Good morning, and welcome to Newmont's 2021 Exploration Update Call. All participants will be in listen-only mode. After today's presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Please note this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Eric Colby, Vice President of Investor Relations and Communications. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and good morning. Welcome to Newmont's 2021 Reserves and Exploration Update. Joining us on the call today are Tom Palmer, President and Chief Executive Officer, Rob Atkinson, Chief Operating Officer, Dean Gehring, Chief Technology Officer, and Marcelo Godoy, Senior Vice President of Exploration. They will be available to answer questions at the end of the call, along with other members of our leadership team. Please take a moment to review the cautionary statement on Slide two, and refer to our SEC filings, which can be found on our website. I'll turn it over to Tom on Slide three.
Thanks, Eric. Thank you all for joining us this morning. Today, we are looking forward to highlighting why Newmont, as the world's leading gold company, is also the clear leader in gold exploration. I'd like to start with a look back at our long history of exploration on Slide four. Newmont was founded in 1916 and incorporated as a company in 1921, making this year our centenary year, and May 2nd, our 100th birthday. Over the course of the past 100 years, we have played a significant role in the mining industry, initially across multiple commodities, and for the last 60 years with a clear focus on gold. To achieve a century of value creation in the mining industry, exploration has and always will be a core competency and a key investment priority for Newmont.
Over the last six decades, Newmont has had a successful track record of making significant gold discoveries. That is, discoveries of 2 million ounces or more. In the early 1960s, we discovered the Carlin Trend in Nevada, a region which grew to become the largest gold district in North America through the application of Newmont technology that revolutionized the gold industry. Carlin produced its first gold bar in 1965 and became the first operation to apply heap leach technology to extract gold from sub-mill grade ore. In the 1970s, Newmont discovered the Telfer gold deposit in Australia's Great Sandy Desert. By the mid-'80s, Telfer was the largest gold mine in Australia.
In the late 1980s, Yanacocha was discovered in Peru, emerging to become the largest gold-producing district in South America, with an endowment of more than 50 million ounces and production peaking at 3 million ounces per year earlier this century. In the 1990s, our exploration team, exploring in the Indonesian archipelago, discovered Batu Hijau, a world-class copper-gold deposit that we developed into a mine that is still in operation today. Over the last 20 years, Newmont has made 14 discoveries that together total 45 million attributable gold ounces. These have included major brownfield discoveries in Suriname, Ghana, and at Tanami in Australia. This slide highlights Newmont's long and proud heritage of discovering gold districts. Each of our greenfield discoveries has led to many brownfield discoveries, which have supported profitable and sustainable mining operations.
At Newmont, we have a fundamental belief that successful exploration cannot occur without robust environmental, social, and governance practices. Turning to slide five. Our purpose is to create value and improve lives through responsible and sustainable mining. Often, the first people from Newmont entering a new prospective district are our exploration teams. It is the quality of our very initial engagement with local communities and governments which determines our ability to earn social acceptance, explore, and ultimately operate in these locations. Through our long history of establishing gold mining districts around the world, we have learned many lessons that inform our policy, standards, and the governance we apply to our exploration work.
Newmont has learned that investing time and energy into engagement well before a drill rig ever shows up is the foundation to building the strong and trusting relationships that we require to explore, develop, and operate mines today. Our exploration guidebook provides practical direction and knowledge for our explorers, and they work hand in hand with our community relations experts to ensure our social performance standards guide our behavior and action on the ground. We recognize that our exploration activities must be done in a way that promotes responsible land use practices, respects local community, understands cultural resources and norms, acknowledges indigenous peoples and their rights, including free, prior, and informed consent before we conduct activities on their land.
Most importantly, we respect their right to say no. We absolutely only want to explore in areas where social acceptance has been granted to us and where we have earned the right to stay based on our approach to environmental stewardship, utilizing local labor and businesses, respecting local laws and customs, and becoming trusted partners. We also acknowledge that our approach to exploration requires time and resources, and may not result in an economic discovery or a future mine. When done right, it will create a favorable experience, deliver value to local communities, and contribute to our reputation of building relationships first and mines second. Turning now to the exploration potential of our industry-leading portfolio on slide six. At Newmont, we have engineered a robust and diversified portfolio of operations and projects in top-tier gold jurisdictions around the globe. Our portfolio, which is underpinned by nine world-class assets.
One of the key aspects of Newmont's exploration program, and the area I'm most excited about, is the quality of the opportunities that exist around our portfolio of existing operations. As you will hear from Rob and Marcelo shortly, every one of our operations have near mine exploration opportunities that can leverage our existing infrastructure and extend life. It is this exploration effort that will allow us to maintain our industry-leading production profile. Turning to slide seven. The reinvestment we make back into our business through exploration will support our ability to maintain stable, steady production of between 6-7 million ounces of gold every year, combined with an additional 1.5 m illion gold equivalent ounces from other metals.
This is the production profile we expect to maintain well beyond the end of this decade, through a disciplined approach to resource discovery, organic project optimization, and operational delivery. As we will discuss today, our leading reserve base and exploration program form the backbone of our long-term plan. Turning to slide eight. This morning, we reported year-end 2020 reserves of 94 million gold ounces and an additional 65 million gold equivalent ounces from copper, silver, lead, and zinc. Importantly, over 90% of our reserves are located in top-tier jurisdictions with a reserve life greater than 10 years, supported by our foundation of world-class assets. Put another way, this offers shareholders exposure to 117 gold reserve ounces for every 1,000 Newmont shares, an implied value of over $200 per share at today's prices, and the most in our industry.
We also offer substantial future upside through our resource base of over 101 million ounces of gold. We continue to use a $1,200 per ounce reserve price and a $1,400 per ounce resource price. While we are primarily focused on growing and developing gold districts, we are in a very fortunate position of having significant exposure to other metals, including copper, silver, zinc, and lead. These other metals are contributing substantial value to our portfolio today, generating solid cash flows each quarter from Peñasquito and Boddington. Through our organic project pipeline, we have significant exposure to very large gold-copper deposits through the Norte Abierto, NuevaUnión , and Galore Creek projects. If you assume that we bring one of these mega projects into our production profile at the back end of this decade, then 15%-20% of Newmont's total metal production would be copper.
Providing us a natural exposure to a metal of growing importance for reducing carbon emissions and the ongoing transition to a new energy economy. 2020 was an incredibly challenging year, but I'm very proud of how our exploration team rose to the challenge and delivered the results that we are sharing with you today. With that, I'll hand it over to our Chief Technology Officer, Dean Gehring, to take you through the details.
Thanks, Tom. Good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to be here with you today to talk about Newmont's process for determining our ore reserves. Turning to slide ten. Ore reserves are the lifeblood of a mining company. Replacing our reserves is critical to sustaining production. Newmont leads the gold sector in gold reserves. As Tom mentioned, we've established a long history of exploration success and technical capability. On average, we target replacing 100% of our reserves, with two-thirds of that replacement achieved through exploration drilling and the remainder by converting resources to reserves through optimized mine plans, reducing costs, and, at times, pursuing value-creative acquisitions. Reserves replacement is a long-term process and needs to be measured as an average over time. In 2020, Newmont replaced over 80% of depletion despite the logistical challenges relating to COVID.
