Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the AngloGold Ashanti market update. All participants are currently in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity to ask questions later during the conference. If you should need assistance on the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star and then zero. Also, note that this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Stewart Bailey. Please go ahead, sir.
All right. Thank you very much, Chris, and welcome everybody. Good evening and good day, and thank you for joining us for our Q3 2022 market update. We know it's a very busy day for the sector, and we'll obviously attempt to be as efficient as possible. We have Alberto leading the call as usual, and various members of our ExCo, including our interim CFO, Ian Kramer, to handle your questions. With that, just before I hand over to Alberto, please remember at the top of this presentation is our safe harbor statement. It contains important information around forward-looking statements that might be made in this call, and I urge you to read it when you have a moment. Alberto, all yours.
Thanks, Stewart, and we can turn to the overview. Good day to all, and thanks for joining us. Before we get into the detail, let's look first at a high level at how the quarter went. Our primary goal, if you remember, is to regain our cost competitiveness versus our peers. We're making very good progress, but there is still a long way to go. We had another solid operational quarter with production and all-in sustaining cost moving in the right direction. This is a testament to our focus on execution and the success of our inward investment program, which really shows up in our grade improvement in particular. Cash conversion has improved, and so has cash flow.
We've maintained our guidance, probably one of the few companies that have been able to do so, with cost and production trending towards the top end of the range. I'm very pleased to have announced the appointment of Gillian Doran as our new CFO, joining us in the new year. She's a seasoned executive with a long and distinguished career with Rio Tinto. She will lead an already exceptional team and brings a very good operating and corporate pedigree to round out our senior team. Most important of all, we're seeing strong ESG performance. Safety continues to trend in the right direction, and I think the graph speaks for itself.
That's down to a clear strategy that emphasizes controls to manage the most important risks, what we call major hazards, that focus on the very few things that can cause serious injury, and ensuring that, as much as we can, that every one of our thousands of employees understand what are the major risks and what are the critical controls to avoid those major risks. Our total recordable injury frequency rate was 1.28 per million hours. That's very low, compared to probably, the best mining companies out there if you compare them in the ICMM database. You would have seen this. Recently, we set out our new emissions. We've defined a roadmap for a 30% net reduction in GHG emissions by the end of the decade.
That probably another way, when factoring in our growth and the emissions that will come with it, we will effectively reduce absolute emissions by 46%, and we will keep working obviously on our goal towards zero by 2050. That's the pathway. We've identified and scoped a number of initiatives to cut absolute emissions. At the same time, we would also more than halve our intensity. That's the emissions we regenerate for each ton of material we move. Importantly, the overall program is NPV positive. That's obviously the best of the news. We do good while doing well. The basket of projects will require a capital of about $1.1 billion. About $350 million will be funded directly by us and third parties making up the balance.
Ian is already working to secure a green funding facility of around $300 million. That will probably come in at quite attractive interest rates. We've put in place the government framework to ensure we achieve our targets and track the benefits of each initiative. We aim to achieve most of the reduction by the end of the decade. These are the highlights. We saw strong year-on-year improvements in production and all-in sustaining cost and cash flow for the quarter. Clearly, there were benefits from planned higher grades and efficiency gains, which helped offset inflation. We're committed to getting the basics right, and that's what you see here. Reinvestment in our bigger assets is tracking well and remains on schedule, and is in a big reason the cause of a better predictability or greater flexibility in our mines.
Reinvestment in our bigger assets is tracking well, remains on schedule. We're seeing inflation running at about 14% quarter-over-quarter. The biggest factor is the oil and diesel. That was about 25%, and that really skewed everything up. But this is the average of the sort of things we bought this year, and the impact on the cash cost is about 14%. But we've limited that cash cost increase to 4%, so we were able to counter 10 of the 14 points. That is, as I said before, based on more predictable operational performance, higher grades, and a significant drop in stockpile drawdowns as investment at Geita and Iduapriem start to bear fruit. All-in sustaining cost was lower, mainly driven by higher production and lower TSF capital in Brazil. Still, that TSF compliance is very significant.
