Thanks, Jackie. Thank you all for joining us this morning. It's certainly great to see some people in the room. I think this time last year it was me and Mark Bristow were the only two people in the room. It's nice to have a few more faces out there. Before I begin, can I invite you to review our cautionary statement on the next slide, and we'll move into the presentation. 2022 has been a unique and challenging year for Newmont and the mining industry as a whole. Over the last nine months, we have observed the continued impacts from the pandemic, Russia's invasion of Ukraine, an increasingly competitive labor market, and the highest global inflation rates in 40 years.
Yet, in this environment, Newmont benefits from over 100 years of history and experience, differentiating ourselves in four key areas. First and foremost, Newmont has a long history of leading change in our approach to environmental, social, and governance matters. These practices have been embedded in our culture and strategy and are woven into the very fabric of our company. Second, Newmont has created an unmatched global portfolio of world-class operations and projects with both the scale and mine life to sustain our business and continue leading the industry for decades to come. Third, these assets are managed through our integrated operating model, which is supported by a deep bench of experienced leaders and a proven track record of delivering value.
Finally, our disciplined approach to capital allocation allows us to maintain financial strength and flexibility by balancing steady reinvestment into our business with industry-leading returns to our shareholders. At Newmont, our core values are safety, sustainability, integrity, inclusion, and responsibility. Together, they are fundamental to how we run our business, where we choose to operate, and how we conduct ourselves on a daily basis. We take pride in being a values-driven organization with a clear purpose. We remain committed to high standards for accountability and transparency, and we consistently rank among the most transparent companies in the S&P 500. This commitment, along with Newmont's leading ESG practices, have positioned us as the gold industry's recognized sustainability leader. We are focused on creating long-term value for all of our stakeholders by delivering safer, more efficient, and reliable operations.
Responsibly developing and operating our assets in a broad range of top-tier jurisdictions while delivering on our commitments to host governments and communities. Proactively managing risks and addressing the emergent issues that face our industry and our world today. Most importantly, conducting our activities transparently and fostering trust-based relationships, which is a fundamental principle that is more important today than ever before. To navigate the challenges in today's unprecedented and evolving market environment, we will need to leverage our leading ESG practices, our integrated operating model, and importantly, the strength and depth of our world-class asset base. At Newmont, we have created a robust and diverse portfolio of operations, along with a pipeline of more than 20 organic projects with the scale and mine life to deliver strong long-term results.
Newmont will produce more than six million ounces of gold each year and almost 2 million gold equivalent ounces from copper, silver, lead, and zinc. Combined, that is nearly 8 million gold equivalent ounces per year for at least the next decade, the most of any company in our industry. Among our 12 operating mines and two joint ventures, nearly 90% of our attributable gold production comes from top-tier jurisdictions because we firmly believe that where we choose to invest and operate matters. Underpinning our portfolio is a robust foundation of reserves and resources, which combined with the gold industry's best organic project pipeline, provides the pathway to steady production and cash flow well into the 2040s.
Our operations and projects are managed through a proven integrated operating model, and at Newmont, we are able to attract and develop a team of experienced leaders and technical experts who have a strong track record of delivering long-term value. Through the strength of Newmont's portfolio and integrated operating model, we maintained a disciplined and balanced approach to capital allocation, a key component in sustainably managing a mining business through commodity cycles. Our capital allocation priorities remain unchanged and follow a clear hierarchy. First and foremost, to maintain the industry's strongest balance sheet with financial strength and flexibility. Second, to reinvest in our business through exploration and organic growth.
Finally, to return excess cash to shareholders through dividends and opportunistic share buybacks. I'll take a moment to step through each of these priorities, explaining their significance to Newmont and how they work together in order for us to deliver long-term stable outlook. Underpinned by the largest production base in the sector, Newmont has established the industry's strongest balance sheet, providing both strategic and tactical resilience in the current uncertain global economic conditions. We have made a deliberate effort over a number of years to build a very robust platform by growing our cash balances to $4.3 billion with total liquidity of $7.3 billion, responsibly managing our long-term debt through refinancing at historically low coupon rates in 2020, and again in 2021.
This included the launch of the mining industry's first sustainability-linked bond, further aligning our financial strategy with our ESG commitments. Achieving a net debt to EBITDA ratio of 0.3 x, well below our target of 1 x. With an investment-grade balance sheet and no debt due until 2029, Newmont is in a strong financial position, allowing us to be resilient and agile in times of market instability, while we continue to build a profitable and sustainable future. From this robust foundation, our next capital allocation priority is to sustainably reinvest in value-accretive projects from our industry-leading organic project pipeline. Our long-term outlook assumes an annual investment of around $1 billion in sustaining capital, $600 million to $800 million in development capital, and $400 million in exploration and studies.
Combined, this is an average investment of at least $2 billion every year, a critical component in Newmont's strategy to sustain strong production levels and improve margins over the long term. We have entered a period of meaningful reinvestment as we continue to advance our near-term projects, including the construction of a mile-deep production shaft and the associated infrastructure at Tanami in Australia's Northern Territory, the development of our new mine, Ahafo North in Ghana, and the Yanacocha Sulfides project in Peru. As we announced last week, we have made the disciplined decision to resequence our Yanacocha Sulfides project for several important reasons. To manage project execution risk, to move out of a period of significant inflation, and to balance our development capital cash flows.
To support this decision, I've also taken one of my best leaders in Dean Gehring to review the scope and pace of this project. Dean is uniquely qualified to provide leadership and oversight for both this project and our existing operations at Yanacocha. On the back of a strong balance sheet and reinvesting into our business, our final capital allocation priority is to return excess cash to our shareholders. Two years ago, Newmont was the first in the gold industry to announce a clear dividend framework, providing our shareholders with a sustainable base dividend calibrated at our reserve price assumption of $1,200 per ounce. In addition, our shareholders have the potential to receive between 40% to 60% of the incremental free cash flow we generate at gold prices above our base assumption.
