimal change to the shape of these graphs from what we previously shared. The changes to Porgera's contribution, the commissioning of the Phase 6 at Veladero, the changes at Long Canyon, and the resource additions in AME, particularly at Tongon, have changed the production profile slightly. What is more important is that we have added resources to our life of mine plans. Year-on-year, we are seeing an increase in our NAV. This is exactly what one would expect from tier 1 assets.
Equally important, as Rod has touched on, we are not about to start adding ounces that will only deliver returns at significantly higher gold prices. We will remain disciplined. As part of our drive to increase the value of our portfolio and given our strong cash flows and balance sheet, we have slightly increased our capital spend over the five years, including some deferral of capital from 2020 into 2021, given the delays related to COVID. In some cases, these new projects will only deliver returns beyond this five-year window. We are comfortable that they add value to our overall business. This is an opportune time to make these investments.
In summary, our five-year outlook is a demonstration of our ability to generate profits throughout the cycle, anchored by a $1,200 per ounce gold price. This plan serves as the foundation for our decisions around capital allocation and is also used to set our base level of dividends. The outlook remains consistent with our previous production guidance of around 5 million ounces per annum, with costs declining over the period. With that, there will now be a short break, after which Darian will talk to you about our human resources strategy commencing at 11:40 A.M. EST. That's in 10 minutes, I believe. Thank you.
All right. Hello, everyone. My name is Darian Rich. I have been the HR executive for Barrick for the past nine years. It is a pleasure to speak with you about our human capital efforts today. As Mark Bristow highlighted earlier, to build a modern mining business at the top of the field, we need the best people to run our portfolio of best-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. A modern mining business needs people who share its vision and its values, who are entrepreneurial, who are agile, who are alive to technological and societal changes, and who are profit-oriented. That is why in an industry traditionally dominated by white males, we at Barrick are building an effective, multicultural, and multigeneration workforce aligned to a changing world through our talent framework.
The executive team and key senior leaders recently held a two-day talent and succession planning review to discuss our talent capability, able to drive business priorities across the regions and sites by ensuring we have the right skills in the right jobs to take Barrick into the future. Succession slates and individual profiles were reviewed, and follow-up actions were identified as we assess the performance and potential of our employees and build individual development plans for both our leaders and our high-potential talent pools. We strongly believe that a diverse workforce is a better workforce. We have operations in 13 countries, and we are committed to harnessing the talents, the skills, and the perspectives of a diverse workforce in each of them. There are many examples of employees whose actual first work exposure to industry was through their hire and development at Barrick.
Barrick has a long tradition of hiring locally for both operational and managerial roles. Recognizing these employees are as good as you can find anywhere, this policy leads to greater team effectiveness and workforce stability. We have embarked on a drive to recruit more young people and women, and it's worth pointing out that these efforts are purely on a merit basis. Over the past 22 months, we have seen a shift in our employee age profile. 53% of the workforce is under the age of 40. We are utilizing online events in which candidates interface in a virtual environmental portal using chat rooms with recruiters. Hiring managers now gain a stronger sense of individual skills and experience at the initial stage of recruitment. Year to date, we've conducted 1,800 interviews using this online format as we build our candidate pipeline.
We have continued to invest in training, in development, and in learning opportunities during the pandemic to position for our future. While many other companies rescinded or even canceled university student programs due to COVID-19, each of our regions offered and hosted student internship programs with the representation of women ranging from 33% to 49% of the positions sponsored. Our investment in people range from mentorships and internships to group-wide programs designed to develop a foundation of operational knowledge and management skills. We offer apprenticeships, we tailor executive and management development programs to individual needs. I will highlight three of these learning opportunities. Our Compass and Young Professional Development programs provide structured training for early career technical employees.
Earlier this year, we launched the Greenfield Talent Program at Nevada Gold Mines to provide new engineering graduates meaningful, direct underground mining and supervisory experience as a solid foundation for their mining engineer careers. Third, modeled after the curriculum offered in Randgold Finance for Business Leaders develops financial acumen across the organization to help our people have an ownership mindset and integrate financial and business needs into their everyday thinking. 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 enabled through a variety of important processes and activities at Barrick. I'll highlight four of these.