As you can see on this slide, Newmont's operating regions delivered an impressive 2020. In Australia, Boddington added nearly 2 million reserve ounces benefiting from improved mine plan efficiencies and supported by the autonomous haulage project. The addition of these reserve ounces extends mine life of Boddington into the 2040s, and it's an excellent example of how our Full Potential drives value in the business, including increasing ore reserves at our existing operation. Moving to Tanami. Over the last several years, reserves have grown by more than 250%, and resources have also increased by nearly 200%. 2020 was another successful year for this world-class asset. Over 700,000 ounces were added to reserves, driven by drilling at Auron and the Federation ore bodies. Additionally, 1.4 million ounces were added to resources from underground drilling and progress being made at the Oberon, one of our most prospective deposits.
As we mentioned in December, we look forward to providing more information on our progress at the Tanami Expansion 2 project, and we remain encouraged by the positive results we're seeing in the Tanami district. In South America, Merian continues to progress towards world-class status by adding an additional 800,000 ounces through drilling at the Merian 2 pit, in addition to reducing operating costs through Full Potential efforts. In North America, Porcupine converted resources to reserves at the Pamour layback. Éléonore, the team replaced over 90% of depletion as the mine also benefited from Full Potential cost improvements. While delivering on the conveyor material handling system at Musselwhite, the team developed designs, updated operating costs, and grade reconciliation, and it resulted in a net reduction of reserves of 200,000 ounces.
However, Musselwhite also underwent a Strategic Resource Development program, which we refer to as SRD. This is Newmont's proprietary program for maximizing value through optimized mining and process designs and sequencing. The team at Musselwhite will continue to optimize the strategy around its ore body. I'm very optimistic we'll see these ounces added back in the future. At Cripple Creek and Victor, we added approximately 160,000 ounces of gold reserves in 2020, partially offsetting depletion. This team is focused on the layback at the Cresson Pit and continues to evaluate the potential to go underground. Finally, in Africa at Ahafo, we offset depletion with 450,000 ounces of reserves additions. As you'll hear later from Marcelo, the Ahafo district remains one of our most exciting exploration opportunities in our portfolio.
At Akyem, the focus on 2020 was on resource conversion, of which 250,000 ounces were added, with increasing study work around layback options for potential underground. We're very proud of these results. We replaced 80% of gold depletion in a very challenging year and delivered it in a safe and responsible manner. In addition to our industry-leading gold reserves, Newmont has a significant exposure to other metals, which I'll now review on the next slide. Turning to slide 11. Newmont has 65 million gold equivalent ounces in reserves and 107 million gold equivalent ounces in resources, with exposure to copper, silver, lead, and zinc. Copper accounts for three-quarters of the gold equivalent ounces, with nearly 15 billion pounds in reserves and over 26 billion pounds in resources.
Often overlooked, these reserves and resource base of non-gold metals provides Newmont with a strong cash flow generator, which is not subject to gold price. With a production of one million to one and a half million gold equivalent ounces annually, it equates to about 10%-20% of our annual revenue. Turning to slide 12. I want to talk a little about how we are structured to deliver these consistent and repeatable results. Newmont's technical service organization includes world-class subject matter expertise in mining, processing, resource modeling, business improvement, and asset management. These professionals, while they're centrally managed, are fully integrated into supporting the site operations in the areas of technical, governance, continuous improvement, operational delivery, and strategy. Our technical and operating support capabilities include our in-house Denver-based Newmont Metallurgical and Exploration labs.
These labs are staffed by experienced technicians and scientists and play a key role in supporting our exploration and existing processing facilities with mineralogical and metallurgical test work. However, it's not just what we do to ensure robust reserves and resources, it's how we do it that makes the real difference. Starting in 2014, Newmont fundamentally altered the process to determine reserves. We've separated the groups that do the drilling from the people that do the resource modeling. This reduces bias and helps to ensure a globally consistent and repeatable process. Within technical services, a small team of highly capable geostatisticians and ore body modelers determine our reserves and resources. This team ensures consistent application of Newmont reserve modeling standards at all of our sites. We go through a very rigorous process of study and evaluation to ensure our reserves and resources meet internal profitability hurdles.
We use resource simulation techniques to define drill spacing rather than simply relying on general guidelines or static modeling methods. These efforts result in an annual reserve reconciliation that's within 2%, and it demonstrates we are not overly conservative or optimistic in our approach. In a clear separation between church and state, the review, sign-off, and overall governance of our reserve and resource reporting is managed by a separate team within technical services. The complexity and consistency required for ore reserve determination and reporting is simply too important to be managed with a decentralized operating model. As a result, our reserves and resources are not aspirational, they're real. As I mentioned earlier, reserve conversion is not just about drilling.
There are mine planning and operational and cost components as well. In Newmont's technical services organization, all of these elements are integrated. This allows us to have some of the world's best subject matter experts developing and directly contributing to the generation of our ore reserves at all of our sites. Additionally, centralizing this complex work allows a site-based team to focus on keeping our people safe and not distracting them from delivering on their operational plans. With that, I'll turn it over to Rob.
Thanks, Dean. Good morning, everyone. I will introduce Marcelo in a moment, but before I do, I wanted to talk a bit about the way we manage our operations at Newmont. Turning to slide 14. As Tom mentioned, we have the strongest and most sustainable portfolio in the gold industry. We remain focused on growing margins by applying operating, technical, and exploration discipline each and every day. As we announced in December, our production profile will be enhanced with the development of Ahafo North and Yanacocha Sulfides, both of which are slated for approval this year. As Dean discussed, our reserve and resource base is industry-leading and provides a stable foundation for the portfolio. Each of our nine world-class operations have at least 10 years of reserves available.
Exploration is fundamental to ensuring the longevity of our portfolio, and as you will see on slide 15, exploration is fully integrated across our business. As COO, I have accountability for Newmont's health, safety, and security group, our exploration and project efforts around the world, and our portfolio of 12 managed operations. The accountability I have for these groups results in natural alignment of those most responsible for delivering on our commitments. The ability to share knowledge, expertise, and talent across these four teams is something that can't be accomplished efficiently with a decentralized model. The integration of these groups ensures that we are able to rapidly replicate leading practices globally and apply them to each and every one of our assets. Only an integrated operating model can achieve this, and it truly differentiates Newmont. That is also true of exploration.
Ensuring our exploration teams work hand-in-hand with our projects and operation teams from the very start ensures that we are thinking early in the process of a new discovery and considering exactly how and when we are going to develop a mine, process the ore, and ultimately how it fits in with our existing operation and communities, including the eventual requirement to close the mine. The other benefit we have with the full integration of exploration with projects and operations is that we do not need to reinvent the wheel and duplicate efforts. With the majority of our exploration activities occurring near existing operations, we have familiarity not only with the geology and terrain, but also the permitting, regulatory, and community issues, and relationships surrounding each of our operations. Our ability to leverage our vast whole of Newmont knowhow certainly applies to how we approach health, safety, and security.
Turning to slide 16. Exploration is considered one of the highest-risk activities we do around the world, with our people often working in remote environments. For this reason, our approach to safety at all our exploration sites is no different to what we do across our operations. We apply the same rigorous safety framework and standards, including the fatality risk management program, our visible, felt, and engaged level of supervision, and the application of technology. One example of how we are applying technology to keep people safe is through the use of robotic drill rigs in our underground operations. In August of last year, we started using Titeline robotic diamond drill rigs at Tanami. The dual isolations of these rigs removes the risk of a person being fatally injured as a result of becoming entangled in rotating equipment.
