Yeah. Right. If you're ready, we're linked up, are we? Very good morning to everyone. Thank you for coming. Nice and cold outside. Appreciate you risking the weather. Again, another year, and it's a pleasure for me to share our look back over the last 13 months with you today. As you know, this is the full set of results that Barrick is publishing since its transformational merger with Randgold Resources. It's gratifying to report not only that we have delivered a strong performance, but also that we have made significant progress towards our goal of becoming the world's most valued gold company. Achieving this obviously requires technical excellence, but even more than that, it demands a long-term strategy.
One which recognizes that we operate in a changing world, where business is expected to meet new standards of behavior, and where ethical issues have become commercial considerations with serious consequences. One of these is ESG, which rates how well a company manages its environment, sustainability, and governance. Right now, I think there's a little bit too much focus on the E part of the ESG. The S is as important and so is the G. That is, in other words, something that's been very dear to my heart and was the basis of the Randgold Resources strategy, and that is social license or license to operate. It definitely calls on that full ESG vision. To Barrick, securing and maintaining its operations' social license is a strategic imperative, a core part of our business, and just not another box to tick.
With major investors now placing ESG at the heart of their decision-making, the rest of the industry will have to follow our lead. This is a cautionary statement. Please take note of it, and for those slow readers, it is on our website, and you can go and study it in your own time. Moving on, caring for the well-being of our employees is a key component of our ESG program. Our health and safety record improved last year, but it is still some distance short of where I would like it to be. At the time of the merger, all the Randgold mines held the ISO 45001 Health and Safety certification, but all of Barrick operations did not. We are addressing this, and by the end of 2021, we are planning for all our sites to be certified.
Another challenge has been getting all the Nevada Gold Mines sites up to their required safety standards following the establishment of the JV last year. We also still have some work to do to align the legacy Newmont operations with our safety program. It's worth noting that in our organization, AME, Africa and Middle East, is a standout on safety statistics compared to the rest of the organization. We have quite a lot to do to get ourself to where we are, I believe. We've launched a focus program of zero harm, and we mean it. Just to give you an idea, in Barrick, you break the safety rules, you don't have a job. That's how important we take safety. A first for a long time, there were no major environmental incidents in 2019.
All but four of our mines have the ISO 14001 environmental management certification, and by the end of this year, there will be no exceptions. Three of those are actually the Tanzanian assets which we've just acquired. All the operations, apart from the recently consolidated Tanzanian mines, have community development programs, and you would have seen there's a very real requirement to engage with the community in Tanzania, and we are working on that. It's again, a key building block of our license to operate, is to have that open and formal structure to be able to talk to one of our key stakeholders, which are our host communities. We expect that we will have, again, our entire portfolio working under community development committees. In addition, biodiversity action plans are being rolled out to those sites in the group that do not already have them.
There are also some legacy issues, although Mark and his team have gone a very long way to address that, sitting in The South American assets. Again, we've made a lot of progress in transferring many of those risks and liabilities to opportunities, but still some way to go. These are the highlights of the year, and as you can see, we delivered on all our promises, and then some. I would also just point out that our results are currently unaudited, although we expect to file our financial statements in the next couple of days. We met or exceeded our gold and copper production goals and controlled costs. We also halved the net debt, and that's a key component of this performance.
We set out to really address a number of things, focus on tier one assets, deal with the debt, which is something that really cripples Barrick, deliver a runway where you as analysts, and of course our shareholders, can be able to invest in our company with comfort that we've got a long-term plan. Having that net debt down, we've got to deal with the long-term debt, but that's an expensive exercise. We're going to have to take some time and look for opportunities to reduce that. Right now, what I'm focusing on is the net debt and the liquidity available for us to run our business. Certainly, I can honestly say today we are independent of the capital markets as Barrick. We are able to run our own businesses with our own resources.
Adjusted net earnings per share was up 46% compared to 2018. We ended the year with another quarterly dividend increase, the third increase of the year. Again, really you must look at it as this is what we said we would do. There was a lot of squealing. People wanted more dividends from Randgold. We said we did pay a big dividend in Randgold, remember? I refused to pay a dividend that wasn't supported by the P&L earnings. I'm not going to pay dividends that we haven't earned yet. Likewise, Barrick gave a commitment and upped its dividend right at the deal. We adjusted the dividend again in quarter three on the back of good performance and a higher gold price. We're comfortable about where our dividend is today.
The key part of a dividend, as you know me, we don't want to go backwards. We're only going forward. We feel we're well-positioned with our current dividend for the foreseeable future. The Nevada merger gave us our sixth tier one gold mine, and we continued our portfolio rationalization by consolidating the Tanzanian mines and disposing of our stake in Kalgoorlie in Australia and agreeing to a sale of the Massawa project in Senegal. We settled Acacia's long-running dispute with the Tanzanian government and entered into a framework agreement with the state, which takes our partnership concept, something that we are very comfortable about, to a new level.
