Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Barrick 2018 second quarter results conference call. During the presentation, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. At that time, if you have a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. At any time during the conference, should you need operator assistance, please press star and zero. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded and a replay will be available on Barrick's website tonight, July 26, 2018. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kelvin Dushnisky, President.
Good morning. Thank you for joining us. Before we begin, I'd like to highlight that during this presentation, we'll be making forward-looking statements. This slide includes a summary of the significant risks and factors that could affect Barrick's future performance and our ability to deliver on those forward-looking statements. A review of our most recent AIF will provide you with a more complete discussion. I'm here today with our Chief Financial Officer, Catherine Raw, our Senior Vice President, Operational and Technical Excellence, Greg Walker, our General Manager of Turquoise Ridge, Henri Gonin, the CEO of Barrick Nevada, Bill MacNevin, and our Executive Vice President of Exploration and Growth, Rob Krcmarov. Our other general managers and members of the Barrick team will also be available for questions following the formal portion of the call.
Gold production and costs for the quarter were in line with expectations. We remain on track to meet our gold production and cost guidance for the year. Catherine will speak to you in more detail about our guidance as well as our other financial results. Our growth projects in Nevada are progressing well and remain on schedule and within budget. Henri will provide you with an update on the third shaft at Turquoise Ridge. Bill will speak to the recent progress made at Cortez Deep South and at Goldrush. In the Dominican Republic, we made solid progress during the quarter, advancing pre-feasibility level studies for a potential plant expansion at Pueblo Viejo. Greg will speak to you in more detail about this as well as our other operating results.
Nevada remains a key area of focus for our exploration program. We're pleased to announce a new high-grade gold discovery at Fourmile, following more positive drill results during the quarter. Rob will provide you with an update on these encouraging results and planned drilling for the remainder of the year. With respect to the balance sheet, subsequent to the end of the quarter, we reduced our debt by another $629 million, bringing our total debt down to about $5.8 billion. Earlier this month, we announced an enhanced strategic cooperation agreement with Shandong, further deepening our relationship. With that, I'll hand the call over to Catherine to take you through our second quarter financial results.
Thanks, Kelvin. As Kelvin mentioned, gold production and costs were as expected for the quarter and as outlined in our production release on the 11th. We reported a net loss for the quarter of $94 million, or a loss of $0.08 a share, adjusted earnings of $81 million or $0.07 a share. Operating cash flow of $141 million. Operating cash flow during the quarter were impacted by planned maintenance activities at Barrick Nevada and Pueblo Viejo, unplanned downtime at the Lumwana crusher, all of which we'll go into more detail in the rest of the presentation. These factors also impacted free cash flow, which despite lower year-on-year total CapEx, was negative $172 million for the quarter but remains positive year-to-date.
Project CapEx increased compared to the first quarter, and also to last year, including an increase in spend at Crossroads, the Cortez Range Front declines, the Goldrush exploration declines, the Deep South expansion at Barrick Nevada, as well as the construction of the third shaft at Turquoise Ridge. The underlying effective tax rate in the second quarter of 2018 was 48%, partly reflecting the in-quarter impact of adjusting our tax guidance to 44%-46% from 41%-43%, the result of lower spot gold prices and a change in our first half sales mix. In the second quarter, we began to implement our next wave of organizational restructuring to get us closer to our vision of a simplified, decentralized org structure. We've reviewed all positions sitting above operations, reallocating and eliminating those roles where appropriate and simplifying our footprint.
At this time, we're maintaining our full-year general and administrative expense guidance as the expected savings from these changes are being offset by severance expenses in 2018. Moving on to guidance. As Kelvin mentioned, we remain on track to meet full-year gold production and cost guidance. Production is second half-weighted, with costs steadily improving. We expect third quarter gold production to be over 1.2 million ounces, up from just over 1 million ounces in the second quarter. We've updated our copper guidance, which primarily reflects the operational challenges at Lumwana in the first half of the year. We expect copper production to be in the range of 345 million-410 million pounds at a cost of sales of $2-$2.30 per pound, C1 cash costs of $1.80-$2 per pound, and all-in sustaining costs of $2.55-$2.85 per pound.
