Franco-Nevada has a 2% NSR royalty on three permit areas in Mauritania including the Tasiast, Ahmeyim-Tijirit and Karet areas as shown in the schematic. Tasiast Mauritanie Limited SA owns and operates the permit areas including the Tasiast mine. The original royalty area was 16,334 km2 but some permit areas have been relinquished. Should these original royalty lands be reacquired by the operator, the royalty would continue to apply. The royalty becomes payable once 600,000 ounces are produced, which is expected to occur in the first half of 2011. Tasiast Mauritanie Limited SA has been owned in turn by Normandy Mining, Defiance Mining, Rio Narcea Gold Mines, Limited (“Rio Narcea”), a wholly-owned subsidiary of Lundin Mining, and Red Back Mining Inc. (“Red Back”). On September 17, 2010, Kinross Gold Corporation (“Kinross”) completed the acquisition of Red Back in a transaction valued at $7.1 billion. The payment of Franco-Nevada’s royalty and the performance of certain other obligations of the operating company are guaranteed by Rio Narcea under the terms of the underlying agreements, as amended.

The Tasiast Mine Area is underlain by the Aouéouat greenstone belt, a 70 km long by 15 km wide N-S trending belt. Known Tasiast ore deposits are aligned along a +10 km, N-trending corridor with the Piment deposits to the north and West Branch deposits to the south. The Greenschist zone is characterized by consistently thick intervals averaging approximately 40-100m wide and has been drill-delineated to a depth of 740m. Geological modelling indicates that the zone plunges gently south, consistent with mineralization in other bodies mined at Tasiast. According to its public disclosure, Kinross believes that the gold mineralisation will continue laterally and at depth in the same direction.

For 2011, Kinross plans to implement an intensive exploration drilling program, including additional in-fill drilling and has announced a 2011 exploration budget for Tasiast of $55M. As of February 2011, the rig count stood at 25.

For 2010, Kinross reported production of 185,980 ounces from Tasiast and in its 2010 year-end conference call, Kinross announced that Proven and Probable Reserves have increased to 7.6 million ounces, Measured and Indicated Resources stand at 2.1 million gold ounces and Inferred Resources are 8.6 million gold ounces.

Kinross has completed a scoping study for the Tasiast expansion project based on a 16 year mine life for the expanded project with an annual production of approximately 1.5 million ounces, using assumed gold grades of 2 g/t and expected recoveries of 93%. The proposed open pit mine will feed both the existing 8,000 tonne per day plant and the proposed conventional gold-cyanidation expansion plant, which will have a design throughput of approximately 60,000 tonnes per day. The scoping study pre-commissioning capital cost estimate is approximately $1.8 billion plus a contingency of approximately $400M. The feasibility study is expected to be completed mid-2011 and, according to Kinross, key processing equipment for the expanded plant has been ordered and advanced negotiations are underway regarding the purchase of trucks and shovels for the expanded mining fleet. Pending approval of necessary Environmental Impact Assessments for the expansion project, construction is expected to start in mid-2012 with expanded operations expected to commence early in 2014.