It accounts for $26 an ounce for our group all-in sustaining costs. Free cash flow was good, that's $169 million, and that's even after investing CapEx for an investing CapEx of $257 million into our assets. Our balance sheet remains solid with low gearing and very strong liquidity. We'll talk about later, the full asset potential is making steady progress, and Nevada continues to look better and better. If we start in Africa, you can see probably on the top, most of our assets actually were able to decrease cost. If you look at in that graph in the assets that we are the operators, actually, I would think our cash costs would have been flat for the year. We will continue to make...
Just starting with Obuasi, which is the crown jewel, we made very good progress during Q3, achieving what we needed to do to get the targets for this year and achieving the 4,000 tons per day. Gold production was 72,000 ounces at a cash cost of $961 an ounce. As I said, we have hit that 4,000, and that is obviously needed to ensure the targets that we have for 2023 and 2024. We're on track for that 240,000-260,000. That was the range that we put out about 13 months ago. Then we have the critical KMS shaft, that's phase three.
There's several, but the KMS shaft is really the one that will allow us to jump to 5,000 tons per day. I think we are quite on track to have that KMS shaft ready by the end of the year. Sometime in 2024, in the beginning, but I don't know exactly when, but we will be able to reach that annualized 400,000 tons, which is what we have talked about for 2024, and it's really where we want to take this mine with such spectacular grades as Obuasi. Iduapriem's production was higher as we treated what we talked about, the higher-grade ore tons from Cut 2, and we saw obviously a remarkable increase, improvement in cash costs.
Siguiri's production was similar to the previous period, notwithstanding a 10-day stop following local community protest related to employment demands. Lower tonnages were partly offset by higher grades, again, from Block Two, another block. Geita recorded another strong production result, was impressive 42% quarter-on-quarter, so that was a very pleasing surprise. You'll see higher volumes and grades at Geita, and we're looking to continue that momentum into the final quarter. Kibali's production was unfortunately lower year-on-year due to lower-grade mining, and production for the year is expected to be between 340,000 and 380,000, our share. Latin America. We also saw some encouraging improvements from Latin America.
We continued to manage plant throughput to keep within permitted tailings limits in Brazil while we fast-tracked the transition to dry stacking. That has been a very big endeavor and very costly one. We spent $20 million on TSF conversion in Q3. That takes our TSF investment in Brazil over the last two years to $220 million o of. This investment remains material in each of the next two to three years, but we do expect it to taper over that time. Inflationary pressures is evident across the assets, and it's mainly in Argentina. It's just off the charts. AGA Mineração production benefited from higher grades, especially from Cuiabá.
As I mentioned before, we're assessing strategic alternatives for CDS, and we should come to a landing on that by the time I speak with you at the end of the Q1. Serra Grande saw the benefit from higher production and lower TSF spread. At Cerro Corona, the production was higher, mainly driven by higher grades. Australia, Sunrise, production was flat. We saw inflationary pressures across the spectrum, mining and maintenance contractors, labor and also diesel, explosives and consumables were all. We saw all of that. We're still suffering from the complete lockdown of that state at the beginning of the year and that we couldn't do the development that we had planned because we just didn't have the people.
Hence, you would have seen in the Q3 that development costs were significantly higher. We've also initiated the full potential initiatives and the costs that are implicit in them. That's why you see a quite significant increase in the cash costs in Sunrise Dam. We expect that will go down in the Q4 and it should be quite contained in 2023. Tropicana did well. Production was up 28% year-on-year, mainly due to higher grades and tons processed. That helped us achieve a 26% cost improvement year-on-year. Nevada waste stripping continues to progress, but the timeline is under pressure due to shortage of skilled operators again. We've seen some relaxation lately, but that's still an issue.