Pueblo Viejo expansion project, which I'll tell you more about later, heads our organic growth to-do list for this year, and our reinvigorated exploration programs are planned to fill our future pipeline as well as extend the lives of our existing mines. It's worth noting that in 2019, Josh, we succeeded in replacing all the reserves depleted by mining and at a higher grade. This is net of all changes that included the Randgold merger, Nevada Gold Mines JV, Acacia acquisition, disposal of KCGM, reclassification of Lagunas Norte to mineral resources as we wrestle with its future, correction of some open-pit ounces at Hemlo and Gold Quarry, and probably most importantly, the removal of all leach pad and plant gold and circuit inventory from our reserve statement.
We have a nice, clean reserve statement on which we can go forward, and we are very comfortable that we can plan all those ounces as passing our filter and investment at $1,200 gold. Behind the scenes, we reshaped the business by flattening the corporate structure, further reducing the G&A, establishing empowered regional executive management teams, and moving responsibility for the ore bodies back to the operations. We've introduced a strong geological and mineral resource management capacity throughout the organization to ensure that we optimize our existing assets. The operating results support what I've just explained and show a robust performance across the group. Kibali, Veladero, and Porgera all beat their guidance. North America, Loulo-Gounkoto, and PV performed well against their guidance or within their guidance.
The only exceptions were Tongon, which just missed its guidance, Kalgoorlie in Australia, which, as you know, didn't achieve its guidance at all through the year, which we've now sold, so that's not relevant anymore. Lagunas Norte in Peru, which has been put into care and maintenance while we consider its future, as I said earlier. All the copper assets beat production guidance, and costs were at the lower end of guidance for copper as well. Copper made a significant contribution to our bottom line earnings last year. The numbers on the financial results demonstrate the progress we've made over the last year towards our most valued company goal. Just for those who get it a little confused on what most valued gold company is, we want to be valuable. In other words, we want people to buy us because we give our shareholders returns.
We want people to want to work for our organization, and we want countries to want to invite us in to operate as partners with them. That, in our mind, is the description of what a most valued company is. The EBITDA margin. Remember when we talked in September? We said we would like to lift the EBITDA margin. We've done that materially in the last 12 months. Debt, as I said earlier, has been reduced to its lowest point since 2007, and the free cash flow increased from $365 million- $1.1 billion. As indicated, we increased the quarterly dividend again on the back of the free cash flow forecast. That's one. The strong balance sheet, that's two. More importantly, our five-year outlook. This is not just a response to a windfall.
It is a genuine, considered commitment that we promised to the market back in September of 2018. You should note in all these results that I'm going to present now that the comparisons have been impacted by the Nevada joint venture, which came into effect on the 1st of July. I'll try and explain that, but if you look at these tiny little things at the bottom of the slide, you'll see how we've presented the results. We'll start and again to the analysts here in Toronto, feel free to get a hold of David or Lewis and give some input on how we present the results. Our objective is to give you the numbers you need. We start with Nevada complex on 100% basis. That's why because I can't run a company with 61.5%, so I look at it collectively.
Afterwards, we'll give you the individual assets in the attributable form. We start our tour, of course, of the operations with Nevada, our real foundation of value in this organization. As I pointed out, it's 100% basis. This is the second set of numbers since the JV was formed, so there's only a quarterly comparison as shown here. Production was in line with plan, and costs were well contained despite the lower grade. Putting together and integrating these complex operations to deliver within our guidance of 1.8 million- 1.9 million ounces for this half of the year so effectively was an enormous achievement by Catherine Raw, who's here today, and Greg Walker, who's chiseling away back down in Nevada, and their teams. That really, I must say, it has been an astounding achievement by anyone's means. The ultimate measure of an enterprise's success is financial.
This is how Nevada Gold Mines stacked up for the first six months on synergies. As the free cash flow chart shows, we're well on our way to delivering the $450 million in annual synergies, with some work in progress relating to supply chain, and we've put the detail in there. This includes, if you look at it, we've got $95 million identified. We're still going through the contracts to get supply chain, and it's all to do with consumables. With that, we get to $444 million, and that's net of some of the savings that we've wrapped back into the Nevada plan. For instance, dropping the cut-off grade so you don't see that benefit because we've used it. That's why I put in the NPV graph on the right, because that's added life.
We are comfortable that we've achieved that objective of delivering on those benefits. More importantly, we've still got significant opportunities as far as life -of -mine goes, and I'll touch on that as we progress with the individual operations in Nevada. Let's start with Carlin. I need to point out that again, going forward, the tables will show attributable numbers now. Following the merger, Carlin was combined with Goldstrike. Q4 production was in line with previous quarters, and total cash costs per ounce were brought down by a higher proportion of underground ore in the feed mix. Year-on-year comparison shows an increase in Barrick's attributable 61.5% share in gold production, primarily because of the combining of the Goldstrike and Carlin operations, and the costs were steady.
Benefiting from the discovery successes at Fourmile, the Carlin Trend will be the most active exploration area in the Barrick portfolio this year. There are exciting opportunities for reserve and resource additions in the Carlin complex, mainly clustered around REN, Greater Leeville, which is a very exciting life -of -mine extension for Carlin, and Rita K, which is immediately accessible. We are just doing some water compartment drilling, and then we'll be able to put it into our life -of -mine plans. We have also made good progress in our remediation work relating to the Gold Quarry wall failure and subsequent redesign work. The potential for extending the mine's life is absolutely real.
