## 2 Gold Mining Industry: The Gold Lifecycle  
The mining lifecycle of gold comprises several stages: generative stage, exploration stage, evaluation stage, development stage (mine construction), production stage, mine closure and rehabilitation stage, monitoring and evaluation stage, and finally, lease relinquishment stage. The generative, exploration, and evaluation stages represent the beginning stages of any gold mining project. Discovering where gold deposits may be, analyzing the promising areas, and performing drill testing are the activities performed in these stages. To pin down potential deposits of gold, the companies engage geologists and other competent figures. At these early stages, methods such as geological surface mapping and sampling, geophysical measurements, and geochemical analysis are often applied. Once mapping, sampling and measurements, and analysis data are collected, the process moves forward to the design and planning stage, to evaluate if and how the project can be safe, environmentally sound, economically viable, and socially responsible. If a worthwhile mining activity is associated with the identified area, the construction stage takes place, and the infrastructure is built. This stage involves building roads, creating processing facilities and environmental management systems, building employee housing, and other facilities. It can take a long time, up to five years, between the time when the promising area is discovered and the time when the actual mining activity takes place. Once the infrastructure is built, the production stage starts. The two most common methods of mining are that of surface mining and that of underground mining. The chosen method is determined mainly by the characteristics of the mineral deposit and the limits imposed by safety, technological, environmental, and economic concerns (see [14]). At this stage, gold is recovered; the ore is extracted from rock using adequate tools and machinery and processed in order to separate commercially-valuable minerals from their ores. This is an on-site processing and is relatively simple for low-grade ore. Once ore is processed on-site, the processing off-site takes place. The ore is transported to smelting facilities to extract the metal from its ore and to produce bars of bullion ready for sale. Once having completed the production stage, the process moves forward to the final stages. When the mining site has been exhausted, it is necessary to close the site and to dismantle all facilities on the property. In order to return the land to its original state, a rehabilitation program starts to ensure public health and safety, minimize environmental effects, remove waste and hazardous material, preserve water quality, stabilize land to protect against erosion, and establish new landforms and vegetation (see [14]). As a consequence, extracting metal ore from the Earth and converting it into gold bullion is quite extensive and requires much front-end investment and time. According to experts, the reporting of the gold industry's cost is unclear, and probably, the real costs to produce an ounce of gold have not been clearly described yet. Let us start looking into the history of gold cost reporting in the industry (see [15; 16]). In the mid-1990s, the industry introduced \"cash costs\" to shed light on the gold industry's costs and showed that the reputation of the reporting of such costs was an embarrassment and an utter joke. Cash cost essentially took into account the cost to dig gold out of the ground and sell it, but ignored other costs such as sustaining capital and General and Administrative expenses (G&A expenses). Therefore, this cost became increasingly ridiculous as industry cost inflation accelerated over the past decade. In 2012, the senior gold companies working with the World Gold Council created a new measure. They created a new industry standard, All-In Sustaining Costs (AASC).