Greg will provide more color on our second half expectations for both gold and copper. Our guidance for total CapEx remains unchanged, with $950 million-$1.1 billion of sustaining capital and $450 million-$550 million of growth capital, for a total of $1.4 billion-$1.6 billion of capital for the year. Now on to the balance sheet. At the end of the second quarter, the company had a consolidated cash balance of approximately $2.1 billion. Subsequent to the end of the quarter, Barrick completed a make-whole purchase of the outstanding principal of the 2021 notes, $629 million, reducing our total debt to just under $5.8 billion. To put the scale of our debt reduction into perspective, over the last five years, we've repaid over $10 billion.
As it stands today, the company has less than $100 million in debt due before 2020, and more than 85% of our outstanding debt matures after 2032. For more detail on our results, I want to draw your attention to our MD&A, including the earnings and cash flow waterfalls, as well as some new charts on copper and on year-on-year mine variances to help aid people to understand our quarterly results. I'd now like to hand it over to Greg, who'll take you through the operational results for the second quarter.
Thank you, Catherine. In the second quarter, we produced 1.07 million ounces of gold in line with our guidance for the quarter. Production was impacted by scheduled maintenance shutdowns at Barrick Nevada, roaster, and the Pueblo Viejo autoclaves. We're pleased to announce that both these shutdowns were successfully optimized. This reflects our focus on increasing the overall availability of our processing facilities by consolidating work and extending time between planned maintenance. For example, at Barrick Nevada, the roaster maintenance was completed 18% faster than prior roaster shutdowns. Gold costs for the quarter were in line with our expectations, with all-in sustaining costs of $856 per ounce, while cash costs were $605 per ounce. Costs were impacted by planned maintenance, higher fuel costs, and the impact of lower ounces sold in the quarter.
Looking forward, we expect gold production and costs to improve steadily over the second half of the year, driven by stronger performance at Barrick Nevada and Pueblo Viejo, as well as the restoration of full production processing capacity at Porgera, much earlier than anticipated following the earthquake in late February. For Q3, gold production is expected to be around 1.2 million ounces. At Barrick Nevada, we expect throughput and grade to improve given the completion of their maintenance during the first half, as well as the increased production coming out of Cortez Hills open pit. At Pueblo Viejo, we see transition into higher grades in phase 5 and phase 6 of the Moore Pit. And, excuse me, throughput in quarter three is expected to remain in line with the quarter two as we complete the second of our autoclave shutdowns for the year.
We expect higher throughput at Pueblo Viejo in the fourth quarter. On the copper side, production for the second quarter was 83 million pounds at an all-in sustaining cost of $3.04 a pound. The C1 cash cost of $2.10 a pound. Looking forward, copper production is expected to improve progressively over the third and fourth quarters, driven by a steady improvement in grade and the crusher reliability at Lumwana, as well as optimization of the stacking procedures at Veladero. Moving on to our pilot plan expansions at Pueblo Viejo. We continue to advance the pre-feasibility study on a plant expansion that would increase throughput by 50%. This is designed to include the addition of a pre-oxidation heap leach pad, a flotation process, along with an additional tailings capacity.
On a 100% basis, this project continues to have the potential to convert roughly 7 million ounces from measured and indicated resource into proven and probable reserves and allow the mine to maintain an average annual gold production of 800,000 ounces after 2022. We're pleased to announce that in support of this feasibility study, we've completed the construction of the pilot pre-oxidation heap leach pad. As noted on the slide, irrigation of cell 1 has commenced, and cell 2 is ready for material to be stacked. Moving on to the flotation process. Civil works for the pilot flotation concentrator has begun, which leverage off the existing infrastructure as shown in the picture at the bottom right. Next steps for this project is contract tenders for structural, mechanical, and electrical work to be completed.
We look forward to providing you further updates as the pilot test work as we advance the pre-feasibility study for this core mine. With that, I'd like to hand over to Henri to provide you an update at Turquoise Ridge.