Although we've got a little bit of work to do, but we certainly have the framework and the confidence that this complex has significant opportunities to retain its tier one status well into the future. Still in Nevada, Cortez was one of our standout performers for the quarter as it continued its transition to a mainly underground operation. If you remember, we came to the end of the very high -grade, what we call chop, Cortez Hill open pit operation, and this quarter we only processed the lower grade stockpile out of that, but it's really, for all intents and purposes, now complete. The Deep South project, however, is on track to contribute and continue to contribute higher tons at higher grade as the Cortez complex moves more towards underground.
The year-on-year comparison, although I'll say it was a stellar year, is impacted by Barrick's attributable share reducing to 61.5% as a result of the NGM JV. The resource model for Goldrush project was completed with the final feasibility study due in the first quarter of next year. In the meantime, Goldrush is now reported as part of Cortez. We've put Goldrush under Cortez structure management. We expect it to be operated from the Cortez management structure. The project is reporting in there as well. Likewise, the resources have been combined with the Cortez reserve and resource statements. Updated mine and feed schedules are expected towards the end of this year, and a feasibility study in early 2021 is due out in early 2021.
I think that a couple of things that you were to pick up, and we'll touch on it in the reserves, is that you'll see the grades come down. Ounces are okay. We've taken out a few of the ounces as part of our rationalization. We don't want soon-to-be discovered ounces in our plans. We'll put them in when we actually firm them up. Some of the resources was very widely spaced drill holes. The resources that you see there, again, the grades come down. Why? Because we've gone to proper mining shapes rather than geostatistical blocks, block estimates. What happens is we want to mine this ore body, so you can go and mine little blocks all over the place, theoretically, but in the end of the day, you've got to join them up into mine schedules, and that's what Rod and his team are doing.
That's part of our commitment to rationalize the ore bodies and optimize them for the long-term returns so that we know they're going to meet our investment filters. Moving back to Barrick's 100% owned Fourmile pre-feasibility project, step-out drilling has significantly increased the resource, and we reported at Denver, you'll recall, a new discovery about a kilometer away from the current defined resource inventory. We are confident that this project is pointing to a multimillion ounce high -grade opportunity. Fourmile was not, as you recall, included in the Nevada merger, but it is expected to eventually form part of the Cortez Goldrush complex, and it will no doubt maintain that Cortez Goldrush complex as a tier one status well into the future.
Turquoise Ridge has been a big driver of the Nevada Gold Mines' performance, and in some aspect, it was the real driver to get there in the first place. It has offered significant synergy savings, more than $90 million of cost benefits in the first six months alone, primarily driven by the termination of the toll milling agreement and synergies of combining adjoining operations. I would point out that we've already dropped the cutoff grade, so this is after that optimization. A year-on-year increase in gold production at lower all-in sustaining costs. Resulted from increased high-grade underground ore feed. Although we dropped the cutoff grade, we did increase the throughput, so the feed from the underground. We delivered more gold to the processing plant.
Construction of the third shaft at Barrick's legacy Turquoise Ridge underground is on schedule and within budget, and is expected to deliver additional value. What value does it deliver? At the moment, we are mining constrained in Turquoise Ridge underground. Once we get the ventilation done, we'll be able to mine more, feed more higher grade ore. That whole Turquoise Ridge Twin Creeks, which we now call Turquoise Ridge, has a much better gold production profile. Now I have to listen to myself. These cost reductions saw an immediate impact on the year-end reserves, where the lower costs enable us, as I pointed out earlier, to drop the cut-off grade and add about 1.65 million ounces of reserves.
Realizing the mine's full potential still needs, as I point out, a lot of work, since its plan is now mine -constrained and we are working to debottleneck the mine, which will allow us. The shaft is one way, but we're also trialing, as we speak, some electric equipment underground to be able to allow us to mine more. We've really focused in on the road heading auto mining, mechanical mining, rather than blasting. We're trialing out some underground haul trucks. A lot's happening because our real effort with the return is the best value proposition that we have in Nevada Gold Mines today. That's not saying that we don't have other opportunities. This is just one of those real easy ones. The other Nevada mines delivered at the top end of their guidance ranges and showed increases in production and reductions in costs quarter-on-quarter.
I'm pleased to share with you that Long Canyon, which is one of those assets that we bought at a very high cost, is making good progress with its expansion, a big pit push back, which will result in about four years life -of -mine extension, and we've still got the underground to look at following that. We're busy with that permitting. As I mentioned earlier, the Carlin Trend is really our primary, or it's going to be our primary hunting ground this year, and of course, beyond. It's the most significant ore-controlling fault corridor in Nevada, with open mineralization at numerous locations. Our fresh geological-focused approach of integrating exploration and mineral resource management on the mines has been a resounding success in this context.
It has led directly to the identification of a host of target areas, some of which are very close to existing operations and are shown on this long section. Further afield, we have already identified new areas of interest from walk-up drill targets to large areas that are known to contain prospective stratigraphy and geological features, but have no or little drilling. Clearly, Nevada Gold Mines has the capacity to replenish its asset space going forward. Before I leave the U.S., a quick comment on Donlin Gold in Alaska. It offers a huge optionality to the gold price across multiple gold price cycles in an excellent jurisdiction. It faces some challenges that we and our joint venture partners, NovaGold, intend to address
In 2019, alongside progressing permitting, which you've seen updated over the last 12 months, the joint venture's focus was on getting a much more robust interpretation of the orebody. To this end, we have updated the geological and resource models, which have identified areas of higher grade that could improve returns for the overall project. Importantly as well, we need to frame those geological orebodies properly because that will set the rate in which we can mine, which will set the ounces that we can theoretically produce, which will then govern what capital will we have to spend to deliver the return on a back-to-front way. You know that's been our focus since I started in the industry, is let's get the geology right and then we'll be able to make decisions on the other critical items into the future.