We now have five rigs working underground at Tanami and have also deployed them at Musselwhite. In addition to a reduction in risk and soft tissue injuries, we've also seen an increase in our drilling productivities using these rigs. Safety and productivity really do go hand-in-hand. This is but one example of the power of our global portfolio and integrated operating model to rapidly replicate and deploy leading practices consistently around the world. Moving to slide 17 for a look at where we are focused on exploring. It goes without saying that often the best place to find gold is where gold already exists. Over 80% of our gold reserves and resources are located within or near our existing operations. As Tom mentioned, in these areas, we have established infrastructure and have developed strong community relationships.
Focusing our efforts in exploring and expanding these districts leverages our operations and allows us to continually extend mine life, as we've seen at Tanami. With the stability and depth of our brownfield portfolio, this allows us to also explore in some of the most prospective greenfield districts in the world with patience and thoughtfulness. 80% of our $250 million exploration budget in 2021 will be focused on advancing these near mine opportunities, primarily at Tanami with the current expansion at Oberon, Cerro Negro to explore our newly expanded land package, Peñasquito using our proprietary DSG technology, which Marcelo will touch on later, and at Ahafo testing additional opportunities at Ahafo South.
Newmont will invest the remaining $50 million of the exploration budget into the discovery of new districts, such as Esperance in the French Guiana, Coffee in the Yukon, and other prolific opportunities which may well become cornerstone assets for Newmont into the next 100 years. I'd now like to turn it over to Marcelo, our Senior Vice President, Exploration. Before I do that, I'd like to tell you a little bit about Marcelo. Marcelo joined Newmont in 2012 to lead the resource modeling function and instill the discipline and rigor across our business that Dean referenced earlier. Marcelo was appointed Newmont's Senior Vice President, Exploration at the end of 2018, has successfully integrated Goldcorp's and Newmont's exploration functions to create the largest global exploration team in the gold industry.
Prior to joining Newmont, Marcelo was mining sector leader for Golder Associates in South America. Marcelo holds a master's degree in geostatistics and a PhD in strategic planning from the University of Queensland in Australia. Marcelo's deep geologic expertise, coupled with his modeling and strategic planning experience, give him a unique perspective to identify opportunities and quickly capitalize on them. Dr. Godoy, over to you.
Thanks, Rob. Good morning, everyone. Turning to slide 18. As Tom mentioned at the beginning, exploration is a core competency and investment priority for Newmont. It's the foundation for growing our reserves and sustaining our production. This diagram captures the six key building blocks of our exploration success. First, at the base is expertise. At Newmont, we stand on the shoulders of giants, and we are proud of our culture of discoveries. Our geological knowhow, our systems, our processes have been developed and improved over a long period of time and continue to be state-of-the-art. Second, partnerships. They are the preferred mechanism to feed our exploration pipeline. These partnerships can be in the form of investments, alliances, and joint ventures. They allow Newmont to accelerate discoveries by gaining direct access to drill-ready projects. Third, land position.
It's no secret that land position is a key ingredient to discoveries, and the address makes all the difference to exploration success. It's not by chance that we have a land position of 59,000 sq km in the top prospective gold domains. In the following slides, I will provide an overview of Newmont's exploration portfolio. Fourth, safety and ESG. As Tom mentioned at the beginning, the explorers are the first ones to interact with community members. We have industry-leading ESG performance, and obtaining the license to explore is something we never take for granted. Fifth, technology. Over the past 80 years, Newmont has been an innovation leader in the industry and was responsible for a step change development in exploration technologies. Many of these are industry-leading practices today. Six, the team. We have a sector-leading team of 338 geoscientists and a proven operating model.
Talent makes all the difference in exploration success. But to obtain extraordinary performance, talent needs to be leveraged with an operating model that supports the business objectives while allowing for leadership and technical development, collaborative teamwork, and replication of best practices. If you have all these elements, finding ore bodies is not a matter of chance. We have made 28 major discoveries since 1990, hosting over 190 million ounces of gold. We have added 58 million ounces of reserves by the drill bit in the last decade alone. Turning to slide 19. The race to find new deposits is basically a race for geological knowledge, for understanding the broad-scale tectonic and magmatic processes that were at play when the deposits were formed. Whoever gets that right will not only understand why the deposit is there, but will know where to look for others.
This is important because it is no longer enough for us to be prospectors, hoping to find outcropping mineralization. We must understand the entire mineral system at regional and district scales and predict where gold is likely to be concentrated in the subsurface. This work is forensic in nature, and recent developments in data sciences are allowing us to tap into several decades of accumulated geological data as never before. One of the biggest technical challenges we face as explorers is finding undercover deposits. Make no mistake, most new significant discoveries going forward will be undercover and deeper. Undercover exploration is not only harder, but it is slower and more expensive. Newmont's approach to undercover exploration is to use targeted detection technologies driven by a mineral systems approach.
The real advantage we have in relation to our competitors is that we have been developing both knowhow and technologies to tackle undercover exploration for decades. As a result, we have an unmatched ability to see through cover and efficiently target the next generation of gold mines. Turning to slide 20. Newmont multigenerational leadership in the development of exploration technologies has led us to today's proprietary groundbreaking methodologies. This slide shows the key exploration technologies developed by Newmont over time, and which contributed to the discovery of several gold and copper deposits. The first one on the left is ground-induced polarization, known as IP, which was developed during the late 1940s and early 1950s. The image on the left gives you an idea of what the IP hardware looked like when it was first deployed to the field in 1948.
During the late 1980s, we started developing BLEG, bulk leach extractable gold, to address concerns related to the accuracy of assaying low levels of fine-grain gold in regional stream sediments. In 2003, we first deployed NewTEM, a time-domain, helicopter-towed EM system. The system was unique in its ability to map resistive silicification associated with gold mineralization. In 2009, NewDAS was deployed. NewDAS is a 3D IP distributed acquisition system. It was revolutionary in its ability to map chargeable bodies to greater depths and at much higher resolution. In 2015 and 2016, we had two major developments in surface geochemistry: Deep Sensing Geochemistry and TerraneMAP geochemistry. Our methods allow us to detect subtle signatures of mineralized systems which traditional geochemical surveys would overlook.
Our latest big technological advancement has been in combining our expertise in geophysics and data science to develop sophisticated codes for constrained joint inversion of geophysical data to model subsurface geology. Turning to slide 21 for an overview of our exploration programs. On this slide, we have a global view of our brownfields and greenfields programs, which cover 13 countries in five continents. As mentioned previously, a key driver of our exploration strategy is the focus on the development of mining districts, where ore is sourced from multiple deposits into one or more processing facilities. These mining complexes are attractive because they offer synergies of scale as well as significant reserve growth potential. Furthermore, geologically, we also recognize that gold is best found in areas of existing deposits. There are two basic components of any exploration strategy.
The first one has to do with the definition of what types of deposits we want to have in our portfolio, and the second is deciding where to look for them. At Newmont, we target those types of deposits which we know to have the highest chances of developing into long-life, low-cost mining districts. The next question, where to look for them, we answer through a global rate and rank process of geological and jurisdictional favorability, which allows us to target the world's top most prospective areas for the types and scale of deposits we seek. I would like now to go around the world and give you an idea of why we are excited about our greenfields portfolio. Then after that, we'll have a deeper dive into our near mine exploration opportunities. Turning to slide 22 and starting in North America.
At the very top is the Tintina Province, where the Coffee Project is located. The Tintina Gold Province runs from central Yukon into Alaska, following a curved belt depicted by the shaded area. In this domain, the deposits of interest are bulk mineable orogenic veins and intrusive related disseminated styles. The Tintina Province has an endowment of 192 million ounces of gold, including past production and identified resources and reserves. Individual deposits here often exceed 10 million ounces, and the province remains underexplored for additional world-class deposits. The Coffee Project is a greenfields open pit heap leach opportunity located in a district with significant upside potential. Since Newmont acquired Coffee, the project team has worked with the technical services and exploration functions to understand and grow the business case.
