2021 has been a pivotal year for Newmont as we celebrate our 1 hundredth birthday. It is a year which allows us to reflect on our company, our industry and where we began. Our organization has a rich history of exploration, mine development, operation and closure. Beginning with an original headquarters in New York and a founder who grew up in Montana, giving us the name Newmont, we have grown to become the world's leading gold company with an unmatched portfolio of world class long life operations and an organic project pipeline that is the best in the industry, all located in top tier jurisdictions and underpinned by our clear strategic focus, proven operating model, superior execution and leading ESG practices. As only the 10th CEO in Newmont's 100 year history, I am proud to lead an organization that remains committed to creating value and improving lives through responsible and sustainable mining.
At Newmont, we have created a robust and diversified portfolio of operations and projects around the globe. Through at least the next decade, we will deliver nearly 8,000,000 gold equivalent ounces per year, the most of any company in our industry. And we believe that where we choose to operate matters. Among our 12 operating mines and 2 joint ventures, over 90% of our gold production is from top tier jurisdictions, which we define as countries classified in the A and B ratings ranges by each of Moody's, S and P and Fitch. Underpinning our asset base is the gold industry's best organic project pipeline of both greenfield and brownfield opportunities, managed through our integrated operating model with a proven track record of delivering value to our business and all of our stakeholders.
Newmont has maintained an unmatched and industry leading project pipeline, which lays the pathway to steady production and cash flow well into the 2040s. In addition to this, every one of our operations have near mine exploration opportunities that can leverage our existing infrastructure and extend mine life. With the stability and depth of our brownfield portfolio, we are able to explore in some of the most prospective greenfield districts in the world with patience and thoughtfulness. This year, we continue to advance our near term projects, including the second expansion at Tanami in Australia's Northern Territory. Through the development of a 1.6 kilometer deep production shaft and supporting infrastructure, this project supports the site's future as a long life and low cost producer.
And it also provides a platform for us to further explore a prolific mineral endowment in the Tanami District. In July, our Board of Directors approved full funding for the Ahapo North project, expanding our existing footprint in Ghana and adding more than 3,000,000 ounces of gold production over an initial 13 year mine life. And we continue to advance the Yanacocha Sulfides project, which will extend mine life at this cornerstone asset for decades to come. Newmont remains committed to the sulfides project and will be investing at least $500,000,000 through 2022 to advance critical path activities, including detailed engineering, long lead procurement, earthworks and the construction of camp facilities. However, we have experienced significant challenges due to the global pandemic, particularly in Peru, where vaccine availability remains low.
Given the current status of the pandemic in Peru and the potential for more contagious variants, we have decided to extend our full funds decision for the sulfides project to the second half of twenty twenty two and will progress the project as the pandemic allows. Newmont is committed to protecting the health and safety of our workforce and host communities above all else, and we'll continue engaging with government and local communities to ensure a safe and mutually beneficial path forward. We remain excited about the project and look forward to bringing you this next chapter in Yanacocha's long history of profitable production. Society's expectation of the role that a business plays in solving global challenges are greater than ever. Our employees are motivated by more than wages and salaries.
They want to work for a values based organization that is governed by a clear purpose. At the same time, host communities and governments require us to contribute equal measure to what we extract, And the investment community demands greater transparency of our sustainability practices as they value the clear connection between solid ESG performance and a well run business. These expectations from ourselves, our workforce, our local communities, host governments, investors and the world at large, compel us to have a broader conversation about how to operate a business in a sustainable way so that we can generate long term value for all of our stakeholders. Newmont has a long history of taking a leading approach to environmental, social and governance practices, developed from some very important lessons we learned a generation ago in Peru, Uzbekistan and Indonesia. And whilst our approach has certainly evolved over the last 30 years, BSG is part of the very fabric of our company and fundamental to the way we operate.
We are governed by an independent board that holds management accountable for developing and implementing policies and standards that create the foundation for Newmont's ESG practices. And to hold ourselves to account, we incorporate sustainability and safety targets into our compensation plans, ensuring that our ESG framework is fully embedded into our business strategy and that every employee takes part in our sustainability performance. Newmont has been disclosing our nonfinancial performance since 2004, regularly ranking as one of the most transparent companies in the S and P 500. Today, we are broadly recognized for our disciplined practices when it comes to sustainability performance and reporting, both within our sector and among all corporate reporters. Through the quality of our people, our long standing ESG leading practices and robust governance structure, Newmont is positioned to be the Gold Sector's recognized sustainability leader for decades to come.
Today, we are leveraging Newmont's scale, technical expertise and leading ESG practices to address one of the greatest global challenges of our time, climate change. We believe that industries that create value like mining have a responsibility to drive bold actions and innovation to transition us to a low carbon economy. That is why last November, we led the gold industry by committing to greenhouse gas emission reduction targets of more than 30% for Scope 1 and 2 emissions and 30% for Scope 3 emissions by 2,030, with the ultimate goal to be carbon neutral by 2,050. And I'm pleased to say that our targets have been validated and approved by the Science Based Targets Initiative, or SVTI, providing important independent and transparent third party assurance. We know that it is important to set long range and business targets, but the valuable work comes from achieving them.
Last year, Newmont announced our commitment of $500,000,000 over the next 5 years to support our climate initiatives. And already, we have identified dozens of opportunities around the world, and we continue to evaluate these and other projects to determine the best approach to reduce costs and emissions. All of our projects under evaluation will pass through our rigorous, disciplined investment system to determine the optimal path forward, and the lessons we learn will be shared across our global operations as we do our part to address climate change. Our assets and projects are managed through our proven integrated operating model with a deep bench of experienced leaders and technical experts. Underpinned by our robust governance structure, Newmont has established a strong foundation of consistent and repeatable processes, disciplined review procedures and clear standards and practices to ensure a stable and sustainable performance.