We are busy with a phased program this year. It'll be looking to validate that geological model, so it needs to be iterative. We'll drill it out, remodel it, check our changes, drill it again. We'll do a couple of those through the year or certainly through the summer. We now move south across the border to Hemlo, where at the time of the merger, you would remember, there was some debate about this mine's viability. In the end, we decided that it could have the potential to be upgraded to the strategic category by modernizing and refocusing the operation, phasing out the open pit, and transitioning to underground contract miners, which is exactly what is happening.
As you can see, there's been a very encouraging turnaround in its performance, and there are indications, subject to some additional drilling and royalty discussions, that we could extend the life -of -mine beyond 10 years. With our tax shield, it actually is a tier two asset. Not that sentiment, I would add, played a part in our decision, but Hemlo is our only Canadian operation at this stage. Considering our heritage, as I've said many times before, I believe we are under-invested in Canada. Leaving Canada and the U.S., we now move to Latin America, and we'll start with the Dominican Republic, where Pueblo Viejo provided us with some pleasant surprises and ended this year with a very strong quarter. That is, we need to recognize that the management team really unlocked those opportunities.
Increased throughput and better grade control delivered a commendable year on a year-on-year production performance, focus on efficiencies, contract reviews, and cost controls kept the costs in line with plan. In particular, the throughput run rate augurs really well for our expansion plans. Mark's here today. I think we've had throughput record after throughput record from the back half of last year and actually in January again, Mark. It's an exciting project. Looking at the geology and the mine plan, we see enormous upside for this mine. The problem, however, was that a significant chunk of the mine's inventory had effectively been sterilized by its limited tailing storage capacity. That's why PV's ambitious plant expansion project is being twinned with the expansion of its tailings capacity to support the increased throughput.
A new optimization study has shown that throughput increase can be achieved without adding additional autoclaves, which will simplify the flow sheet and make sure that we have less disruptions as we introduce the expansion project. PV is already one of the world's largest gold mines, the plant expansion will enable us to transfer about 11 million ounces from measured and indicated to reserve. Today, we can't do that because we don't have anywhere to put the tailings down, once we clear that, we'll be able to do that and keep production well above 800,000 ounces a year beyond 2040. Environmental impact studies and community and social engagement are underway as we speak. I would just add that a long life PV is obviously good for Barrick and, of course, our partners, Newmont, and it's even better for the Dominican Republic.
The mine contributes more than 20% of the country's corporate tax. Further south in Argentina, Veladero had a great 2019 after struggling for years. It exceeded its production guidance, and it kept a tight grip on costs. We put a lot of work into redesigning and replanning the operation, and its life has been extended by a pit pushback on Cuatro Esquinas, which will start soon. This is the pit. We just drilled it out a bit more, and we're going to expand it. That really does take us, along with the residual lease, out another 12 years. I would just point out that when we started last year, we had a short life, and it wasn't possible to make profits at $1,200 gold, and now it passes our $1,200 gold filter. So a big step change for this operation.
There's still more opportunities that could extend the life -of -mine out beyond 2030. In the meantime, we've focused on costs now because it's a low-grade operation. The big next cost saving is going to be when we link up the power line to the clean power grid out of Chile, which is very significant for Veladero. That'll drop our cutoff grades, and it'll give us a whole lot more opportunity to expand. Upon commissioning in the second half of this year, it will have a significant impact on Veladero's cost, as I point out. Then we've also permitted, so we've really worked hard at, or Mark and his team, at our license to operate.
As you know, Argentina came with a lot of baggage, and we're now very pleased to say we have all our permits approved in Argentina and Veladero, and we're now working. We've just got the phase six pad expansion done, and it'll start producing in Q4 of this year. The next focus now is permitting phase seven pad expansion. We have seven, eight, and nine in the plan, and we now have reserves and resources to support that progress with the permitting to ensure that we've got the expansions in place. A renewed focus on integrating geology and mineral resource management with planning and infill drilling has added, as I pointed out earlier, additional three years. This is before residual leaching, which including residual leaching, as I said, will extend the operation by 12 years.
In the Veladero District, drilling programs are being developed to evaluate new conceptual targets, which, if validated, have the potential to unlock and rejuvenate this whole district. We've got a lot of investment in the infrastructure in this region. Recent mapping and sampling and geophysics surveys, physical surveys at the Carlin Project, along with other brownfields satellites, as you can see here on the slide, offer further potential for reserve and resource opportunities. We're also looking at some of the ore bodies that were originally included in the Lama project , which is right adjacent to Veladero, to see if there's any of those assets that would leach. That is another opportunity to add not only life but also some higher grade to the feed for Veladero.