Thanks, Greg. At Turquoise Ridge, the construction of the third shaft continued to progress during the quarter, according to schedule and within budget. During the first quarter, we announced that we appointed Thyssen Mining as our shaft-sinking contractor for this project, and they are now in the process of mobilizing onto site. Dewatering is underway and advancing according to plan, and the construction of surface infrastructure for electrical distribution and other mine site utility construction are well advanced. The balance of 2018 will be focused on long lead equipment purchases, collar excavation, and we'll install the hoists. We continue to expect initial production from the third shaft in 2022 with sustained production from 2023, and that at an estimated capital cost of between $300 million and $325 million on a 100% basis.
The shaft is expected to increase annual production on a 100% basis to more than 500,000 ounces per year at an all-in sustaining cost of approximately $630 per ounce. As we discussed at the Investor Day, the future is unwritten for Turquoise Ridge, and the near mine exploration represents a key area of future growth potential. The deposit is open in multiple directions with a wide spectrum of projects, including the Getchell fault and the Bass Pond East project. Drilling to date has continued to expand the deposit with the first hole of the North Zone Getchell program intersecting 16.5 meters at 16.9 grams per ton during the quarter. This intercept extends the mineralization by 120 meters with further drilling planned along that same fault.
Similarly, drilling as part of the Bass Pond East program has extended known mineralization to the northeast by another 120 meters, with an intercept of 6.7 meters at 15.3 grams per ton. Additional drilling will also continue in this area to the northeast. I'd like to now hand over to Bill MacNevin to speak about our development progress at Barrick Nevada.
Thanks, Henri. At the Deep South project, we kept advancing during the quarter, utilizing roadheader mining technology, and completed our east decline. Our west decline is proceeding on schedule, and the project is advancing to facilitate mining of the already permitted Cortez Hills lower zone, and to be ready to support Deep South mine development upon receipt of the permit. Mining at Deep South is expected to result in production of approximately 300,000 ounces annually, once we're fully ramped up between 2024 and 2028, with an expected cost of sales of $650 per ounce. In July, the project received the Nevada state permits required for mining. Project permitting is advancing, and we expect the draft EIS to be published for public comment in the second half of the year, and a record of decision in H2 of 2019.
On to Goldrush, which is one of our most exciting projects, and our development work on the project continues in terms of both exploration and construction. We're continuing to work on converting the 9.4 million ounces of measured and indicated resources to proven and probable reserves, adding to the 1.48 million ounces we converted in 2017. We've had more drilling success at Red Hill and the nearby Fourmile area, which Rob Krcmarov will describe in a moment. We're continuing development of Goldrush exploration declines, as pictured in the bottom right. The declines are on track to reach the ore body in 2021, when we will conduct further exploration, and it provides a platform for mine development. A plan of operations for Goldrush mining project has been developed, and we're working with our permitting agency to formally initiate their permitting efforts.
With that, I'd like to hand over to Rob to provide an update of our recent exploration results in Nevada.
Thanks, Bill. As you noted, Red Hill infill drilling continues to meet expectations, and we hope to convert more resources to reserves at year-end. As you know, this is a prolific district, and in combination with Goldrush, we expect will form the basis of the future of Barrick Nevada for decades to come. In February this year, during Investor Day, I highlighted some of the high-grade gold mineralization intersected. In March for our Q1 results call, I shared more positive results, and today, I'm thrilled to say we continue to encounter some truly outstanding intercepts in our exploration work. During the first quarter, I highlighted positive geology on holes with pending results. Well, drilling has encountered grade thicknesses in excess of 1,000 gram-meters. We now have confirmed a high-grade discovery, actually with a footprint that is over 600 meters along strike and over 200 meters wide.
We continue to intercept favorable geology in recently drilled holes. The Barrick exploration team has done it again, and what started as two drill holes in 2016 has become the discovery that you see today. Using geological interpretation, proprietary geochemical methodologies, coupled with structural geology, drilling, and other techniques, Fourmile has now advanced to the point where we're increasingly confident that we could have a truly remarkable discovery on our hands. Based on this success, we've increased our current Fourmile budget by over $10 million, significantly increasing the number of drill holes to complete bold step-outs in search of additional high-grade, high-value targets. What are we after at Fourmile? To be clear, we're not looking for more of the same. Bearing in mind that Goldrush is a fantastic ore body on its own, what we want is even better.