We adjust the mine plan to mitigate this impact on production. We've also commenced a PFS on an underground mine at Havana. Going back to talking about the full asset potential. Last quarter, we talked about Sunrise, and I had mentioned that we will be talking every quarter about the progress in each of the assets that we are pursuing this full asset potential. The aim of the program was to achieve a step change in our cost competitiveness by 2024. It is important to note that these benefits won't happen overnight. Siguiri was the second site to undergo the process.
The team identified, or at the end, had 29 opportunities that were selected as the ones that would achieve together a cash cost reduction of around $100 announced by 2024 versus this year's performance. If we see what are we talking about, mining productivity, for example. A key productivity improvement is to increase high-grade oxides from block two by hauling an additional 3,000 tons per day to the ROM pad. A second haulage contractor has been already mobilized, and controls are in place to track performance. We're also improving productivity and metallurgical recovery, like we did in Sunrise. Processing plant improvements include lifting metallurgical recovery by 5% to 88% by focusing on parameters such as grind quality, blending, and pulp density. We have also the potential to increase runtime by about 6% by reducing planned and unplanned downtime.
Also another one related to mill rate can also be inched up by utilizing available power. As with Sunrise, if you remember, we also had a very large idea that was more on the NPV side, that it would take longer. In Sunrise, it was the cutback of the Cleo pit. In this case, they have identified a cost-effective opportunity to extend the life of the mine by an initial seven years to 2034. You can understand that that has a massive NPV in the life of these assets, in the hundreds of millions. This can be achieved by increasing the capacity of the current TSF by about 120 million tons.
We're working to finish PFS by the beginning of next year. Okay, Nevada. The foundations were set for us in Nevada by our greenfield team, which quickly generated the Silicon discovery after we entered the district. Remember, we've already declared 3.4 million ounces of resource here. This understanding of the geology, structures, and alteration in the area helped us identify other targets and reinforce our view on the potential of our consolidated ground position. This slide shows the simplified geology of the district, along with our main projects at North Bullfrog, Silicon and Merlin, which lie within our exploration focus area. Feasibility work at North Bullfrog, a smaller high-return deposit acquired through the Corvus deal earlier this year, is expected to be near completion by year-end.
Work to date indicates that this deposit has a very slow stripping ratio, and the heap leach processing or selective milling can deliver very attractive returns. We have had six drill rigs in action through most of the year at Beatty and expect to double the number next year. We built a strong Nevada experienced project technical and permitting team and remain confident that this district has the potential to yield more than 300,000 ounces of annual production within the decade for about 20-30 years at an all-in sustaining cost in the high $900s. This is a very interesting picture. You can see what we have, our Silicon project that was the first exploration, and then the land we acquired in Corvus.
You can see how the land of Corvus is really almost overlaps all of these ground. Our acquisition of Corvus property in Southern Nevada now gives us a dominant ground position in one of North America's most promising new gold districts. The Corvus ground, combined with our own Silicon discovery and the properties we added through the Corvus acquisition, allow us to realize the potential of the Beatty district through systematic exploration and optimized project development. This slide shows the position of the Seahorse target, which we believe is an extension of our Merlin ore body, and you can see how it makes a lot of sense. Together, Seahorse and Merlin could either provide more economies of scale to Silicon.
In addition, the land package we've assembled gives us unfettered access, exploration upside potential, and other benefits from consolidating to consolidate a larger land holding within the Beatty district. I think we will in the first part of the year, Q1 or something like that, we will come with the resource of Merlin that is looking very interesting, as I said in the past. Here I now pass on to Ian to talk about the financials.
Thanks, Alberto. We delivered a solid cost performance notwithstanding continued high inflation. The performance was underpinned by operational improvements with notable grade improvements across the portfolio. Underground recovered grades were 17% higher year-on-year, including the contribution from Obuasi as it continues its ramp-up. Open pit grades were up 21% year-on-year, primarily due to the improved grades from Nyamulilima at Geita and Iduapriem accessing the Block Five and Teberebie Cut two areas. Total cash costs were $966 per ounce, with the year-on-year increase contained to 4% or $39 per ounce. This is despite inflationary pressure and other non-controllable factors of $112 per ounce. We are focused on improving our operational performance, maintaining cost discipline, and delivering on the Full Potential Programme.