The El Indio Belt, of which Veladero is part, extends from Pascua-Lama and Veladero in the north to Alturas in the south, and straddles the border between Argentina and Chile, and it is particularly well-endowed with gold legacy mines and opportunities. It has yielded more than 50 million ounces in four decades of discovery and development. I don't know if everyone understands this, but Barrick was a leader in that development. Also, when you go back to El Indio, the mine, it was the first mine in Chile that was properly closed under international closure, what's the right word? Conditions. Barrick has a long history there. It's got a great memory. It's got a few bad memories. We're going to get rid of those bad memories. We'll focus on the good ones.
We control 100 km of strike along the El Indio Trend with significant targets that include Pascua-Lama, which you'll see we've restarted. We've given up the current plan, and we're going to do this properly. We also have the 9 million ounce Alturas, the Alto del Carmen project, as you can see in the south of this trend, and many more. I was there just the other day with the team and we flew down this Andean Trend, and it's just amazing. It's the one place where geologically you can actually see the mineralization showing its nose up in this desert. While Nevada is Barrick's value foundation, Latin America offers growth at PV and opportunities at Veladero and along the Andean Trend.
Our regional portfolio holds the potential for further world-class discoveries. Our exploration teams, which are now fully employed, are hard at work in Argentina, Chile, and Peru, as well as the Dominican Republic, where we have our own Barrick exploration team in addition to the JV joint venture. Over to the Asia -Pacific region, where Porgera in Papua New Guinea has the potential also to become a tier one mine, faces many challenges, mainly in the form of legacy issues and an unruly neighborhood. Despite these, it posted a standout performance in quarter four, boosting production and cutting costs, which contributed to its exceeding production guidance for the year. Given all the challenges and interruptions, cost control was commendable, although there's still a lot to improve on. It is worth noting that in 2019, Porgera paid more tax than it has in the previous five years combined.
We're confident that the mine, in partnership with the government and landowners, is capable of making a meaningful contribution to PNG and Barrick-Zijin partnership for years to come. It is because of that we have applied and are negotiating a 20-year extension to the Special Mining Lease with PNG government. We also need to point out that PNG, we believe in it, and we are a committed investor in that country. As at our other operations, we've brought a strong geological and structural modeling focus to bear on Porgera, and this has already identified a significant upside in the life -of -mine potential. For example, at Wangima zone, just outside of the open pit, historical but sparse drilling, combined with geophysics and surface sampling, indicates the possibility of a continuation of mineralization within an intrusive corridor. Drilling is already underway on some of these targets.
With that, now across to Africa and the Middle East, the region which was not an insignificant contributor to Barrick's cash flow in 2019. Incidentally, this region is led by a very competent team, which took the challenge of Tanzania in their stride, and whose performance is a tribute to the Randgold Resources succession planning, because we wouldn't have been able to do what we did in Barrick if we couldn't leave Africa, because we all moved to the center, in competent hands. That was the trained next tier of management in Randgold. We start, of course, at Loulo-Gounkoto complex in Mali, which as usual, did very well, exceeding its production guidance for the year, despite some challenges with the mill girth gear this past quarter. Costs were well contained, and the complex also replaced reserves depleted from mining for the year.
Its solar power project, Barrick's first, is on track to add 20 MW to its grid, this is the mine grid, reducing operating costs and estimated to cut carbon emissions by about 40,000 tons per year, and it will reduce our requirement for heavy fuel and diesel by 10 million liters. Development of the complex' third underground mine at Gounkoto is scheduled to start in the fourth quarter of this year. I'm happy to report that we have made significant progress in resolving our tax disputes with the Malian government, and that's another attestation to our relationships, our license to operate in some of these more challenging environments. Pointing further to growth in the complex's asset base, step-out drilling has confirmed the extension of Yalea's high-grade transfer zone in the south.
This is the effective extension of what we used to call the purple patch, to over an additional 320 m, setting the complex up for continued replacement of reserve depletion in 2020. On the Gounkoto permit, a significant structure which controls the majority of mineralization in the Gounkoto pit can be observed in the south end of the pit, and it projects down into a region called Faraba. We've really made progress in understanding this, and this is how these ore bodies are driven, is these big structures where they interfere, and we're quite excited about the opportunity for Faraba, which is a pot target that had been around a long time to add to the Gounkoto resources and hopefully reserves. Across to Central Africa, where Kibali in the Democratic Republic of Congo continues to shine with a record-breaking performance for the third consecutive year.
Gold production was well above the top end of guidance, and costs were in the lower half of their range. Kibali also replaced the ounces at mined, and as at other operations, the search for additional ounces goes on. The highlight of the past quarter was the completion of a successful pre-feasibility study on the Kalumba Ilokwe project, which will balance the open pit and underground ounces and effectively gives us the opportunity to schedule open-pit ounces out 10 years. You need that in an underground mine, that flexibility that open-pit reserves brings. At Kibali, total project reserves grew by almost 1 million ounces after depletion in 2019 and improving our understanding of the mineralization controls, both within and down dip of the KCD deposits as well as the KZ Trend, will provide further opportunities. We actually have a replacement plan ahead of us.