Our objective remains to find high grade, high value. The Fourmile discovery has done just that. Fourmile is slightly geologically different from Goldrush, and I'm going to explain what I mean by that. The rocks have been metamorphosed due to the proximity of the nearby intrusion, which helps focus fluid flow. This is what we see in other great mines such as Goldstrike. The mineralization at Fourmile is typically hosted in an intensely sulfurized, matrix-supported breccia with sharp boundaries, as you can see from the photo above. The breccia-hosted mineralization is localized in a fault-propagated fold hinge. It spans multiple stratigraphic horizons and appears to become pipe-like at depth. You'll note this is different than the more stratiform nature of the mineralization at Goldrush.
Incidentally, the slide shows the detailed results of hole FM181D, which is an example of strong and continuous mineralization in sulfurized breccia. Now let's get to those results. The Fourmile area is pictured above where we're completing tighter space drilling. Assays have returned for 13 holes to date, with 10 of those holes intersecting significant mineralization in 2018. That's a remarkable 75% of the drill holes this year.
As you can see in the slide, the intercepts speak for themselves. 13.9 meters at 56.8 grams per ton, 16.6 meters at 71.6 grams per ton, and 16.8 meters at 57.9 grams per ton. What's more, are open to the west where there's plenty of room to grow. These are truly exceptional results. For reference, these grades are well over double the average grades for Goldrush reserves and resources. This style of extremely high-grade mineralization typically requires close-based drilling for inferred resource classification. As such, we're still on track to deliver an initial modest inferred resource at year-end. It'll take time to do sufficient drilling to define the full potential. In the meantime, bold, wide-spaced step-out drilling continues in the general area to find more of these high-value ounces.
The Goldrush deposit and Fourmile discovery truly adds to the remarkable story coming from Barrick Nevada, and I look forward to sharing more updates from both in the future. With that, I'll hand back to Kelvin.
Well, thanks, Rob. Halfway through the year, we're progressing well against our full-year priorities. We expect gold production and costs to improve steadily over the second half of the year, and we're on track to meet annual guidance. The organic projects continue to advance on schedule and on budget. We're really excited about the success of our exploration activities, as Rob just mentioned, and we look forward to updating the market on our progress at Fourmile and on our other programs over the remainder of the year. Finally, before we close, I'd like to add a few personal comments. By now, many of you will know that I'll be leaving Barrick to take on the opportunity as CEO of AngloGold Ashanti. You can't get rid of me just yet. I'll be here through the end of August to ensure an orderly transition.
It's truly been a privilege to spend the past 16 years at this company. We have some of the most talented and dedicated people in the industry. The support and friendship of the entire Barrick team has been amazing, and I couldn't be more grateful for it. Equally, it's been a privilege to work every day for you, our shareholders, and I greatly value the support and trust you've placed in us over the years. Barrick has an outstanding pool of talent with great bench strength, and I have no doubt that the company will put the right leadership team in place to take Barrick forward. I'd like to thank our Executive Chairman and our Board of Directors for their confidence in me, and I'd also like to thank them and my Barrick colleagues from around the world for their support and friendship.
I'm looking forward to watching and cheering the company on, I hope that I can stay in touch with many of you on the call as well. That concludes the presentation, with that, let's open the call to Q&A.
Thank you. We will now begin the question and answer session. To join the question queue, you may press star 1 on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone acknowledging your request. If you are using a speakerphone, please pick up your handset before pressing any keys. To withdraw your question, please press star 2. We will pause for a moment as callers join the queue. Our first question comes from Chris Terry of Deutsche Bank.
Good morning, Kelvin and team, thanks for taking my questions. My questions are mainly on the strategy side, I guess where to from here. The first one I had is just around the JV with Shandong Gold, how you look at that going forward and what the opportunities are there. The second one's just really around the copper portfolio, the recent performance of Lumwana and how you see that positioned in the medium term within Barrick. Thanks.