Our strength comes from leveraging our collective experience, sharing knowledge and talent across our operations and applying best practices and lessons learned across our global business. And Newmont's unmatched scale, combined with an operation support network in mining, processing and asset health, enable rapid replication of leading processes and advanced technology across all of our regions and operating mines. Newmont's operating model and business strategy is built upon a fundamental principle that the whole is worth more than the sum of the individual parts, and it is supported by our continuous improvement methodology. Full Potential is a program that I have led over the last 8 years of Newmont, and it is the most sustainable program that I have worked in, in my 30 plus career in mining. It has delivered $4,000,000,000 in value since 2014 by reducing costs and generating productivity improvements across our operating sites and functions.
And this success goes to the very heart of our operating model and culture at Newmont. To us, the program delivers more than just cost savings and productivity improvements. Full Potential breaks down barriers and encourages active participation, global collaboration and sharing success and learnings to provide additional opportunities across our organization. The program has been instrumental in delivering value from the Goldcorp acquisition in 2019, and I'll give an example of this on the next slide. When we acquired Goldcorp, we committed to delivering synergies of $365,000,000 per year, largely from the implementation of full potential.
Penasquito alone has exceeded that target, delivering $375,000,000 in free cash flow improvements since acquisition. Over 80% of this value was delivered from full potential mining and processing improvements, which continue to generate value today and will do so into the future. As an example, Penasquito began working on improving the digging quality of our shovels by bringing together our mining engineers, geologists and operators with the goal of improving polygon design and then compliance to that design. This project has already delivered nearly $90,000,000 in value with the opportunity to further improve it. Then this year, at Cripple Creek and Victor, an operation which is just an hour's drive away from where we are today, we began a similar optimization initiative, leveraging Penasquito's success.
Our teams from both sites came together to share knowledge and ideas for improving polygon design and compliance and includes the use of new systems and software to improve performance. This is but one example of the power of leveraging our global portfolio and integrated operating model to rapidly replicate and deploy leading practices consistently around the globe. Our balanced portfolio, combined with our disciplined and integrated operating model, provides significant leverage to high gold prices from the largest production base in the world. For every $100 increase in gold price above our base assumption, we generate $400,000,000 of incremental attributable free cash flow per year. At today's gold prices, this represents an additional $2,400,000,000 per year above our base plan assumption.
Newmont is the only gold mining company with the ability to generate these levels of attributable free cash flow, allowing us to drive the business and execute on our clear capital allocation priorities. These priorities include reinvesting approximately $2,000,000,000 a year in our business through exploration, organic growth projects and sustaining capital maintaining our financial strength and flexibility and returning cash to shareholders. In the first half of this year, we delivered on each of these priorities through our profitable reinvestment in our business, particularly with the advancement of our near term projects, Tanami Expansion 2, Ahafo North and Yanacocha Sulfides our investment in the 1st autonomous haulage fleet in the gold industry improving safety and productivity at Boddington and the completion of the GT Gold acquisition and adding the Totogho project to our organic pipeline. In addition to that, Newmont has returned over $1,000,000,000 to shareholders in the first half of this year through our industry leading dividend framework and opportunistic share buyback program. Newmont has maintained a strong balance sheet with a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 0.2x, giving us the flexibility to reduce our debt outstanding by $550,000,000 with available cash and still maintain cash balances of $4,600,000,000 at the end of the second quarter.
We are also proud to have executed a $3,000,000,000 sustainability linked revolving credit facility, one of the first in the mining industry and a demonstration of our commitment to leading BSG practices. As we look ahead to the remainder of the year, we are confident in our ability to deliver strong results and free cash flow to maintain our disciplined approach to capital allocation and create long term value for all of our stakeholders. Today, as I reflect on the last 100 years and the disruption over the last 2 years, some areas are clear that we must fundamentally understand that we reap what we sow, and it is our responsibility to take care of the resources and the people who provide us and the world so much. We must ask ourselves, how will we learn from our past? How will we move forward?
And how can we be bold in providing solutions to keep our future bright? I encourage each of us to make bold commitments to lead our industry well into the future. The pandemic has broken down many paradigms and created an environment to bring forward new and diverse ideas. We must seize upon this moment and find ways to help provide solutions to those ideas to address those challenges and to honor those commitments. Thank you.
And I'll give 23 seconds.
We have 23 seconds for questions, if there's one quick question out there. I'm sorry, I'm having trouble seeing. I'll ask one really quick one then, Tom. You talked about capital returns, and I know you have a framework in place. Can you talk a little bit about how you may change that framework over time or if there's any opportunities maybe to increase your dividend over time?
Thanks, Jackie. So we it's a framework that's just coming off on 12 months in place. We initially calibrated it to a $1500 gold price and then lifted earlier this year to the $1800 gold price and have set it at a 40% payout ratio of the cash we're generating at $1800 And every quarter, we sit down with our board. We look back over a semi annual period. We look back over the last 6 or 12 months, what's gold price done?
What's the cash that we have generated? And what do we see coming forward when we look forward in our business in terms of either some of the opportunities or threats? So every quarter, we sit down and look at that payout ratio, both in terms of gold price calibration and then that 40% to 60% payout ratio. So we still got our current gold prices, and we seem to be holding quite nicely at 1800 some scope to improve that payout ratio. I think when I think also about our share buyback program, we're also looking, I think, across the gold industry, it's some very nicely valued stock.
So some opportunities there when it comes to capital allocation as well.