Inflation contributed $131 per ounce or 14% to the total cash costs increase. This includes impacts like oil and gas, explosives, lubricants, and cyanide. The cost environment remains dynamic and uncertain, and we continue to expect full-year cash costs at the top end of our guidance range. While input commodities, energy, food, and fertilizer prices have trended sharply upwards following the outbreak of the Russia-Ukraine war, there are indications that inflation may slow over the next six months. Global logistics and manufacturing bottlenecks already evident before the war have showed modest improvement. On the other side of the ledger, labor markets remain tight. We currently see inflation averaging around 7% next year. In addition to inflation, total cash costs were impacted by volume variances of $29 per ounce and activity changes of $42 per ounce.
These upward cost pressures were partly offset by favorable ore stockpile movements of $39 per ounce and the positive impact of higher grades at $135 per ounce. All-in sustaining costs were down 6% or $78 per ounce year-on-year to $1,284 per ounce. This was mainly due to lower sustaining CapEx of $103 per ounce, partly offset by the $39 per ounce increase in cash costs. Our balance sheet remains solid with long-dated maturities, low leverage, and strong liquidity. Adjusted net debt of $746 million at the end of September was down 14% year-on-year, and it includes $620 million received from Kibali.
This was partly offset by the $365 million Corvus payment and $181 million of dividends paid this year. Adjusted net debt to adjusted EBITDA was 0.41x at quarter end. Our leverage target remains below 1x through the cycle. Our strong liquidity provides good flexibility. We have around $1.2 billion in cash and $1.3 billion available on our revolving credit facility. We anticipate using $150 million to settle the Questor purchase before year-end, once conditions are met. Cash conversion is improving. We received $71 million from Kibali in Q3, split between a shareholder loan repayment of $59 million and $12 million in dividends. Our share of the outstanding cash balance at Kibali was $50 million at quarter end.
Outstanding cash balances, VAT receivables, and export duties were largely stable during the quarter. In Tanzania, the net VAT receivable reduced by $4 million to $144 million. Verified VAT claims of $15 million were offset against corporate tax payments, and $17 million in new claims were submitted. We continue to engage with the Tanzanian authorities on the mechanism to recover historical VAT accumulated between July 2017 and the end of June 2020. VAT lockups at Kibali and the export duty receivable at CVSA remain a challenge. At Kibali, our share of the recoverable VAT and fuel duties increased by $4 million to $81 million net of discounting provisions. While at CVSA, the export duty receivable decreased by $2 million over Q3.
CVSA had a cash balance equivalent of $146 million at the end of September. These funds are available to settle previously declared offshore dividends. Application to transfer a portion of these funds on the back of the declared offshore dividends has been made to the central bank. The total cash balance continues to be invested at attractive rates of return locally and remains fully available for CVSA's operational requirements. Turning to guidance. We are on track to achieve full year guidance for 2020. Full year production is expected to end in the top half of guidance, with Obuasi expected to continue to ramp up and improvements anticipated at Tropicana, Siguiri, Iduapriem, Geita, and CVSA. Total cash costs guidance remains unchanged. We see inflationary pressures catered for in the current guidance range.
We do, however, remain aware of the ongoing cost pressure created by the current inflationary environment and anticipate that total cash costs will come in at the top end of guidance. All-in sustaining costs are guided between $1,295-$1,425 per ounce, with elevated sustaining CapEx in line with the prior year. Total CapEx is guided at $1.05 billion-$1.15 billion and remains especially weighted to the Q4 of the year. Once again, we remain on track to end the year within guided levels, but here we are trending towards the top end of the guidance range.