Maybe I'll start, maybe Kathy, you can join in as well. Great. Chris, first of all, thank you for the question. I think in regard to Shandong, as we've indicated in the past, the relationship has gone extremely well, the benefits of the enhanced agreement, I think, would relate to things like continue to strengthen collaboration between our two companies, more communication, knowledge sharing. We'll be looking at other investment opportunities together potentially as well. We had indicated earlier that Shandong is also doing their own independent evaluation, focusing on the Lama side, Pascua-Lama in Argentina. That's a high-level evaluation that they're conducting, including looking at possible synergies between Lama and Veladero. That work will continue, again, they're doing that independently, but you should consider it kind of a new level of advancing the relationship, which has gone extremely positive so far.
Greg, did you have something to add?
I'll just touch on Lumwana. You're mentioning Lumwana's performance in the first half. The issue there was the crusher availability impacted severely on the production. That was a short-term issue. The site management through Sam has managed that issue. We don't expect that to continue into the second half of the year. We expect a stronger performance from Lumwana in returning to plan.
Okay. Thanks, guys. Just maybe on the copper portfolio more generally, are you still looking to potentially monetize some of the assets down the track, have you changed your view at all in the lower copper environment, or is it really just going to take for copper to rally and then you reconsider things from there?
Well, you've sort of answered your own question. I think what we said at the investor day was very much that our views on copper remain the same in so far as we're a gold company that doesn't want to put gold funds into copper necessarily at this time. I think with the strong, well, up until sort of the first half year, strong performance from our copper portfolio, our outlook for copper prices and our feeling that our copper portfolio could do with more daylighting to the market. I think at this moment, I would say we're still just business as usual with no imminent plans.
Okay. Thanks, Catherine. Just the last one from me. Any updates on Tanzania? Thanks.
Well, I think as we've indicated earlier, the discussions are ongoing. I don't think there's much more to add to that at this point, Chris. We'll certainly keep the market posted.
Okay. Thanks very much.
Thanks for that question.
Our next question comes from John Bridges of JPMorgan.
Morning, Kelvin, everybody. Just firstly, the Fourmile, where possibly could you fit that into a production schedule if you were able to fast-track it into the sort of Goldrush development?
Get that over to Rob.
The honest answer is I don't really know. First, we need to finish scoping it out, and then we need to do the various studies. Obviously Goldrush is starting in 2022, and so it'll be some time after that. We need to put in a significant amount of development if we choose to go from the Goldrush exploration decline, so that will take some time.
Okay. Following on in Tanzania, if the U.K. regulator decides it's a related party transaction, Acacia puts the vote as a special resolution rather than an ordinary one, would that be a problem for the Tanzania decision when it finally comes through?
John, I'm going to put that to Rich Haddock, who's here with us as well. Rich is our General Counsel, has been involved in the Acacia discussions as well.
At this point, everything we're working on is not a related party transaction. If we're able to develop a proposal to put to Acacia, we don't expect that to the independent directors. We don't expect that to change.
Okay. Any new idea on when there might be a proposal for the board at Acacia?
We continue to engage with the government with no artificial timelines on those negotiations.
Okay. Good luck, guys.
Thanks, John.
Once again, if you have a question, please press star one. Our next question comes from David Haughton of CIBC.
Good morning, Kelvin, Catherine, and team. Thank you very much for the update. I'd just like to ask on two aspects, Goldrush/Fourmile being one of them. The other one is PV. Perhaps if I could start with Goldrush. Is it your thinking that this would simply be incorporated within the greater Goldrush footprint, or are there enough differences between Fourmile met and Goldrush met to make you think a little bit differently on that?
David, I'll start. Rob will address Fourmile, Greg will talk about PV.
At Fourmile, my understanding is that we haven't done any metallurgical work, visually, the mineralization looks reasonably similar. It's probably going to be double refractory and probably going to be roaster ore.
Okay. I've been hunting around, I just can't see, maybe it's me, the kind of CapEx that you've been spending for the development on Goldrush so far this year.
That is within our project spend, and also within the capital, within the Nevada sites. If you read the MD&A, we have got some sort of verbiage on it. I take your point. You would like more detail on the specific spend at our individual projects.