As a result, we have decided to move the project back to pre-feasibility, and exploration is now targeting additional high-value ounces to augment the project resource base. Out of an abundance of caution to reduce the chance of bringing COVID to the project area, it was decided to suspend drilling operations during the 2020 field season. However, our exploration crew did succeed in completing ground and airborne geophysics, soil and BLEG surveys. Turning to the Golden Triangle on slide 23. We also have a position in the prolific Golden Triangle in British Columbia, where the Galore Creek project is located. We estimate the gold endowment in the Golden Triangle to be in excess of 270 million ounces of gold. The Galore Creek project includes a significant land package of 1,678 sq km , with the potential for additional porphyry copper-gold as well as epithermal high-grade gold deposits.
The project is a 50/50 partnership between Newmont and Teck Resources, and is one of the largest undeveloped copper-gold projects in North America. Besides Galore Creek, we also have strategic investments in junior companies exploring in the Golden Triangle. Turning to the Superior Province on slide 24. The Superior Province is the largest Archean craton in the world, which has similar lithological and metallogenic characteristics to the Yilgarn Craton in Australia, where Boddington is located. In the field of view, total endowment exceeds 623 million ounces of gold, including over 70 million ounces produced from the Timmins Porcupine camp alone. We have been interested in the Superior Province for a long time, and in 2019, the acquisition of Goldcorp provided a unique opportunity to establish a strong position across the province.
With production hubs at Timmins, Musselwhite, and Éléonore, our total land position in the Superior Province is approximately 3,000 sq km . Given that the gold deposits in this province can demonstrate continuous economic mineralization for more than 1 km vertically, there is significant remaining discovery potential in the Superior Province, and we are already applying modern data integration technologies and unlocking the district's potential with recent identification of several new targets. Newmont is deploying and adapting our exploration toolkit to see through glacial cover. Turning to Mesa Central on slide 25. Mesa Central presents another great opportunity to leverage unique deposit knowledge and Newmont's proprietary technologies to explore and uncover. Our land holdings in this domain correspond to approximately 1,200 sq km . Discovered in 2004, the Peñasquito deposit represents a new gold deposit style within a historic silver-producing district.
The deposit occurs within two adjacent pipe-shaped bodies related to a porphyry origin at unknown depth. In addition to disseminated gold, the deposit also has an endowment exceeding 1.3 billion ounces of silver. It's worth mentioning that the original surface expression of this district was a small hill with showings of copper oxide completely surrounded by alluvial gravels of the Mazapil Valley. I will discuss this domain in more detail when I speak about Peñasquito. Turning to the Andes Domain on slide 26. The Andes Domain includes Chile, Peru, and Colombia, is estimated to have an endowment of 830 million ounces of gold. It's centered around the Yanacocha District. This domain includes several drill-ready exploration programs in the prolific Peru Miocene Magmatic Belt, which is ranked as Newmont's number one address globally for exploration success. Our total land position in the Andes Domain is 5,790 sq km .
Our 35 years presence in Peru allows us to leverage the geological knowledge developed over decades of mining and exploring these gold and copper systems while working in a known jurisdiction supported by mature and experienced local capabilities in sustainability, external relations, land and legal, and safety and security. Moving now to the Deseado Massif on slide 27. The Deseado Massif in Argentina includes Cerro Negro and extends into southern Chile, where we are also exploring for epithermal gold deposits. The Deseado Massif was recognized in the late 1980s as prospective for gold mineralization. Now, it has over seven active gold mines, an endowment estimated at 20 million ounces, and is emerging as a world-class epithermal gold province. Newmont owns the Cerro Negro gold mine and peripheral tenure of approximately 1,100 sq km . Known trends of gold-silver vein systems are projected to continue under post-mineral volcanic and sedimentary cover.
Our specialized exploration methodologies will be addressing such hidden targets. I will return to this domain when we talk about Cerro Negro. Turning to Guiana Shield on slide 28. The Guiana Shield includes Suriname, French Guiana, Guyana, and Brazil. We estimate the Guiana Shield to have an endowment of approximately 172 million ounces of gold. I would like to point out that these greenstone belts represent the extensions of the Paleoproterozoic greenstone belt of West Africa, where Ahafo and Akyem are located. They were separated during the tectonic rifting of the Atlantic Ocean. In a way, you could say that we are putting it back together. We clearly have an emerging mining district in the Guiana Shield. It's anchored by the Merian operation and with Esperance some 50 km away in French Guiana, poised to be our next mine in the Guiana Shield.
Our total land position in the Guiana Shield is nearly 2,000 sq km . Moving across the Atlantic to Africa on slide 29. We also have a strong presence in the West Africa Craton, a highly prospective province with an estimated endowment of 487 million ounces. It includes a series of greenstone belts, including the Ashanti and Sefwi belts, where Akyem and Ahafo are located. Our land position in the West Africa Craton is approximately 1,100 sq km . In addition to the two operations, we will soon be building Ahafo North. Since mining began at Ahafo in 2006, Newmont has added significant ounces to its resource and reserve base with the discovery of several deposits. Our recent studies of geological evolution, mineral zoning, and geophysical characterization of our deposits have provided capabilities to identify compelling targets that are poorly exposed or covered. I would like to pause here.
I draw your your attention to the geological map of Ghana on the left. Here you can see an extensive cover to the northeast that is depicted in beige. The greenstone belts you see in the southern part of the map don't really end when the cover starts. They are buried under it. When I talk about the superpower we have to detect deposits under cover, that's the type of terrain where we can apply that. Moving to the Nubian Shield on slide 30. The Nubian Shield includes several district-scale mineralized systems with world-class deposits and numerous gold and gold-copper occurrences. The Nubian Shield represents one of the last frontiers of exploration destination, where no modern exploration has been undertaken, and there is significant expected remaining endowment. We explore in Ethiopia through the Ezana JV.
The land package of 3,638 sq km has been screened with BLEG and has revealed a highly prospective emerging gold-copper terrain. We are targeting district-scale orogenic gold and gold-copper-rich VMS-style deposits. It's early days, but the results are encouraging with potential for the first Newmont discovery in the Nubian Shield. Turning to Japan on slide 31. Over the last three years, Newmont has established a strong position in the most prospective ground throughout Japan through our actively managed investments in Irving Japan and Japan Gold. Japan is the first world democracy with excellent infrastructure and a strong gold mining industry, but very little modern exploration. The mining law was revised in 2012 to reactivate the mining industry in Japan. For the first time, foreign companies were allowed to stake ground, explore, and mine.
Through these investments, we are targeting high-grade, low sulfidation, epithermal gold deposits, analogs of which include the existing high-grade Hishikari Mine in Japan, Waihi in New Zealand, and our own Cerro Negro operation in Argentina. Results from drilling to date have been very encouraging and confirmed the presence of a strong epithermal system and has confirmed that modern exploration approaches are very applicable to this exciting new exploration opportunity. Turning to Australia on slide 32. The Lachlan District in the Australian state of New South Wales is located in the highly ranked Macquarie Arc domain, where our primary targets are concealed copper-gold alkalic porphyries, like Cadia, and epithermal gold deposits, like Lihir. We have expanded our land exposure to 1,500 sq km working through JVs, alliances, and holding Newmont land tenure. We have successfully intercepted three fertile gold-copper porphyry systems so far.