Sustaining capital ranges are guided between $77 million and $180 million, and non-sustaining capital between $280 million and $340 million. I will now hand over back to Alberto to conclude. Thank you.
Thanks, Ian. We've started to see operating improvements and remain focused on continuing to make improvements and delivering more consistent results in line with the targets we've set out. Our guidance is intact. The Full Potential program is working as intended. Obuasi is on track to meet its production targets this year. We have the right people in the right place and the right organizational structure. We've been focused on improving operating and capital efficiencies and doing the basics right. Our technical team continues to uncover value in Nevada as they work to bring the resource into a consolidated reserve. Why AngloGold Ashanti? Let's start with the foundation. We have strong ESG practices with sector-leading safety and one of the cleanest energy mixes in the gold industry.
Our operating fundamentals are improving, and we have the team and structure in place to sustain that trend over the longer term. In an industry searching for grade, our profile is among the best in the sector. We have an organic growth pipeline that remains the envy of many of our peers as F&F continues to improve. That means we're not forced into expensive large-scale M&A to sustain and grow production. While the next year remains a transitional period for us, we work to realize our turnaround strategy, we're holding our own on costs. We're disciplined in allocating capital that is in line with a framework that balances reinvestment, debt reduction, and dividends all before we invest in growth. I believe that's the right mix of attributes to regain our cost competitiveness and close the gap value with our peers. With that, I would open to questions.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star and then one on your touch-tone phone or on the keypad on your screen. You will hear a confirmation tone that you have joined the queue. If you decide to withdraw the question, please press star and then two to remove yourself from the queue. Our first question is from Patrick Mann of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good day, Alberto, Ian, and team. Two questions, please. I just wanted to ask about the ESG spend. Can you just explain a little bit more about how it can be NPV positive? And if it's NPV positive, you know, why wasn't it done before? And I suppose where I'm coming at is, this potentially because the cost of financing or the cost of funding is relatively low because of the green financing? So just a bit more detail around that. And then maybe just around the regional strategy in Nevada. You know, do you think you're done or are there more properties or more packages that you are thinking of adding to what you've already acquired? Thank you.
Alberto?
Hi. I lost it. It seems to be, but again.
Alberto, we've lost you. Everyone, if you could just bear with us for a second. We're having some connectivity issues.
Yeah. I don't know what it is. I'm back, but hopefully it doesn't go again. It hasn't happened all day, so hopefully it doesn't happen again.
You're crystal clear now.
Are you hearing me okay?
Yes.
Okay.
Crystal.
What was the second question?
Second question was whether we are done in Nevada or if there are any other properties that we still would like to pick up.
Okay. Look, the first question is a very valid one. Why, if it's NPV positive, we hadn't done it. It's interesting. I think we would have done it, but not in a systematic way. What happened is that I think the work that was done was really an integrated. There's two things that happened. This was like a very systematic process where it questioned the type of power in all the places where we were buying diesel. And the other question was, well, why haven't we done anything about it? And sometimes, probably one of the answers was, well, the mine life that we have is too short. This is the case like take for example, and it's not for data.
Well, we know that we're gonna have in 10 years of resource. That was the type of judgment call that was made. If we know that this is just a not even exploration risk, but this is just the nature of those mines, then you can take a view. The other thing that we also did was, is there an option? Like, can we go into solar? Can we do something if the mine life doesn't fit? Yeah, all of those risks and balances were assessed. In some cases, like in Tanzania, it just makes a lot of sense of whatever just switching from diesel into a grid that is hydro gas and much cheaper, it's clearly highly NPV positive.
Yeah, it is a good question, but this doesn't rely on the cost of the funding. It's just, I think, because this is not core, probably it hadn't been done in that way before. Nevada, I don't know what the. Well, if we're doing anything more. At this stage, we have a lot of property to digest, a lot of rights, a lot of water rights we've acquired, and so at this stage, I think we're quite happy with a district that can be part of AngloGold for what we believe could be as much as three decades.