Yes, I am just looking for a breakout. It is a significant project going forward and worthy, I think of being broken out at this stage.
Bill, maybe you would like to comment, if you can, off the top of your head, between the split between Crossroads, Range Front, Deep South, and Goldrush at the moment. Ballpark.
Probably will not be able to just drop them ballpark in terms of spend. We do have them all broken out, David. I think what we can do is give an indication of that in future. At present, most of our spend is obviously in the more advanced projects with, particularly Deep South being at the front. Goldrush is following that. The spend profile in the five-year timeframe drops off from there. I am sure as we continue to have fabulous results like this, we will be looking to spend a lot more in that timeframe for those, particularly Fourmile, right? I think we can do something in future.
That'd be great. Thank you, Bill. I appreciate that.
No worries.
Maybe I could just move on to PV, if you don't mind. Going through now into phase 5 and 6, you've got access there coming up in the second half this year. I heard Greg talking about the throughput flat for Q3 moving up into Q4. I'm just wondering if you could just give us a little bit of an idea about the throughput trajectory that we should be thinking about and the sort of grades that we can anticipate coming out of PV.
Thank you, David. The reason PV throughput is flat in Q3, I said similar to Q2, is because we have four ore clocks there. We realigned two in Q2, and we'll do the other two in Q3. The production won't increase in Q3. It will return to full production rates in Q4. Which is a rate of around 7.9 to 8 million tons per annum.
The grades you can expect we move back into grades of around 4 to 4.3 grams per tonne will be the grades in the second half of the year.
Thank you, Greg. With this maintenance schedule, should we be thinking frequently about Q2, Q3 as being soft periods for maintenance?
Because the schedule is not an annual schedule, it rolls on about 10 to 11 months, it moves. That number will move. Next year, it'll be more likely moving into Q1 and Q3 rather than Q2 and 3.
Okay.
Sorry, Q1 and Q2 next year, sorry.
And, uh-
Sorry.
Sorry, go ahead, Greg.
No, I was just going to repeat. Go.
Okay. The heap leach looks quite interesting. I presume that you're only really going to be capturing gold out of the heap leach because you're just irrigated and then just I presume you'd put the pregnant liquor through the back end of your plant there. Can you-
No, that's not David, that's not correct.
No, no. Okay. Please explain.
This is a pre-oxidation. We're actually oxidizing sulfur. We're not recovering gold out of that circuit. Effectively, we're washing sulfur out of the ore, and then we'll pick that material up and put it through the normal process. What it does is allows us to reduce the amount of sulfur going to the autoclave.
which allows us to process higher sulfur grade material than previously able to, using the limited oxygen we have in the autoclaves.
Thank you for that explanation. Assuming that this pilot works to the extent that you'd like it to, when could you see it going into a full scale?
As we said, we're running a pre-feasibility, which we should have in around Q3, Q4 next year. From there, we'll move forward, and we're looking at, in Q4 2021, having the full scale pre-oxidation up and running.
Okay, great. Thank you very much. Kelvin, before I leave you, best wishes for your new role at AngloGold, which I've also covered for 20 years, so our paths will be crossing again.
Well, thanks very much, David. I appreciate that.
Our next question comes from Kerry McGrory of Canaccord Genuity.
Hi, good morning. Just wanted to see if there's any color. You're looking at increasing potentially processing capacity in Nevada. Just wondering what you're potentially looking at there.
Maybe defer that to Bill MacNevin. Bill, are you on the line still?
Yeah. Kerry, as we put out there, we're doing work at the moment. We're in the middle of a pre-feasibility study assessing the different options. We're excited about what we're working through, and we're seeing some very positive results. Expect to be putting something to present in Q1. I think it'll take till then, but we're very excited about the potential we've got. We are doing that work at present.
This is expansion of roaster capacity, I presume?
We're looking at the different options, and that's looking at being the most preferred.
Yeah, Kerry, the ore that we're looking at going forward, as Rob said, most of it is refractory. We'll be looking at either autoclave or roaster. You're correct.