The team continues to vector towards economic mineralization with a very active ongoing target development and drilling program. This completes our greenfields tour. Turning to slide 33 for our near-mine opportunities starting with Tanami. The Tanami orogenic gold deposits are hosted within Proterozoic-age sedimentary rocks. Gold occurs as visible coarse grain within sheeted quartz veins, focused by folding and coincident with district-scale northeast-south corridors. The Tanami district is highly prospective and underexplored due to its remoteness and extensive shallow cover. The Tanami underground mine is one of our world-class operations that continues to deliver quality, high-margin ounces. It has a strong reserve and resource base and produces consistently 500,000 ounces per year. Our knowledge of our existing deposits and ability to leverage off existing infrastructure will pave the way for future discoveries in the district.
The figure on the left shows a plan view projection of the Tanami underground deposits, highlighting reserve, resource, exploration targets, and mined-out areas. The exploration upside extensions are outlined by the dashed line. New repeat positions like the Auron Corridor already have ore grade intercepts from the very limited drilling to date. The figure in the middle is a view of the seismic cube that maps out the ore host units outlined in yellow. The large 3D cube allows us to define our key mineralized host stratigraphy beyond the mine footprint and efficiently target mineralized corridors, as shown in the plan view on the left. It also helps us identify and test new targets close to existing infrastructure more efficiently and confirms that the host units extend to greater depths than the currently defined exploration targets.
The figure on the right is a plan view showing our large 7,000 sq km ground position in the Tanami, and new opportunities including deposits such as Oberon, the historic Granites area, and several prospects in the district. The Oberon deposit is located only 28 km to the north of the current underground mine, and the pre-feasibility study is ongoing. Boddington, located 90 km southeast of Perth in Western Australia, is a gold-copper deposit hosted in the southwestern terrain of the Yilgarn Craton. Primary gold and copper mineralization consists of a network of thin fractures and veins controlled by shear zones and hosted by greenschist metamorphosed volcanics. This world-class asset, with a very large remaining gold and copper resources and reserves, is poised to become the world's first autonomous haulage gold mine, producing around 850,000 ounces per year with a current life of mine out beyond 2040.
Exploration target mineralization surrounds the existing pits and could extend the life of mine out to 2050. The figure on the left shows a north-south long section view through the Boddington deposit, highlighting current reserves, resources, and exploration target areas. This massive deposit is mineralized between the existing north and south pits and remains open at depth. The dashed line shows a pit outline optimized for a $1,500 gold price. The optimization is constrained by drilling, especially in the area between the current pits, where drilling is planned in 2021. Holes in pink highlight recent encouraging gold results. The figure on the right illustrates the large ground position, in gray, we have around Boddington. Our strong ground position covers the majority of the prospective and underexplored Saddleback greenstone belt.
A renewed exploration effort, including the acquisition of new regional geophysical data, has led to improved deposit understanding and opportunities to find additional mineralization in the district, which would further extend the life at this world-class asset. Turning to Peñasquito on slide 35. Peñasquito has reserves and resources which underpin a business plan extending out beyond 10 years. The successful conversion of existing resources into reserves can potentially extend mine life to 2040. Peñasquito is a bulk mineable open pit gold, silver, zinc, lead deposit centered on two diatreme breccia complexes emplaced in carbonate rocks. The long section on the left shows the Peñasco and Chile Colorado pits. The current resource and reserves models are shown in dark blue and gold respectively. The light blue dots are the proposed 2021 exploration drill holes.
The Peñasco and Chile Colorado breccia bodies host the bulk of the gold and polymetallic mineralization at Peñasquito. We have identified and drilled mineralization within our existing pit shells, requiring drilling to convert to reserves. Additional opportunity exists to drill a long strike of structures which act as conduits for mineralization. The map on the right shows Newmont's land position in the district. The light blue polygon represents 100% Newmont, and the dark blue polygon represents the Festiva JV. The image shows a series of drill targets in Mazapil and Jagüey Valleys. Newmont's land package is approximately 650 sq km, with less than 20% currently explored with modern and effective exploration techniques. Historically, exploration has focused on outcropping prospects. However, our geologic model for Peñasquito style mineralization predicts it will occur in recessive rocks beneath the valley fill cover, which means blind to surface.
Our key focus for this year, with the exploration budget of $10 million, is to apply Newmont's technology such as BLEG, DSG, and geophysical modeling to explore undercover for Peñasquito style ore bodies. Turning to Ahafo on slide 36. As I mentioned before, the Ahafo mine is located in the prolific West Africa Craton. It exploits a series of greenschist hosted orogenic deposits. The total production to the end of 2020 was over 7 million ounces of gold. The figure on the left shows a long section covering from left to right, the Apensu, Awonsu, and Amoma pits. The light blue shade indicates the current areas targeted for resource conversion. We see extensive opportunities to extend mine life by building extensions of the known deposits open at depth and between existing open pits.
Ahafo is a great example of a developing mining district. We started mining at Apensu and Subika pits, built the Subika underground mine under the Subika pit, expanded the Ahafo mill. Now we're about to start building Ahafo North with a standalone processing facility. Ahafo North will add 260,000 ounces to Ahafo's annual production. Ahafo North also shows upside potential to add ounces on both lateral and depth extends. The Ahafo district is highly prospective with a land holding of over 950 sq km. The figure on the right depicts Newmont's tenement outlines, as well as the deposits and prospects along the Kenyasi thrust. The exploration budget for Ahafo in 2021 is the highest of any of our near mine programs at $22 million. It will focus on resource and reserve conversion and brownfields targets. Turning to Yanacocha on slide 37.
Yanacocha has been a key gold producer over the past three decades and has the largest gold endowment of this class of mineral deposits, epithermal high sulfidation disseminated gold. Yanacocha has produced over 40 million ounces of gold and 30 million ounces of silver and is on the brink of starting a new chapter with the onset of Yanacocha sulfides. This will unlock the potential to develop several more underexplored targets in the district. The long section on the left displays the current resource and reserves for Yanacocha. The dashed black line marks the oxide to sulfide contact, highlighting the exploration potential that remains within the sulfides. The red arrows show the preferred structural trends that are believed to be prospective for growth. Internal mineral probability assessment of Yanacocha landholdings suggest that Newmont has mined about half of the district's potential. Historic exploration was only focused on oxide mineralization.
The current reserves at Yanacocha corresponds to a mine life until 2041. Our strategy is to explore deeper and outward to realize the Full Potential of this world-class district and extend mine life past 2050. The figure on the right shows a map of Yanacocha's property boundary with existing deposits, projects, and prospective targets. A district-wide assessment has been conducted identifying 48 targets within the Yanacocha property limits. We are leveraging Newmont's exploration tools to uncover potential deposits at depth, as well as outboard from the main mineralized trend. Auron is a great example of a hidden potential, having already defined 1 million ounces of resources to date, and remains open along strike. Turning to Cerro Negro on slide 38. Cerro Negro is a low sulfidation epithermal gold deposit located in a highly prospective and underexplored region of the Deseado Massif in Southern Argentina.
Our exploration teams rank Cerro Negro as one of the most prospective land package in our global portfolio. The photo in the middle demonstrates how resistive the quartz veins are to erosion in the harsh Patagonian climate. Here, the Eureka vein in the west district outcrops like a man-made wall. The Bajo Negro vein long section on the left display recent results, which are generally better than model predictions. The intercept at depth is a key upside and suggests a secondary mineralized horizon and has the potential to completely open the eastern district. The map on the right illustrates our landholdings in the Cerro Negro area. The area depicted by the light blue outline is our original concession, while the dark blue outline shows the land we acquired since the Goldcorp acquisition.