At this stage, we're just focused on really identifying and exploring the new assets that we have uncovered in core and before in Corvus. I don't know if that answers your question, but.
It does. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Jared Hoover of RMB Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Afternoon, Alberto and team. Thanks for the call. A few questions from my side. I wanted to start off with the FAP program at Siguiri. I wanted to chat about execution risk on this, and I think we did chat about execution risk at Sunrise Dam at half year results. But particularly as it relates to Siguiri, it looks like one of the items you've bucketed is improvements in recoveries, improving that by about 5%. If my understanding is correct, that has also always been part of the plan, and for differing reasons, it's always just been tough, whether it was heavy rainfall in that region or whether there was a lot of carbon and carbonaceous material being processed and that impacting the recoveries.
I guess is the FAP going to contemplate something that's different to what was done historically at Siguiri to really bump up those recoveries by 5%, which seems like quite a lot? Yeah. Any thoughts on that? I'll follow up with two more. Thanks.
Look, yes, there has been ideas in the past, but probably what wasn't done for a long time is this sort of three-month gathering of people and what is probably different in this program is the intensity and also the modeling of how the execution is going to be done. I think that there is something different. I'll tell you in the mine productivity, for example, and how that's happening. Say, "Okay, well, we need to hire a second contractor and we need to mobilize," and that's already happening. I get every month updates on all of this, and we're already beginning to see the increases in the metallurgical recovery.
I can only say, am I 100% sure that we will have that 5% recovery? I think it's highly likely that we'll get close to that. What I can say is that the quality of the analysis and the efforts put in, this is all benchmarked. This is all, one of the things that the consultants bring is what has been done in other places and what is possible. I, when we put out numbers, it's always a risk, but it's because we intend to meet them. We obviously, you would imagine that the numbers that we have are probably higher than the ones that we are saying because there's always some level of conservatism. Look, that's probably the
What I can tell you is this is not business as usual. This is. There's a lot of detail into this plan. The way it's gonna be monitored, probably even more importantly, there's a whole team, and this is where there's a team at the center, in the chief technology officer that is monitoring. Even though the execution lies with the chief operating officer, there's a centralized team that monitors and tracks and see that this is delivered as much as possible. If one idea can't be delivered, another idea needs to come and to fill its place. Yeah, we'll see.
Okay. That was comprehensive. Thanks, Alberto. My second question, I thought maybe I'll ask Patrick's question in a little bit of a different way, on Nevada, that is. I mean, I've noticed a bit of a subtle change in your guidance in Nevada, but a significant change. I think when you first started talking about this district, it was about a 10-15-year mine life at 300,000 ounces. You're now talking about 2-3 decades, and I think you first mentioned that at Denver. Very high-level math. I mean, 300,000 ounces for 25 years is about 7.5 million ounces of reserves. Usually you convert about 50% of your resource into reserves. High level, it's about 15 million ounces of resource that you need to find.
Currently you've got about 7.5 or 8.5. So basically, if you aren't gonna buy anything else, it looks like Merlin is going to be quite significant, probably in the region of about 8 million ounces, obviously over time. I wanted to see if my thinking around that is correct. If that is correct, does that also imply that your exploration spend is probably going to be elevated for a good few years going forward?
I would probably disagree on the conversion rate. I think the conversion rate is a bit higher than that, is my understanding. It's probably more in the 60% than in the 50%. The rest of your to support a 30-year, yes, you would need something in the two digits in resource. That's what we believe from everything that we have, that that we will be able to announce. We've said that Merlin is sizable and that we will communicate that to the market. I don't want to advance myself, but clearly we are very excited by what we're seeing.
Those numbers of even 20 years, as you say, but 25 years will require. Well, I'm not saying them lightly. It is a very exciting sort of acreage and that's why we're so happy with what we've been able to consolidate. Yeah, your numbers are, yeah, okay, ballpark. As I said, I think the conversion is a bit higher than 50.