You'll see we've stepped out that DD602, hit the main mineralized bodies, and we've stepped out another 600 m. We're drilling that hole as we speak, will add another significant potential to the mine. Now to our latest African partnership. In September, we consolidated the Tanzanian mines into the Barrick portfolio following our buyout of Acacia. Without wishing to bring up old bones, I have to say that Acacia represents a lot of what can be bad about mining. We have certainly got our work cut out to repair the operational and reputational damage it inflicted on these mines. The team has made a strong start, however, and we're confident that we can turn them around.
We settled Acacia's stalemate dispute with the government and concluded the formation of a jointly -owned management company, as well as a benefit sharing agreement designed to ensure a genuine partnership going forward. I might add, we're very comfortable with these sort of partnerships. A bit strange maybe for you, but that's how we operate in Loulo, that's how we operate in the Congo, and that's how we operate in the Ivory Coast. It's important to have governments in your management structure on your Board, seeing what you do. You take away that suspicion that you're not doing the right thing. The partnership's first achievement was the swift resumption of the normal operations at North Mara, which is now back on track, and the successful transition from contractor to owner/operator mining has already delivered cost savings.
The AME team led by Willem has really done a lot of good work immediately to address operational challenges. Quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year comparisons are not really worth much, because we've changed. We started with 63.9%, then we went to 100%, and then we did the joint venture at 84/16 ratio with the government. There's absolutely no doubt about the potential at North Mara. Some of the bankers in this audience will know that I've really always had a view that North Mara wasn't optimized at all. Everything we've done so far reinforces that. We're looking forward to building on our geological models. It's short of geology everywhere, short of geology in the reserves. We can't plan long-term.
We've got a lot of work to do, but we've got new models already out on Gokona and the Gena ore bodies, and we're very excited about the upside around North Mara. Elsewhere in Lake Victoria Goldfields, Bulyanhulu, as you know, is running on tailings retreatments. We're busy. We've appointed a full feasibility team. We've started the drilling, as we said we would be when we were arguing with Acacia, get the geotech right, drill out some of those holes in the deeper, high -grade areas, because there were no borehole logs. They got lost, the core. We have to get another look at that ore body. We're doing that. We have a plan to bring it back into production, and once we've got the detail mine planning done, we expect to have that mine back in production by the end of the year.
Buzwagi, really working towards closure. It's a relatively new processing plant where Jon Steele has already got plans, but we would like to use it. We've got lots to do in Buzwagi. As you know, this will precede our work at Murillo, which we're making a lot of progress on bringing it to closure. Tongon has about two and a half years of life left and remains a very strong cash producer. It's got very little sustaining capital. We've just finished the drilling on the Djeni deposit. We've got to do a feasibility study, but it has the potential to add one year. We are looking at that Ivory Coast, still a good destination for our exploration team. As I indicated earlier in the introduction, our copper mines had a very good year and exceeded their production guidance.
Their performance was led by Lumwana. As you know, we wrote back about $900 million in Lumwana, and we've dropped the cost. We've increased the efficiencies, and we've got a much more Zambian management team running that operation. Zaldívar, we've now approved with our partners the chloride leach project scheduled for commissioning and ramp up by 2022, and that will add more value to Zaldívar. I don't believe that our copper assets are properly valued in our NAV, as I would probably suggest most of our assets. This year we're going to be focusing on that, is sharing that with you and getting you to understand where we're going. It's generally expected, and I've certainly been bugling this for a while, that the global production for the gold industry will peak this year or next, and then it's downhill all the way.
We're forecasting, if you assume all the announced projects come to fruition, we'll still be 30% short by 2029. Against that backdrop, it's particularly important and rewarding to be able to present a trend going the other way, where we have been able to end the year with higher reserves at higher grade than what we started the year with. Most importantly, we have replaced depletion on all our key assets except for PV and Cortez. It's worthwhile just understanding, those need feasibility studies, but we've got the Measured and Indicated resources already in line. A new feasibility just unlocks that. I've put this in here because I anticipated some analysts would misinterpret our numbers. If you look, there's the acquisition line 13.4 million ounces.
The depletion is what we depleted, the additions, change gains are all replaced ounces through the drill bit, so 6 million ounces and 6 million ounces. The 4.5 million ounces is the cleanup. All the stuff that we couldn't deliver value on, and we've put it back to where it is. Some of it completely out the schedule, some of it as inferred, and some of it as measured and indicated like the Lagunas Norte. You see where we've got to year-on-year. The same for copper. Copper, so Barrick has 71 million ounces at 1.68 grams of reserves that are viable at $1,200 long-term gold price. No adjustments, current input costs. It has 171 million ounces of resources at 1.55 grams per tonne, which is viable and deliverable at $1,500 gold. They've got mine plans attached to them. They're not just some soon-to-be-discovered thought.
The same with copper, as I show here. We've increased our reserves by 2.2 billion pounds of copper. Just to point out, we don't muddle the two, we separate our individual reserves and resources. We don't do the gold equivalent bit. Wrapping all this together, this is our five-year plan. We've already shown it to you, and in your deck you'll find the detail of the individual regions. We just didn't want to waste the time sharing it. We've updated it, and really there's an improvement in the trends because we've taken out KCGM and Massawa, so that takes out capital. Why do we do this? Well, it shows you've got a 5 million ounce base. The costs are coming down. You can see why we are comfortable with our dividend.