Now, as we do at this time every year, we are currently working through our annual business planning process. As part of this exercise, there are two key inputs to our dividend framework that we are critically reviewing. The first, and as I've been discussing for some time now, is the long-term gold price and the assumption we use for both reserve pricing and project approvals. This assumption is a key input for determining the payout level of our base dividend. The second key input is the free cash flow we expect to generate above this base level, and this is impacted by the current global economic environment that we are all operating in. Over the next two months, we will finalize and our board will approve our business plan.
We will then provide a comprehensive update on these two key inputs and the associated outputs with our long-term outlook as part of our 2023 guidance webcast in early December. However, I can assure you that we clearly understand the importance of returning cash to our shareholders, and we have a proven track record of doing so. Having returned $3 billion through dividends since we led the industry in introducing our framework two years ago. We will continue to take a long-term view to determine the appropriate level of current dividend payouts, and we remain committed to a clear dividend framework. As the sector leader, Newmont is well-positioned to respond to the challenging market environment that our mining industry faces today.
We will not be distracted by the things and factors outside of our control. Instead, we'll remain focused on controlling what we can control and delivering long-term value from responsibly managing our portfolio of world-class assets. We will continue to address today's challenges by leveraging our leadership, our collective experience, our balanced portfolio, and our scale to build a resilient and sustainable future. Guided by Newmont's clear and consistent strategy, our focus remains on doing what we do best, delivering stable production and strong margins while investing in our future and creating value for all of our stakeholders. Thank you very much for your time today, and I'll turn it over to Jackie for any questions.
Well, we have a little bit of time for questions, and I'm gonna kick it off with a question about the dividend and maybe to follow up on what you were saying, Tom. Can you give us a little bit more color in terms of how you're thinking about those inputs into your dividend framework for next year? Are you planning to maybe smooth out the dividend using that 40% to 60% range, or are you expecting to have a more volatile dividend and any other comments you can make about the framework?
Thanks, Jackie. Certainly, you can expect that our dividend framework will look very similar to our framework today. Where those two key inputs that we're assessing will impact it, first is the base dividend level. As we look at long-run gold prices and where the floor is, we see it quite a way above $1,200. We're actively debating whether we lift from $1,200 to $1,300 or $1,400. As we make a decision on that, we'll recalibrate in terms of what our base dividend is at our new gold price. That'll be an important step. Same methodology, same framework, just a new starting point in terms of the base level.
The second area is the cost environment, and I think we're all, as an industry, experiencing cost escalation in a number of areas. We're certainly experiencing it in labor, particularly contracted services. We're seeing higher fuel costs, and we're certainly seeing the impacts on materials and consumables, both steel and the impact of natural gas to ammonia, cyanide, and explosives. We're working our way through that and understanding what that escalation looks like for 2023. Certainly seeing it coming off a bit in 2024, but 2023 is looking similar to levels this year. The other factor on the cost base is a challenge that I think everyone in the mining industry should be working through, and it's the investment we need to make on our commitments to achieve our greenhouse gas reduction targets.
What does that look like in terms of the spend on energy efficiency projects, the spend on renewable energy, whether that be capital investment or entering into power agreements, and what impact that has on your cost base? The other very important area is how we look to comply with the Global Industry Standard on Tailings that was introduced a year or so ago. Certainly, as we look at our tailings facilities, both our existing facilities, lifts to do on those facilities or new facilities that we're building, we see the need for additional buttressing or methods of construction that will be more expensive than what we've done in the past. I think every mining company will be facing similar challenges in terms of the geotechnical requirements for those facilities and the cost associated with that.
We'll see some of that come into our cost base. I would expect our sustaining capital as a consequence will probably be a bit higher than it has been over the last few years. They're the two inputs that we're working through right now, Jackie.
Thank you, and I'm gonna, sorry, take one more question which I think is probably on everyone's mind anyway, and that would be the announcement that you referenced earlier to defer the Yanacocha Sulfides full funding decision. Can you maybe talk about what influenced your decision to defer that project?
Yeah. Thanks, Jackie. When I think about any mining company and the number of very large projects that you take on at any one time, my rule of thumb from bitter experience, I've got some scar tissue, as a consequence, is if you've got a couple of around a billion-dollar projects, which is what we have in execution currently with the Tanami expansion and the Ahafo North, having a third project in parallel starts to introduce a project execution risk that I think is unacceptable, particularly when you're looking at developing three big projects across three continents.
As we looked at coming out the other side of the pandemic, and could have a clear line of sight as to the run home for the shaft at Tanami and the run home for the new mine in Ghana, and both of those projects were impacted by border closures and other restrictions. We saw that Yanacocha Sulfides on its current timeline was gonna stack up on top of those. We were crowding up on top of each other. To manage project execution risk, the two-year delay to Yanacocha Sulfides puts it into a different timeframe, allows us to complete those two projects in execution, commission them, and then essentially have a team that can move on and commission Yanacocha Sulfides as we build that. Project execution risk and managing it was the key factor behind that decision.
The second factor, secondary factor, was that the Yanacocha Sulfides project is essentially the construction of a concentrator and a pressure oxidation plant. That is essentially using a huge amount of steel. The opportunity to push it out a couple of years enables us to put that project and the big spend for that project into a different inflationary environment when it comes to purchasing steel. That was another factor that was secondary to managing project execution risk, which was our primary reason.
Thank you. We have a very short amount of time left. I'll open it up to the floor if anybody has a super quick question. I think we should probably leave it there then, Tom, because we are basically out of time anyway. Thank you very much for your presentation.
Thanks, Jackie. Thanks, everyone.