Since then, Newmont has doubled its landholding in the region to establish a dominant foothold of approximately 1,000 sq km. As shown on the map, our concessions are dominantly underlain by prospective geology, as seen in the beige underlay. We have recognized two main northeast-trending corridors hosting most of the mineralization discovered in the east and west district. We also completed a district-wide assessment identifying over 70 new prospective occurrences. The 2021 exploration budget for Cerro Negro is $14 million. We want to take Deep Sensing Geochemistry surveys to rapidly screen and identify additional prospective structures within the land package. We also plan to undertake a remote sensing survey to map Cerro Negro style alteration. Turning to Porcupine on slide 39.
At the Porcupine gold mines, most of the exploration and new reserve additions have come from Hoyle Pond, which is a relatively recent discovery compared to other deposits in Timmins. Hoyle Pond has produced in excess of 4 million ounces. The deposit has been tested to depths of 2,000 m. It still demonstrates high-grade continuity and is open at depth. The figure on the left shows a perspective view looking north of the Hoyle Pond mine trend. The figure shows current reserve resource and exploration target and historical drilling in red. The figure on the bottom shows a plan view of the Timmins mining camp, demonstrating Newmont's land position relative to active mines and deposits. Newmont controls much of the prospective geological corridor, the Porcupine-Destor fault zone, marked in red.
The entire belt proximal to Hoyle Pond is underexplored and improved data integration is unlocking additional targets both east and west of the current footprint. Several bolt-on opportunities are being evaluated, which leverage off the existing infrastructure and could extend the life of Hoyle Pond. The Dome Mill is expected to run at capacity for the next several years. Additional ore sources, which could offset lower-grade ore, are being considered as part of a larger rate and rank exercise in conjunction with Full Potential. This project will result in the generation of exciting targets in a world-class camp with the goal of sustaining and growing the Porcupine district well into the future. Turning to Borden on slide 40. Borden is classified as an orogenic gold deposit hosted by highly metamorphosed and sheared rocks.
At Borden, we have recently been successful in tracing the known deposit eastward, an additional two km along its hosted structure, the Genesis deformation zone. The land package, as it is now, was fully consolidated in 2015, five years after the discovery of Borden. Even on the scale of the Borden project, the land package is new and unexplored by us, resulting in the large upside potential. The figure on the left is a long section showing the Borden deposit. It shows the current reserves and resources and recent results on the step-out drilling, demonstrating the down-plunging extension of the ore body. This step-out target provides the foundation for future conversion to reserves to extend the life of mine. Continuing infill and delineating the extent of the mineralization will be a focus in 2021.
The Borden deposit remains open down plunge. The image on the right side of this slide shows the Borden deposit with respect to the large land package of more than 1,000 sq km . The dashed line shows the Borden belt, which is the interpreted continuation of the lithological package that hosts the Borden deposit, and which fall within Newmont's land package. Borden exploration will be leveraging Newmont exploration tools and expertise, DSG, for example, to help focus on advanced exploration targets, both near mine and regional. Prior to Borden discovery 10 years ago, little exploration work was done in the area. Turning to Éléonore on slide 41, the immediate focus at Éléonore is on reserve and resource conversion to extend mine life. The exploration upside within the mine corresponds to down-plunge extents of the known mineralization.
Recently, new targets have been identified outside the mine that have had limited or no previous exploration work. The figure on the left is a long section displaying current resource, reserve, and exploration target areas. The pink dots are 2020 drill intercepts, which return encouraging results, both laterally and at depth. The blue light dots show the position of planned 2021 exploration holes. The 2021 exploration budget for Éléonore is $7 million. The figure on the right is a satellite image showing Éléonore's land tenure. The red star indicates the position of the Éléonore mine. The new brownfield targets are represented by the yellow stars. We have recently gained significant advancements in understanding the district-scale geology, which has resulted in new exploration targets to be tested in 2021. The new geological interpretation is based on integrating and interpreting all available internal and publicly available data.
This work has identified new untested target areas outside the mine. In order to accelerate exploration, DSG surveys are being prioritized over new defined targets to screen prospective areas undercover. Now turning to Musselwhite on slide 42. Musselwhite is an orogenic greenstone-hosted gold deposit located in Ontario, Canada. The Musselwhite mine has been in operation for over 25 years, and the deposit remains open at depth with known significant mineralization. The figure on the left shows a long section displaying the current resource, reserve, and exploration target areas at Musselwhite. The in-mine exploration target areas are depicted by the light blue shade. As you can see, the deposit remains open at depth, up to 2.5 km down plunge from the end of the current reserves. Also, there are several upper mine exploration targets to be drilled in 2021.
The figure on the right shows a map indicating our landholdings in the North Caribou greenstone belt. The area shaded gray indicates prospective rocks located throughout the belt, which have had limited modern exploration, providing an opportunity to apply Newmont's exploration technologies. A number of prospects throughout our landholdings are depicted by yellow stars. The ongoing ore deposit footprint study will help us understand the Musselwhite geochemistry so we can apply our learnings to regional scale exploration. The exploration budget for Musselwhite in 2021 is $8 million and includes drilling the PQD and Lynx North extensions from underground, test upper mine targets to increase mining flexibility, and drilling Redwings to the north to confirm continuity. With that, I will turn it back over to Tom.
Thanks, Marcelo. Wrapping up on slide 44. As you've seen today, Newmont has engineered a portfolio of operations, projects, and an exploration pipeline in top-tier jurisdictions that clearly lead the gold industry. It is the quality of this portfolio, along with the capability of our people, that gives us the confidence to be continuing to create value and improve lives for many decades to come. I'll now turn it over to the operator to open the line for questions.
The first question comes from Jackie Przybylowski of BMO Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
All right. Yeah, thanks very much. This was a really great presentation, and I really appreciate all the detail. I have a question, I guess, about the slide that you showed on the greenfield section, when Marcelo said the Andes is still your number one address. Can we interpret that to mean that if you are looking to move forward with future projects or sanction future projects, that something like Norte Abierto, NuevaUnión or Agua Rica would be a high priority? I recognize those are joint ventures, so there may be other factors at play, but would that be a higher priority for you than maybe some of your other greenfield projects?
Thanks, Jackie. It's Tom here, and I don't think I've spoken to you this year, so Happy New Year to you. We're already February. Certainly, it's the number one address in terms of our next big project, Yanacocha sulfides. That's going to occupy us for a good portion of this decade, building and commissioning that. Then two of the three mega projects, and we'd only ever do one of those at any one time, are Norte Abierto and NuevaUnión . We're still doing the work for which of those two, Agua Rica or Galore Creek, would come forward first at the very end of this decade. Marcelo, I'd like you just to talk to your perspective when you talk about that number one post address from an exploration perspective.
Thanks, Tom. Look, that Miocene magmatic belt is extremely prospective, and we are very excited about the opportunity there. The real major focus of our greenfield exploration in that domain is gold. We are really looking for gold deposits. As you know, Norte Abierto, NuevaUnión have a big component of copper. It fits very well in our strategy going forward to focus on the gold projects we have over the next 10 years in the Andes domain, and let those large copper projects play along as we go. Thank you.
That's great. Thank you. If I could ask one other question. You went through a pretty detailed overview on all of the assets, but specifically on Coffee. Do you see Coffee as being big enough to be a standalone Newmont-sized mine at some point in the future? Is there more consolidation in that area that would be necessary before that'd be developed, do you think?