Our flat organizational structure provides the executive team with direct access to line operations and enables them to better understand issues. Second, our annual executive and regional team effectiveness sessions create a shared understanding of and commitment to Barrick's high-performance ethos. Three, our quarterly executive site visits facilitate rigorous discussions focused on business execution, safety and environment performance, status of key projects, and also an important opportunity to interface with our emerging high-potential talent. Fourth, 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. We have advanced the implementation of our global HR system, which we call Element, across North America in 2020.
Consistent with Grant's earlier comment about unification of our global data platform, our vision is to deliver an HR cloud-based system to provide a global, integrated, standardized, simplified, and consistent system of information and access to HR services. Global implementation is targeted to be completed in the second half of 2021. This implementation is a critical enabler for improving the system user experience for both managers and employees, and for data inputs for our Human Capital Scorecard. We evolve our HR strategy, new Human Capital Scorecard tracks our progress across five key HR pillars on our journey to building the world's most valued gold company. We are using scorecard inputs to build a database of employee skills and development plans as we advance our focus on talent reviews and succession planning deeper into the organization.
This scorecard also provides a means for operations to measure key performance indicators and opportunities for our human capital efforts and provides data needed for our sustainability scorecard. Before Grant begins his comments, it is important to highlight that since the merger, the Barrick Board Compensation Committee has invested time to solicit shareholder feedback on our approach to sustainability, executive compensation, and governance. Concurrent with our discussions with you today, over the next 4 weeks, Grant and I are joining both our Lead Independent Director and our Independent Director who chairs the Board Compensation Committee for individual shareholder engagement discussions amongst our top 50 institutional investors for additional feedback regarding our actions taken this year. Our key 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 with incentive plans and compensation outcomes at all levels in the company. We promote share ownership culture across the organization. Since 2019, we have added two highly qualified women to our board of directors who were identified through a rigorous search and selection process. Our board of 10 includes international business leaders and mining industry professionals with expertise and experience working in all jurisdictions in which Barrick operates. They bring together diverse viewpoints and perspectives, exhibiting the skills, professional experience, and backgrounds necessary to best address opportunities, challenges, and risk for our business. Thank you. Grant will now provide an update on sustainability.
Thank you, Darian. Good afternoon, and thank you for this opportunity to talk to you about sustainability at Barrick. My name is Grant Beringer, and I lead the sustainability team as a full executive responsible for health and safety, communities, and the environment, which is a first for the company. My intention today is to elaborate on our sustainability strategy, a strategy that has been tried and tested with the former Randgold, and one which I was personally part of. I'll also demonstrate how the strategy has been fully integrated into the group and driven improvements in our business. As you well know, the last 2 years have seen a lot of activity with us taking operational control of the Nevada Gold Mines JV, and 4 months later, acquiring the former Acacia Mines in Tanzania.
We firmly believe that the successful integration of these businesses into Barrick was underpinned by a strong sustainability vision and strategy. We at Barrick believe good ESG management is a proxy for good business management in general. It provides a holistic and thorough way for us to assess and understand our business. This, however, is not new thinking for us. It's something we've been doing for a long time, and we've long seen the value of it being part of our DNA. Since the merger, there's been a strong focus on building our social license to operate, and the team and I have stuck to three main principles to achieve this. The first is the primacy of partnership. Our approach to partnership is epitomized by our community development committees, or CDCs.
Each CDC is made up of a mix of local leaders and community members. Their role is to allocate the community investment budgets to those projects most needed by the local communities. We have placed the communities at the center of decision-making with regards to the support we provide. Having attended these meetings myself, I fully recognize that no one knows what a community needs more than the communities themselves. Secondly, sharing of benefits. We view our supply chain as an enormous opportunity to contribute to local economic development. As Catherine and Willem have already mentioned, this has reinforced our commitment to our host countries and communities. In 2019, the group procured over $4.4 billion of goods and services from suppliers based in our host countries. Lastly, engaging and listening to our stakeholders.
Like everything we do, we consider the most effective community engagement that which is delivered on the ground at the local level. Something that was demonstrated by Willem and his team after taking over the Acacia assets, where the first thing we did was meet with the communities and discuss the new vision we had for the mines, and to explain that they were an important part of it. Further to this, as most of our operations, we invite labor representatives and trade unions to attend the mine's quarterly board meetings, and we consult with them on many key business decisions, including cost reviews. The bedrock of our strategy is good governance, and to use a phrase coined by Mark, we believe that our business is where the mine is. Ownership of sustainability risks and opportunities have been placed in the hands of the individual sites.
