Lama

Lama is the Argentine portion of the ~21 Moz Pascua-Lama gold project straddling the border between Chile and Argentina. The Chilean Pascua portion has been placed into a closure process while the Argentine Lama portion, which contains 3.13 Moz of gold and 236.9 Moz of silver, is being considered by Barrick as a longer-term growth option within the broader Veladero district.

In 2021 Barrick committed up to $75 million at Lama, with 10 to 12 drill rigs operating, and studies were undertaken to evaluate the capital required to complete mill and plant facilities in Argentina. Drilling in the royalty area confirmed mineralization 300 metres east of the current known resource in an area known as Lama East, including 1.79 g/t AuEq over 96.2 meters. At the Lama porphyry target, drilling confirmed gold-copper porphyry style mineralization at depth with a footprint of approximately 2 km by 1.5 km. The Lama deposit remains open to the east, south and west where no deep drilling has been conducted.

Penelope is a satellite pit of the greater Lama project in the southeast section of the Lama project and less than 10 km from the Veladero mine, which is held in a 50% joint venture between Barrick and Shandong Gold. In 2021, a small geo-metallurgical drill campaign was carried out to collect additional metallurgical data with a focus on the potential for treating the ore through heap leach processing at Veladero.

Metalla holds a 2.5% GVR royalty on the first 5 Moz of gold, increasing to 3.75% thereafter, and a 0.25% NSR royalty on all metals except gold and silver, which escalates to 3.0% based on cumulative net smelter returns from the royalty area.