Thanks, Jackie. We certainly see the opportunity for it to be a mine of a major size within the Newmont portfolio. The potential for it to be a standalone mine, like a Ahafo North or a Merian, that sort of scale. It's one of the reasons that as we acquired that project, it was pushing forward too quickly to be developed, but we put it back into pre-feasibility. That's the work, again, I'll get Marcelo just to talk to how we think about the exploration potential of that Coffee deposit and the work that we want to do back at pre-feasibility to do more drilling, to prove up what we think might be there that can then support a mine of that sort of scale. Again, I'll pass to you, Marcelo.
Thanks, Tom. Look, the growth strategy for Coffee is to expand the resource and reserves to double the base case oxide mining opportunity we have there. We have an aspirational target of 4 million ounces at current grades. Of course, we'll take any better grade that you can find, that 2019 and 2020 exploration target generation has delineated about 40 km of untested structural corridors in the property with near-surface satellite oxide gold targets with potential for future testing. Very excited about the opportunity there.
Oh, fantastic. Thanks, Marcelo. Thanks, Tom. I'll let somebody else take a question. Thank you very much.
Great. Thanks, Jackie.
The next question comes from Tanya Jakusconek of Scotiabank. Please go ahead.
Great. Good morning, gentlemen. Thanks for the call. I wanted to focus on optionality in your portfolio. I'm very intrigued that you run your reserves at $1,200 gold price, and thank you for providing the sensitivity at higher gold prices. I don't know who wants to take the question, but if you look at your portfolio and you look at your mine plans and where to look at some at maybe $1,400 or $1,500 gold price, is there anything around your open pits that you could incorporate into your mine plan today at very little capital and still make money?
Thanks, Tanya. What I'll do is I'll ask Dean Gehring, who's accountable for our long-term planning team, to give you an overview of how we think about that work and then where there are potential opportunities that we , what we do dynamically on a day-to-day, week-to-week basis, but also how we think about managing our mine plans in the current metal environment, whilst we want to very deliberately maintain that discipline in our business to be running at the bottom of the price cycle. Dean, I'll get you to pick that one up, and feel free to introduce Mark Casper, your key guy in that area as well, to Tanya and the people on the phone.
Sure. Thanks, Tom. Tanya, thanks for the question. It is a good one, in particular in the price environments that we're seeing today. There's two components that I think are important to consider into your question. One is, there's actually a short-term optimization opportunity
We do revenue-based ore control. We look at our day-to-day, week-to-week, month-to-month optimization opportunities based on what the prices are in that current price environment. We'll actually make ore selection and processing decisions based on that. We're actually doing, you could say, real-time optimization. Now, more to your question specifically, and I'll also turn it over to Mark Casper here in a minute, and I'll introduce him as well. We do look at each mine separately to understand what the sensitivities are. As you pointed out, you saw the sensitivity in the chart, and that's obviously global. As an example, we've looked at our CC&V operation here in Colorado, and we recognized an opportunity to look at a shorter-term, higher-price environment that allowed us to expand that open pit mine, which will help bridge us to what we believe will be a potential underground opportunity.
We continue to look at site by site. What I'll do is I'll turn it over to Mark Casper. He's our VP of Resource Evaluation and Mine Planning. Mark, maybe you can just talk a little bit about what that process looks like and how we look at each site on an individual basis.
Thanks, team. As you mentioned, it was a pretty good description. We do tend to go through a fairly rigorous evaluation. Whilst $1,200 is our base fundamental pricing, we're continually looking at optimization behind the scenes and trying to expand and look for opportunities. They're pretty complex trade-offs. They cover mine process capacities, grind throughput recovery, cut-off grades, stockpiles, and the like. At the same time, we're also looking for smaller, incremental development making opportunities that can pay themselves back relatively quickly as well. All of that's normally framed in a ranging analysis, so we can look at the pricing and time matrix and really see where we've got some real opportunities. The whole process is designed to create a discussion about understanding those trade-offs and how we want to utilize them. Thanks, Dean.
Just coming back to it. If you were to look at your mines today, the big open pits, is there anything that you can see that, with very little capital and mining today, that you could make money at these prices?
Yeah, I think so. It's also dependent on your view of value. We can make decisions in the short term by lowering cut-off that allows us to increase our overall life of asset reserves and the amount of metal that we extract. We can look at cut-off grade increases that could increase head grades in the shorter term, as long as you've got the capacity to do so. We have those opportunities around most, if not all, of our open pits. The question will come down to how do we want to assess those trade-offs, and where do we present preferences, I suppose, within that trade-off matrix. We are currently looking at that for all of our open pits, as well as the underground as well.
Okay, great. Thanks.
Thanks, Tanya.
The next question comes from Mike Jalonen of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Oh, hi, Tom, and everyone.
Hey, Mike.
I just had three questions. The first on Coffee, going back to the earlier question. As you know, 2.14 million ounces M&I resources, grading 1.2 g. From what I heard, Newmont's plan for 2021 is to delineate higher grade mineralization. Correct me if I heard that wrong. The reception in my basement here is not very good. How much higher does the grade need to go to move it back into reserves, or is that just part of the issue? I ask because the producing Eagle Mine in Victoria has a grade of 0.65, and as I mentioned, it's in production. That's my first question. I'll pass the other two at the end.
Thanks, Mark. Again, I'll ask Marcelo to talk. If you could just talk Mark through our 2021 exploration program, what we're planning to do in that area on the ground, and then how we're thinking about grade versus volumes.
Thanks, Tom. Look, as I mentioned before, we have huge untapped structural corridors at the property. Really the focus for this year is to unravel the opportunities we have there. We have been with all the geophysics and solid geochemistry work we did last year. We are currently working out that information and generating new targets. Yes, the problem is we would like to have more grade in the project. If we had more grade in that project right now, the project would be across the line. That's why we moved the project back to exploration to go and capture more value, both increasing value and increasing grade. Back over to you, Tom.
Thanks. Thanks, Marcelo. Back to you, Mark.
Okay, thanks a lot. Just one for Musselwhite. It's kind of a question that's been asked for years. From my memory, as you know, Tom, exploration just keeps pushing that zone to the PQ Deeps to the north and deposit's getting deeper, nearly 2 km . Just ask this question of Placer Dome Goldcorp, now Newmont, when do you think it starts to make sense to start sinking a shaft to the north? Those most recent drills spots looked pretty spectacular.
Thanks, Mike. I get Dean to pick this question up, and it goes to the work we have done at Musselwhite over this last year around, and Dean mentioned a bit in the presentation about strategic resource development. Dean, maybe get you to pick up how we've looked at that ore body and its development path with that program and where mining at ore depth is starting to shape up.
Thanks, Tom. Mike, that is a question that has come up often, as you point out. It has been on the radar for a while, and almost as a result, it starts to lead people to believe that is the optimum and maybe ultimate solution. As I mentioned in the slide presentation, I talked about our proprietary Strategic Resource Development process, and we applied that at Musselwhite, and we learned a lot of very interesting things. What I'll do is I'll turn it back over to Mark Casper, who leads that group, Strategic Resource Development, and let him talk about some of the insights that we've learned about Musselwhite after the last round of work that we've done there.
Well, thanks, Dean. Just talking a little bit about SRD, Musselwhite was one of the first full deployments we did of this new process. The journey was fantastic. We experienced learnings throughout that I think gave us the insights where we can see where Musselwhite can go and what its potential is. I think one of the, probably the more important parts is it challenged some of the traditional thinking and norms that we had about Musselwhite, that it was all about major infrastructure on the North Shore.