In March, with our annual report, we'll show you the 10-year plan, which doesn't look too similar. Why? Because as I said in the beginning, we want people to see our runway and understand we're a long-term business. Some of them will be a little bit wobbly, but then we'll talk to you about how we're going to fix them. We've certainly got organic opportunities that we need to convert and put into this plan. This is our base plan going forward, and we as a management team will now work with you on it, as I have done in the market for my entire career. The same with copper, and you can see, not a bad picture. The picture didn't look so clever when we first started out last year, but we've really turned our copper operations around.
In conclusion, since the Barrick-Randgold merger was announced, the Barrick share price has increased by 79%, outperforming its peers, the indices, and the spot gold price. It's clear that the market now believes that what we set out to do was, one, plausible, and two, has delivered something that is really an opportunity to continue to build on. I have no doubt that we will deliver on our most valued gold company ambition. As I've shown you in this presentation, we have achieved much in 2019, but we are under no illusion as a management team that there's still a lot remains to be done to get to our destination. I can assure you that we are all, more importantly, our executive teams in the regions, quite capable of doing it, and we all look forward to the challenge. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
I know it was a long presentation, but we've considered it important to walk you through this, and so it gives you the foundation on which we'll build on going forward. Again, we've got some of the executive here. We're happy to take questions. I think Graham is actually on the call because he got caught up with the U.K. weather and wasn't able to fly across. We're going to take questions here first or yeah?
Mark, it's Greg Barnes from TD. I may be jumping the gun a little bit, but in the 10-year plan, can you sustain that 5 million ounce a year production profile without building a new mine?
Sure.
Yes.
Yeah. Certainly that's every indication where the teams are at the moment. Nevada's got some upside that we've got to work on. I think Latin America is pretty flat, no doubt we've got opportunities there organic-wise. Can we get to 800,000 ounces, closer to 1 million ounces out of PV? AME, you'll see in the graphs that you've got, it goes from 1.5 million ounces to 1.3 million ounces. Again, that's based on what we've got today. It highlights where we can go. When we stack those three stacks together, we get that 5 million ounces for the five years, and we've got the same looking at 10 years. We've got opportunities built into that 10-year plan, organic opportunities that we'll highlight for you when we deliver it.
Remember, it's a production plan, so it just shows you how we're planning to do, and then we'll roll that five-year plan, and with any luck, we'll continue to roll the 10-year plan. That's the plan.
Is there any thinking about growth?
Oh, sure. Growth, what is growth? The best growth I can give you today is this. Sorry, that one. If you transfer that into a cash flow number and you look at different numbers, you grow the cash. You've watched, Greg, you've been with me all this time. How many times did people suggest that I should go and buy Durban Deep or this company or that company because everyone was focused on growth being ounces? We stuck to our numbers. We used the filters, which we very clearly have shared with you back in January last year, and we will grow this business. First of all, it needs this growth because we need to sweat these assets.
The second growth opportunity for us is, I would change the term growth to investment opportunities with the nuance that investment means that you intend to get some returns back from your effort rather than just growing ounces. As you know, we're not shy of taking on a challenge.
Hi, Matthew Murphy with Barclays. Just wondering with the reserve update, where you're at now in this MRM transition, are you where you want to be? Is there a lot more work to do on these geologic models before we start talking about new drilling?
We're drilling. Our budget this year is $170 million just under Rob's stewardship. We spent most of our money on very near-term brownfields work last year, tidying up. Most of our exploration team lived on the mines because we had to redo things. We re-logged all the core in PV, all the core in Veladero. We've redone all the models in Nevada. We re-logged everything in Lumwana. The one that we didn't do a lot on because we haven't got any more information is Porgera. All the rest we've done a lot, and we're busy with that exercise right now with Pascua. There are two things. The mineral resource management team and that philosophy is completely entrenched in our organization. Catherine's a geologist. That was easy. Even my engineering colleague here, he's fully committed on the MRM side.
Willem, who's a lawyer, every now and then we have to put him in the right place, but he's got some very strong MRM people behind him. That's what it is that philosophy is well-entrenched in our organization. The general managers understand it. This year these plans have come from the mines. They own the reserves. They own the planning. The geologists are completely integrated in the business of planning. Again, we've got work to do. We are busy reshaping and improving the efficiency of a very complex geological planning program in Nevada because it's a huge organization. We've got it 90% right, but we need to tidy up a little bit. We've also moved geologists around to get a little bit of a different view. I think the big change has also been we've now got properly staffed.
If anything, the area that needs an additional focus on geology skill is Africa, because we've moved quite a lot of people around, and we've been very focused on the Americas and Porgera. I think we've got the framework. I wouldn't say that we are. You're never absolutely at utopia in R&D. There's always something more to do. We've got some excellent geologists. The reason, I'll just give you an example, Veladero. When we got there, we didn't really know what the grade was we were putting on the leach pads. We do now. We've got it drilled. We haven't got it drilled to where we want it to be, but at least we've got it drilled and we're drilling it out. Nevada was well-drilled in the reserves, but not in the life -of -mine.
We've moved a step out of there, and we identified that in the due diligence, because it was very focused on cash flow. We've changed that completely. As you see, the grades like Turquoise Ridge, Carlin, the grades are down, but the production is there because we've improved the efficiencies in the processing facilities and we've optimized the ore bodies. I would say that we've got the basics where we want them to be.