Overseeing this, of course, is myself along with the regional sustainability leads. In short, our commitment is driven at an operational level, not set at a corporate office as part of a compliance exercise. In fact, for many of the executives, our offices are the sites themselves. One of the first changes we made following the merger, and based on the Randgold model, we established the Environmental and Social Oversight Committee. This committee is an important mechanism for connecting site-level ownership for sustainability with the leadership of the company. That is why it's chaired by Mark, and in attendance is Mark Hill, Willem and Catherine, myself, each site general manager, the regional sustainability leads, and the site sustainability leads. We meet on a quarterly basis to review our performance across a range of sustainability KPIs. The committee also includes an independent sustainability expert in an advisory role.
Part of their remit is to provide independent oversight and review of sustainability management at each tier 1 operation. We at Barrick are encouraged by the fact that ESG as an investment thesis has moved from the margins to the mainstream. We also recognize the challenges it presents with the number of disclosures, tools, and metrics used to score a company's performance ever-increasing, each with its own acronym. The point is that it's hard to know what good looks like. We, during the 2019 sustainability report process, decided to develop an ESG scorecard to address this challenge. The scorecard, which is a first for our industry, does this by setting out what we believe are the sustainability issues most relevant for our business and our industry. The role of the scorecard is twofold.
First off, we wanted to benchmark ourselves against our peers on our most important ESG issues, while at the same time conveying to the ratings and investor community those issues that we consider to be most pertinent to our business. Secondly, from an internal perspective, it drives performance. My team, along with the rest of the senior leadership, review our performance against the scorecard every quarter. We have no intention of relaxing on our past efforts. Although not the sole objective of us putting the scorecard together, we wanted to raise the need for equivalency on the metrics within our industry. This is something that I'm passionate about and engage regularly with our memberships to drive this agenda. As you see here, our scorecard is broken into five subsections. These reflect our four core pillars, with the fifth being governance aspects.
Using the scorecard, we gave ourselves a B grade, which shows we have improved significantly over the last year. However, we have not met all the high standards we have set ourselves, and that there's still work to be done. The scorecard and our performance against it, as Darian has elaborated on, is now linked to our long-term incentive program. In terms of health and safety, we believe in aligning with internationally recognized management standards. Currently, three sites are certified to ISO 45001, one of the most widely respected international management standards for occupational health and safety. We have set a target to certify all of our operational mines to ISO 45001 by 2021 and are making good progress to achieve this. Throughout 2020, we have invested a lot of energy in improving our performance from last year, which we acknowledge was just not good enough.
One such initiative was our group-wide journey to zero harm, which has assisted us in driving down lost time and total injuries year-on-year. This improvement, however, was marred by the tragic fatality of an underground worker at our Kibali mine in the D.R.C. last week Wednesday. A thorough investigation is currently underway, and the initial preventative actions and lessons learned are being communicated to the group. In terms of community investment, and as I highlighted earlier in our strategy, we place a lot of emphasis on community development and partnership, and to date have spent over $13 million on sustainable community projects, with an additional $26 million spent on COVID support for our communities.
One particular area of focus was restoring the license to operate at North Mara, and having spent a lot of time on site these last few months, I can attest to the complete lack of relationship between Acacia and the 11 villages surrounding the mine. One of the first things our new team did was to start the work of rebuilding relationships with the community. We established a Community Development Committee to oversee local community investment and partner with a community that had grown disillusioned under the Acacia management. While still in its infancy, the CDC at North Mara has already started to change community sentiment toward the mine and begin the process of restoring its social license to operate. For example, the CDC has funded a poultry project run by the local youth association.
The project has started to sell its produce to the mine, delivering income to the community. I often say that I'm probably the only executive in the industry that reports to the CEO on how many eggs the community have sold. We do this because developing and supporting sustainable business is our priority. Our approach to our relationships with our indigenous partners is no different, and we create genuine partnerships that aim to build long-term capacity and legacy within our host communities. At our Hemlo Mine in Canada, we have recently concluded the renewal of our socioeconomic benefit agreements, which are developed and agreed upon through the newly implemented CDC and have initiated a number of economic development projects, which will provide sustainable income to the indigenous communities long after the mine is closed.