Through some fairly diligent work and optimization modeling, the team collectively has been able to come up with some solutions that show incremental opportunities around ventilation, which was our primary constraint, and development on the main heading that allows us to get pretty much about 80% of the expected benefits that we would have got from putting a major infrastructure deployment over on the North Shore. I think there's several other learnings about how the different aspects of the ore body between PQ Deeps and Well and Redwings all work together in that kind of balance of production as it relates to the physical constraints. Now we've been really happy with what we've been able to do there so far. We're still on that journey, I think my assertion of Musselwhite's potential has grown significantly in the last year and a half.
Okay. Well, thanks. I guess my last question goes to Porcupine underground. Maybe, Tom, in the press release, I'm learning there's so much material, and thanks for all the material. I echo Jackie's comment, great slides and great presentation by everyone. You guys should do this annually. How much of the 1.1 million ounces Porcupine underground reserve, how much is that broken down by Hoyle Pond and Borden? Is there a breakdown, or I couldn't quite figure that out from the slides.
Sure. Mike, what I'll do is, again, Dean, I might get you to introduce Don Doe. I think Don's probably best placed to give you that breakdown, Mike.
Thanks, Tom. I agree. Mike, just continuing on Tom's comment, Don Doe is with us also today, and he is our Group Executive of Resource and Reserves. As I mentioned earlier, he's part of that separation of church and state. He and Mark both report to me, but while they work together, they have very different accountabilities as it relates to the development and governance of our ore reserves. Don, I'll turn it over to you.
Thanks, Dean. I'm looking to pull the numbers right now, and actually my system is a little slow. If I could just get back to this question offline, and I can answer in more detail.
Okay. I was just looking for a breakdown. Otherwise, okay. Well, that's all my questions, Tom and everyone. Thank you.
Certainly, I can get that to you.
Thanks, Don.
The next question comes from Anita Soni of CIBC. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, gentlemen. Could I get some idea about the layback at Boddington? Can you give us an idea of what the capital would be involved there? Similarly for Merian, what kind of capital would be required to access that layback?
Thanks, Anita. Rob, this might be a good one for you if you've got those numbers handy. Otherwise, we can circle back with you, Anita. The layback of the northern pit at Boddington, I think you're talking about there, Anita, and then the Merian layback. Rob, do you have those numbers at your fingertips?
Yeah.
Is that something we'll circle back and get to, Anita?
Tom, thanks, and hi, Anita. Unfortunately, I don't have those at my fingertips today. If we can circle back with you, that'd be great.
Sure. I guess I would round it out with all the other two additions for Tanami, as a specific addition as well. That'd be great. Thank you.
No worries, Anita. We can certainly get Eric to pick up with you and take you through those details.
The next question comes from John Tumazos of John Tumazos Very Independent Research. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much for taking my question and the presentation. Congratulations on the very good conservatively framed results. There were a large number of ounces of Goldcorp that you took out of reserves, pending your own scrutiny now almost two years in your possession. I haven't looked up the exact number. Do you think that all of those and more will be back on the books a year from now? It sounds like you're optimistic about every project. I'm just trying to gauge how quickly it comes back and how much better it was even than what Goldcorp reported.
Thanks, John. Again, Marcelo, I'll tee you up for this question with John and certainly, a lot of our investment is in and around those properties and doing the resource reserve conversions. I'll get Marcelo to give you his considered view. Go ahead, Marcelo.
Thanks, Tom. John, we are getting back on track on those sites, John. We have been working really hard over the last couple of years to get into the rhythm of converting the exploration target into resource, into reserve. This year, this is the region where we are putting more funds for exploration. Those sites, as you can see in the results, those reserve grades are the lowest ones in the portfolio. We believe that this year is the year where we are going to turn the coin on this, and we are going to move those sites to the same level of conversion and cost that you see in other Newmont legacy assets. I'm pretty confident that from this year on, we are going to see a significant improvement in the reserve and resources on the Canadian sites, mostly.
We see Peñasquito the same, Cerro Negro is our engine of reserves going forward. We are also going to see a lot of reserves coming out of that site.
If I could ask one more. Simplified, 1.21 of the 1.49 million ounce depletion was Nevada Gold Mines' equity stake. There's big lumps as Goldr ush would come into reserves with more documentation and permits, Fourm ile and more of the Getchell underground. What year do you think those big lumps are going to come into reserve that'll make Nevada Gold Mines look like it has a wonderful epic year? We realize these lumps aren't smooth, and we don't want to think things are bad just because there was depletion this year, because we know there's more coming.
Yeah. Thanks, John. I think that's a question probably best asked of Barrick as the operator rather than us. Getting in front of them, certainly Fourm ile is a Barrick asset. That's got to work through its process. I think that in terms of particularly the Goldr ush question, I think that's a question for the Barrick team as they work through their reserve resource statements and the like.
Thank you. I have to try.
Whilst I've still got the microphones, with Mike still on the line, of the Porcupine underground, 700,000 ounces is Borden and 400,000 ounces is Hoyle. Mike, hopefully you have that data. I think we had another question.
The next question is a follow-up from Anita Soni of CIBC. Please go ahead.
You there, Anita?
Hang on a second. I was on mute. Just a question on Éléonore. I was just wondering, the infill drilling that you have there, are you seeing lower grades? The grades dropped year-over-year. We don't have the full picture on depletion yet because we don't have Q4 grades. Just from my assumptions, I'm seeing that kind of like a 3.6 g per ton addition or replacement. I'm just trying to understand where you guys were drilling there and are there opportunities in future on that one?
Thanks, Anita. Marcelo, again, I'll get you to pick up Anita's question just as you're cracking up the microphone. Anita, we're very pleased that this year's just gone by as the first year in five, which is essentially what it's been like, that we have largely replaced depletion. We're very pleased with the exploration effort and the work that's been done to get Éléonore into good shape. Marcelo, I'll get you to pick up Anita's specific question.
Thanks, Tom. Look, the results were very encouraging these years for Éléonore, both at depth and close to the surface, where we are very excited to find really high grade around that place. As Tom mentioned, we are very happy with the results for Éléonore this year. We almost replaced full depletion at Éléonore, and we have an increase in reserve at Éléonore, which is the first time in its history that we are seeing that. The big change around at Éléonore. So we are seeing more high grade further at depth and up close to surface. We do expect to see ounces coming into reserves next year with the program we have designed right now. We are also very excited about the land package and the targets we have developed this year for Éléonore.
We are going to be moving rigs there as soon as the ice subsides.
Great. This reminds me of the whole Éléonore crown pillar thing. Is that going to be a future target for you or are you happy to leave that piece on surface?
Yeah. We are not exploring that scope right now, but it's a possibility that we'll be open to in the future.
All right. Thank you very much.
Right. Thanks, Anita.
This concludes the question and answer session. I would like to turn the conference back over to Tom Palmer for closing remarks.
Thank you, operator, and thank you everyone for taking the time, making an investment in time to go through the information we've provided. I know we've put a lot of information out there today and over the last hour and a half or so. Please, if you've got any follow-up questions as you process that information, please get in touch with Eric and the team, and we're more than happy to sit down with you and go through your questions. Thank you all very much for making the time to go through what I think is a very exciting story for the Newmont organization that's going to put us in good stead for a very, very long period of time. Thank you, everyone. Please have a good day.
The conference has now concluded. Thank you for attending today's presentation. You may now disconnect.