Hi. Anita Soni from CIBC. You talked about adding mineralized envelopes around the resources. If the resources move from inferred M&I into reserves, would you expect additional dilution or is that it?
No, that's it. We look at standard mining shapes when we model it, and let me answer it a different way. When we looked at 1$,200 from $1,000 in Kibali, for instance, when we tried to test the higher gold price, lower cut-off grade, we didn't really change the reserves because the shape of the ore bodies are such that you're on a hard boundary. A lot of the ore bodies that we have are on hard boundaries. When you move them, you really don't change the dilution. We just continue that process. On new projects, we make a conscious effort to manage dilution and losses and things like that in our studies and in the reserve calculation.
Those sort of new deposits, like satellites and that would come out, but they're not in the inventory at the right grade anymore because we're still very widely space drilling. I think the key, Anita, somebody, one of our shareholders called us the other day and said, "Can I give him a view of what we'd look like at $2,000?" It's 171 million ounces. What's exciting about Nevada is when you look at our mine plan, because we're going underground, we're increasing the grade, keeping the production, in fact, rising the production. What we do is we open up capacity. We actually close down some of the facilities. In a high-grade because high -grade doesn't help if you haven't got processing capacity.
Nevada has that significant opportunity of being able to grow gold because at a higher gold price, lower cut-off grade, we access, again, more oxide, or we have more flexibility for the capacity. We've got capacity. The same with some of our big mines where we've got leach pads. You can increase your capacity quickly, whereas in Kibali, for instance, Kibali's still got capacity. We don't use all the capacity, so that's a bad example. Loulo has got full capacity. You add reserves, you just add life. You don't really add extra gold. Does that make sense? Josh, you were going to say something? Come on.
You make me blush.
No, you're always a pool of wisdom. Is there any questions from the phone-in side?
Once again, if you have a question, please press star then one. Our first question is from Chris Terry of Deutsche Bank.
Hi, Mark, and thanks for taking my questions. I just had two quick ones. Just in terms of the overall asset optimization, you've talked a little bit about projects where you can unlock value. Now that you've completed the asset sales at Kalgoorlie and Massawa, from here, if you can't get the value you're looking for in any other assets, are you comfortable that the portfolio is what it is? Or is that still something you're working on around the edges on a couple of the assets? That was my first question. Then just with the 10-year plan, just to prepare for that a little bit, is the idea of that is that you show the production plan over the 10 years, but should we expect a lot of detail on some of the assets like Donlin, et cetera?
Is it just focused really on the production side? Thanks.
Okay. Thanks. We're not going to put Donlin in because we manage at $1,200. We're not changing the rules in this. We're showing you that we've got visibility on the runway for a 10-year program, and there might well be opportunities that we will highlight, but they would need to be opportunities that make it at $1,200 gold price. The optionality is what it is, and we'll leave it there. That's why it's important. We've redone all our resources. We can assure you, Rob signed off on them. They are proper mining shapes in a proper mining plan. It's not just geological resources. Even the inferred, if you look, we also changed the grade at Fourmile. Initially, Fourmile, it's a breccia. It's a classic Carlin breccia. It's very high -grade, but very awkward shapes. Not mineable at all.
We put in the mine stopes, the plan and sort of conceptual stopes, and then we diluted it properly so that we know we can mine it, provided that our drilling continues to deliver. All those ounces are inferred, aren't they, Rob? There's work to do, but at least that's how we've always done things. That's why you don't get big surprises when you do it properly. I think for me, this is right now is to really sweat the assets we've got with the management team, and it's another measure of whether we really understand our mineral resource and reserve base, as a management group. Then we'll look at other opportunities. The second question was? What's your second question?
The other question is just on the overall, the portfolio?
Oh, yeah.
Assets overall-
Yeah.
Whether there's anything else you're targeting, just talk through that. Thanks.
Right now, all our assets are producing, making a bottom-line contribution after everything. They're not all tier one, as you can imagine, and we are very focused on building an ice cream company. The market is a bit oversupplied at the moment with sale options. Again, as I've always said, first of all, we don't do this publicly. We are very mindful, and that's why we were able to really build a transformational transaction with Teranga. It was a lot of work because we really see our host countries as an integral stakeholder of our assets. We'll continue to work with them, and seek or respond. In most cases now, it's a response to interest rather than active marketing. As you say, we don't have to sell anything.
I mean, the copper assets contribute about 10% of our bottom line this last year. They're not, I mean, in any way you look at it, they're not tier one assets, but they are profitable assets. We'll work with those. A lot of them are just pure copper assets rather than gold -copper assets, too. In the fullness of time, we'll get there. Right now, we've had a phase of alignment, reinvention, and really I would describe 2020 as a year of delivery. We've got a lot to do to build on the foundation that we've set. It's much harder work in the next 12 months than the sort of more flashy work that we did last year.
There are no more questions from the conference call.
Thank you. Anybody else want a question? We're going to have a cup of tea. It's quite a boring process. Listen, back in London, we used to have a glass of wine. We're working on it. Join us for a cup of coffee or tea or glass of orange juice. Anybody wants to ask questions, we've got, as you can see, some of the executive here to take those questions. Thanks again for coming and for your diligence in listening through this presentation.