Similarly, in Nevada, we have increased our support to the Native American tribes, and recently Mark had the privilege of attending the graduation ceremony of the 11 tribal graduates from our Western Shoshone Scholarship Foundation. Effective engagement also provides a forum for the resolution of community grievances or to discuss the risks and opportunities linked to our mines in a fair and open manner. A good indicator of the success of this approach is at North Mara and Porgera, which account for the bulk of our outstanding community grievances. Most of these date back some time and are what we call legacy grievances. Since the merger and taking control of assets, we have seen a steady reduction in the number of open legacy grievances with a sharp decrease in new grievances lodged.
Under our human rights policy, we commit to respecting the human rights of all individuals impacted by our operations, including employees, contractors, and external stakeholders. We do this by developing and implementing supporting policies, procedures, and internal reporting structures, providing training on our human rights expectation to all new employees and all relevant existing employees. We also maintain a grievance mechanism for human rights complaints to be reported and addressed without any prejudice to the aggrieved person. Finally, we carry out independent third-party assessments of our conformance to the Voluntary Principles on Security and Human Rights, of which we are a member, and I recently gave a verification presentation to the VP's plenary. We believe our first line of security is the communities around our mine sites. We have found that we have a positive working relationship with them, we can avoid serious conflict, trespassing, and confrontations with security.
This is demonstrated at the Porgera Mine in Papua New Guinea, which operates in an environment with a weak rule of law plagued by tribal violence and corruption. We have had to look at ways we could not only implement the Voluntary Principles but supplement this with programs specific to the needs of the Porgera Valley and its community. To do this, we have been working with public security, the judiciary, and local leaders to build capacity of the local law enforcement, support local leaders in conflict management, and support programs to address family sexual violence. These programs fall under a project which we have called the Restoring Justice Initiative. Strong environmental management is a crucial building block of our business.
Environmental issues with the greatest potential impact on the health and safety of local communities-Such as how we use water, prevent incidents, and manage tailings at the top of our agenda. This is the same approach we have taken across the group, and since the merger, have worked tirelessly to remedy some of the legacy issues we have. Also to educate those in the industry, like the ESG raters, of what is actually being done and ensure this is recognized by them. Our environmental performance has continued to improve with zero Class 1 or significant events for the year to date, a continuation from last year. In particular, we have focused on how we can improve our water recycling and reuse. We understand the need to conserve water, particularly in those areas that are water-stressed, like the high desert of Nevada or in Saudi Arabia.
As a group, we have adopted the internationally recognized water accounting framework and embedded this at a site level. With proactive site intervention, we are again seeing an improvement in this regard. This means we are reusing and recycling more water than ever before at our sites. Earlier this year, as part of our sustainability report, we set a greenhouse gas reduction target of 10% in 10 years against the consolidated 2018 baseline. At the same time, we've also seen a lot of other companies come out and make bold proclamations on emissions reduction targets, but they lack the backup or detailed roadmap for achieving these targets. We, however, have been more prudent and pragmatic in the target we have set. It is grounded in climate science and has a detailed pathway for achievement that we can actually demonstrate.
This entailed identifying several projects that we will be implementing, and it is worth noting, as Willem, Mark, and Catherine have already done, that some of these projects we've recognized are already implemented and are seeing reductions. Our investment in battery technology at Kibali will further reduce the mine's requirement for diesel gensets . At Loulo-Gounkoto, we have installed a 20-megawatt solar plant, which from Q3 has been injecting power into the microgrid. It will reduce CO2 emissions by 27,000 tons per year. In the Dominican Republic, we have switched the Quisqueya power plant from heavy fuel oil to cleaner-burning natural gas, realizing a decrease of around 260,000 tons of CO2 per annum.
Our medium-term plans, as Catherine mentioned earlier, will see the introduction of similar initiatives in Nevada, where we'll switch the TS Power Plant to a natural gas, realizing at least 570,000 tons decrease per year, while at the same time, we prepare to construct a solar plant capable of injecting at least 100 megawatts into the grid. We have already started with the permit application for the solar project and have secured the land. The target set this year will also be constantly reviewed and updated as new emission reduction projects are identified and come online. We put safety at the center of our tailings management, and it determines how we manage these facilities, from location and design to operation and closure.