Okay, great. My last question is just on your new CFO who was appointed. I know she'll be starting next year. Are you able to give us some early indications around what her focus areas might be and what her impact might be at AngloGold Ashanti when she does join? Should we be thinking of maybe a tightening of the capital allocation agenda or maybe more heavily supporting the turnaround program and the FAP program? Just some thoughts and maybe some color around that. Thanks. I'll leave it there.
One of the things that impressed me about Gillian, so she was the CFO of Rio Tinto, but it was the Alcan. Most of you will remember the Alcan was a $40 billion, 27-asset operation. How she worked at Rio, she works as she saw herself as a partner with the operations in making them better. In aluminum, those of you who know about aluminum know that it is a very low-margin business, and that if you do not understand what are the variables that you can control and what are the variables that you can't control, you're dead. I think that in AngloGold Ashanti, and in the industry, but in AngloGold Ashanti, we need to do a better job of that.
That's my assessment, that with what I call the economic interpretation more than the accounting interpretations of the number. Helping becoming a partner for the senior VPs in Africa and in Argentina and all that, saying, "Okay, this is what you can control. This is what's happening with inflation, with the exchange rate, with this, but you can't control that. But this you can, and this is what's happening." I think we can do a better job at that. We need to strengthen, I think, that part in accounting, in taxes, in treasury, just to name a few. I think we have just a very good team. I said before, the team that she will find is very, very good.
I think we can use probably that angle that she brings from aluminum into that deeper economic interpretation. I think that will be. I'm telling you in the conversation that we had, that will be one area of focus. Then again, as partners, that goes when you understand what you can control and what you can't control, then that also makes we can have deeper conversations with, "Okay, you can control this. How can you be better?" She becomes a also like a black hat, a partner, but also somebody who keeps pushing the discipline of how can we get better.
who also keeps the full asset potential, as you pointed out, to make sure that we have the right tracking mechanism and all of that. Yeah, it's a very good complement to that great team that we have today, and I'm looking forward to joining. I think she will fit very well with the rest of the executive, and that sort of makes up the ExCo that we have. I'm very proud, and it's done basically the ExCo that we have today in AngloGold Ashanti.
Thank you very much. The next question is from Lorraine Gunning of HSBC. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good afternoon, guys. I've got three questions. The first one is on slide six, where you show your emissions. There's an increase from 1.4 to 1.8 from the base year to 2030. What drives that increase, and is it linked to an increase in production? Just on your cash lockups, you've had a lot of progress in the last 12 months or so. Are you targeting any further significant releases in the cash lockups in the regions you've listed over the next year or so? Lastly, the Siguiri operational improvements. Do you have any indication of the CapEx that would be required to unlock some of those improvements that you've listed?
On ESG, that jump is basically Nevada. This is 2030, so it incorporates also Colombia and the natural growth that we have in our assets. Obuasi is gonna be at a bigger number. We expect probably from 2021, Geita would probably be also larger. That's what we. It's growth. Nevada and Colombia are incorporated in that number. From then on, that's why the reduction has to be about 46%. On Siguiri, and that was the third question, and I'll go back to the second in a second. Siguiri CapEx, look, they're all minor CapEx.
The one that would be a bigger CapEx is the extension of the seventh year, and that has a project in itself. Most of the other ideas, you just do them because they're with OpEx and they're very low CapEx. That one in particular, that's why it requires a feasibility study as similar to the Cleo pit in Sunrise. What we know is that we will only do. Well, we believe already in the preliminary sort of calculations that the NPV is in the $ hundreds of millions. We will talk about that when the feasibility study is approved. Then on cash lockups. Look, we're quite happy. As Ian showed, we were able to cut them in half.
What we are now focused is that they at least don't grow. Tanzania, as you know, there's just an issue. It isn't growing. It's actually slightly decreased. It's just an old discussion of VAT balances, and that's something that is discussed. At some point, we'll be able to sort it with the government. In the medium term and short term, we just don't want that one to increase. Argentina, it also didn't go up. It actually went down $2 million in total between export duties and total cash balances. I think they went down by about $5 million.