Okay. Then secondly, I understand that your concentrate at Lumwana had what looks like decent amounts of cobalt in it. I'm just wondering where cobalt prices are. Is that something that you've looked at potentially recovering?
No, we haven't looked at it in the past. Now that you raise the point, we may look at it, but it's not on our horizon. I don't think we'll be looking at it.
We're generally looking at processing of our concentrate and considering what our options are over the course of this year. We'll provide more information on that.
Okay, great. Thank you.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Stephen Walker of RBC Capital Markets.
Great. Thank you very much. Good morning. Just a couple questions on strategy. As part of the Q2 severance expense of $30 million, my understanding is the projects team and head office no longer exists with individuals moved to other offices or employment terminated. I struggle with this a little bit, and I guess my question is, these teams generally provide oversight directly to head office for major projects. Can you talk a little bit about the rationale for not having the projects team at head office? Does that imply that, A, there's no greenfields projects expected of any significance in the pipeline, and B, M&A becomes a higher priority if you're looking at bringing on additional production at some point?
Stephen, thanks for the question. The difference between projects and technical services. Our projects team per se, we haven't had a full-blown projects team in Barrick for some years. What you're talking about now is the technical services and the governance support team from a technical perspective. That team still exists in Toronto. We have reduced the number of people in that team, but we still have oversight for all of the technical functions in our Toronto office, mining, mill maintenance and capital projects. Those roles will be decentralized and moving out to our Nevada office in Henderson. They'll still be supplying oversight for the company. We still have those functions available, and we still use those functions. They are not only just for oversight and governance, but also technical support. Also, we are beefing up the skills and the ability of our mine sites.
Our mine sites and our greenfield projects are being run by the mine site CFOs and the CEOs. We still have oversight from Barrick.
That's helpful. Maybe as a follow-up question, in the recent announcement about the strategic cooperation agreement with Shandong Gold, clearly that's advancing at various stages and various levels. I guess my question is it conceivable that Barrick could end up with an operating joint venture in China or a development project in China? Is that something you foresee, or is this mainly a focus on the Americas?
Well, I think at this stage, that's not what the agreement implies. The two things I think that are most important from the agreement, or that I think people should be focusing on from that agreement is, one, the Lama evaluation study, and two, our commitment to act as a partner and help Shandong Gold create a mine of the future. What we're doing is working together. We're leveraging off what their technology and advances are and the research and development they're putting into their own mines. They're obviously leveraging off the work that we're doing to innovate and to move our mines into the 21st century. Really, those are the two elements of the partnership that have moved to the next stage.
We have always worked closely with our partners on any potential projects, asset sales, or M&A, just as you would with any partner, whether you have an agreement or not. It indicates a level of trust. I just want to give you that sort of context so as to not answer your question directly, but really say that that's what the partnership agreement is supposed to be about.
Right. Thank you, Catherine. That's all my questions.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Anita Soni of Credit Suisse.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my call. I just wanted to get an idea of how you see Kalgoorlie. Newmont put out a revised mine level production guidance this morning, and I'm just wondering how you plan to offset that production decline in Kalgoorlie.
Great. Yes, thank you for that, Anita. The full impact of the wall slip at KCGM is just, as you said, Newmont put out today their guidance and their plan. We're working closely with Newmont. As you know, Newmont are the managers of that JV on our behalf. We're working through them. We had already built into our second half forecast some of the impact from that wall slip, and we're now building the remainder of that impact into the wall slip. Even given that loss of ounces at KCGM, we will still be within our guidance limits for our gold production for the year.
I would also highlight the benefit of having a portfolio. You will see we've made changes across our gold mines to still end up at the same place. That really is the strength of Barrick, that we can have these external factors hit us, whether it's earthquakes, whether it's our non-operated joint ventures, and still be able to meet our guidance. I think that really illustrates the strength of our portfolio.
Sure. Thank you very much.
Thanks, Anita. I understand that's the last question. I know it's a busy morning with many earnings calls. Operator, thank you very much, and we'd like to thank everyone who dialed in today. I know that my colleagues look forward to updating you on our progress during the Q3 call in October. Thank you very much.
This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Should you have any additional questions, please contact the Barrick Investor Relations department. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.