Along with our tailings standard, which is aligned to best practice, we also have 6 levels of surety, which sets out the monitoring, review, and assessment required for all our facilities. We at Barrick were also intimately involved in the process and publication of the Global Industry Standard on Tailings Management, co-convened by UNEP, the PRI, and the ICMM. I was personally part of the tailings subcommittee for the ICMM that met and engaged with the expert panel tasked with the standards compilation. Since its publication, we have started the implementation of the standard by completing consequence classifications of most of our facilities, operational and closed, and this will be followed by a risk assessment exercise of those with higher consequences, as we believe a risk-based approach is imperative to good tailings management.
In closing, I'd like to share with you the progress we have made relative to our performance in 2019 based on our ESG scorecard. Some of the highlights are shown here. Although we have seen a significant improvement on our safety scores year-to-date relative to last year, the unfortunate fatality last week means that we'll see a lower score this year as we have a zero tolerance for these incidents. Community-wise, we have implemented CDCs at a further three sites, and although not accounted for here, the team at PV held their first CDC meetings at PV last week. This will increase further by the time we review at the end of the year. We have also worked hard to increase the local employment at our sites, and this has again improved year-on-year.
In relation to the corporate human rights benchmark score, this will be published by the organization themselves, but internally, we have worked to improve our disclosure on these aspects, which will impact our previous score. On the environmental metrics, we recognize improvements or remain at the same high scores across the board, with significant improvements on water efficiency. By the end of 2020, all our sites will be accredited to ISO 14001. Through our revised and updated code of conduct training, we have reached and trained even more employees this year. Again, an improvement. Their overall grade will be updated next year once all the data has been consolidated and our peers have published their data.
As you can see, we have tried to summarize the key metrics here, but as you well know, there's more to ESG than just the numbers. It's in the qualitative results too, and we over the last two years have seen a marked improvement in aspects such as the social license to operate and our environmental stewardship. As we strive for further improvement and to remain a leader in the industry, myself and my team have set overarching priorities for 2021, which we will roll down through the organization. These entail implementing the World Gold Council Responsible Gold Mining Principles and the ICMM's Mining Principles with the self-assessment process already well underway. Embedding our climate strategy at a site level and introducing climate champions at all sites to identify further opportunities for reductions.
Fulfill our commitments to the Global Tailings Standard and complete the human rights assessments we have planned and arranged. We'll also prioritize the further alignment to SASB while continuing to report to GRI. Another important priority, and one that we have made much progress on already, is continuing the dialogue with the ESG raters and specifically dealing with the legacy issues that they reference in their controversy reports. This will require providing them with information on how we have or will be remedying the perceived risks. Thank you for your time today. I'll now hand back to Mark.
Thank you, Grant, and thank you everyone again for joining us today. Just in closeout, I wanted to point out that one team that did not present but is entrenched everywhere in our business is the Strategic Matters Team led by Kevin Thomson. Leading up all the way back to the work involved with merging Barrick and Randgold, Kevin and his team have been instrumental in all our strategic initiatives that have been highlighted today, such as the Nevada joint venture, the acquisition of the Acacia minorities, and achieving our $1.5 billion non-core asset sale target. As you would expect, we keep a close eye on the broad range of opportunities to grow our business. Kevin and his team, together with Rod and the relevant COOs, are constantly working on these ideas to test whether they meet our filters and would create value for our shareholders.
Another core team that touches everything we do is our legal group led by Richard Haddock, who provide invaluable counsel to our executives and ensure we cross the T's and dot the I's. Last but not least, John Steele, our Capital Projects Executive, who plays a critical role in overseeing all of our capital projects and ensuring they deliver as planned, is also on the call today should there be any need for any detailed technical questions. As you have heard from Rob, Rod, the regional COOs, and Graham, we expect to maintain a steady run rate of production through the next 10 years and beyond, rolling the plan forward on a continuous basis. Everything that our team has done serves as the base for this 10-year plan, and any potential M&A would only build upon this foundation.
In closing, to be a mining company acceptable to future generations, it is all about partnerships. We at Barrick value these partnerships and are obsessed with ensuring they remain successful. It is our partnerships with the market, our host countries, our employees, and not just the communities we operate in. It is these partnerships that we rely on as we move forward along the road that we have shown you today. Thank you again, all of you, for joining us today.