The currency, the dual exchange rate and controls that the government has right now is. It makes it, in the short run, probably difficult to envision any solution. The moment that they let the currency float, I'm pretty sure we'll be able to take the money out. The money is totally protected, and the money is in our hands, so it's just the ability to take it out of Argentina. The long answer is I think these balances will stay where they are for a while, until we can make another dent when we have a structural solution probably or either there's economic solution in Argentina or we arrive to some sort of agreement with this in Tanzania.
Thanks, Alberto. Maybe just one follow-up question. On with the growth that comes through from 2021 to 2050 that drives the increase in emissions, are you assuming any closure of mines in that? You've listed the ones that come online. Does anything come offline, as in, you know, reaches the end of its life, between now and 2050?
No, there's no closures. Nowadays when you, for example, CDS is incorporated there, and if we do something with CDS, we sort of almost carry it in the responsibility in our books in some way. You can't do what they did in the past, that you would be able to reduce your commitments by selling. No, there is no selling in those numbers.
All right. No. Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Francis Daniels of Nedbank Investment Research. Please go ahead.
Thank you. I just wanted to ask about Quebradona and Colombia. Is there any genuine chance of a new application being approved by the Colombian authorities? If there isn't, will you be proposing to exit Colombia?
There's been discussions with the new government. The team on the ground has had meetings with the Minister of Finance, Minister of Mines, President of the Senate. Sort of the good news that probably you, among a lot of controversy and probably more noise that you hear, is that all the government and all of these players understand that copper is a very important part of the future of Colombia. Even though the president and the Minister of Mines have voiced their sort of concern about global warming and their concern about coal and their concern about oil and there's been a lot of controversy around that, let's say, I wouldn't wanna be in oil or in coal right now in Colombia.
At the same time, they understand very well that a green future for the world needs copper, and they have expressed that explicitly to us. The team on the ground is working towards having the hydrological information that we need, that we know that the environmental agency that is still the same one with the same technocrats, the type of information that we weren't able to submit previously and that we need to submit to apply for an environmental license. The key part is this, are the two municipalities connected and proving through piezometers and hydrological information that they are or they're not connected. We're continuing with that work, and at the same time the leadership on the ground has had all these meetings.
It's not easy, but I am heartened by the fact that they understand that copper is part of the solution of the world.
How many years delay do you think we should pencil in to be conservative?
Look, we're still what I said about a year ago that we should be talking about this only at the end of the decade.
Only at the end of the decade. Okay.
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you very much.
Thank you. We have no further questions in the queue. Do you have any questions from the online platforms?
No, I think that's done. I think that's what we have time for today. Thanks very much, Chris. Alberto, any closing remarks from you before we sign off?
Look, probably my closing remark is we are happy with what we have achieved, but there's a long road still ahead. 2023, as I said before, is looking tough with a 7% inflation that will be on top of wherever we finish on cash costs. We are having a very good year, but it's on top of a year that wasn't that good in 2021. Being a very good year in 2022, we can't expect that we can continue to have those progresses and rates and all of that. That means that offsetting that inflation is gonna be more difficult. 2023 is still a transition year. We will talk more about that in February of next year. Inflation is still.
It hasn't left, and it's still creating a lot of havoc. I mean, 7% is still a big number. Yeah, we're quite happy with the results. We're confident for the end of the year. We're confident that we can meet all of those targets that we have laid out there, but we are already focused on what more do we need to do in 2023 in what is still a transition year. Yeah, we're still facing that 7%, which is not a small number. Inflation, I mean. Anyway, for now we're happy with the results and very proud of the massive work that all of our 30,000 employees has done. Thank you, Stewart. Thank you all for listening today.
Thanks, Alberto.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, that then concludes today's event, and you may disconnect.