Item 9A. Controls and Procedures.

Evaluation of Disclosure Controls and Procedures

Under the supervision and with the participation of our management, including our principal executive officer and principal financial officer, we conducted an evaluation of the effectiveness of the design and operation of our disclosure controls and procedures (as defined in Rules 13a-15(e) and 15d-15(e) under the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, or the Exchange Act), as of the end of the period covered by this report. Based on this evaluation, our principal executive officer and principal financial officer concluded that, as of the end of the period covered by this report, our disclosure controls and procedures are effective to ensure that information required to be disclosed by us in the reports that we file or submit under the Exchange Act, is recorded, processed, summarized and reported within the time periods specified in the SEC’s rules and forms, and that such information is accumulated and communicated to our management, including our principal executive officer and principal financial officer, as appropriate, to allow timely decisions regarding required disclosure.

Management’s report on internal control over financial reporting and the independent registered public accounting firm’s report are included in Item 8 under the captions entitled “Management’s Report on Internal Control over Financial Reporting” and “Report of Independent Registered Public Accounting Firm” and are incorporated herein by reference.

Prior Year Remediation

On January 26, 2023, we filed an amended Annual Report on Form 10-K/A for the year ended December 31, 2021 (the “Form 10-K/A”) to amend certain disclosures within the Mineral Properties section of Part I, Item 2. Properties, and file amended versions of the material individual mineral property technical report summaries responding to Item 601(b)(96) and subpart 1300 of Regulation S-K (the "Mining Disclosures"). In connection with the preparation and filing of this the Form 10-K/A, our principal executive officer and principal financial officer re-evaluated the effectiveness of the design and operation of our disclosure controls and procedures. Based on this re-evaluation and solely as a result of the updated Mining Disclosures included in this Form 10-K/A, our principal executive officer and principal financial officer concluded that, as of the end of the period covered by the Form 10-K/A, our disclosure controls and procedures were not effective.

During the re-evaluation, our principal executive officer and principal financial officer concluded that, while the design of our disclosure controls and procedures is appropriate, there was a deficiency in their operation solely in connection with certain of the new disclosures required by the Mining Disclosures that we were required to provide for the first time in the Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2021. Following the initial preparation of the Mining Disclosures and in connection with the re-evaluation of the design and operation of our disclosure controls and procedures described above, we implemented additional operational procedures with respect to the Mining Disclosures included in this Annual Report on Form 10-K for the year ended December 31, 2022 and that will be applied to the preparation of the Mining Disclosures for future reports that we file or submit to the SEC under the Exchange Act, including:

• additional reviews of rule-based disclosure checklists for the Mining Disclosures;

• more frequent communication, including discussion of the Mining Disclosure rules specifically, with qualified persons in connection with their preparation of the technical report summaries for each of our mineral properties to ensure effective processes and procedures were applied in preparing and reviewing the Mining Disclosures; and

• review of best practices for Mining Disclosures based on SEC comment letters and SEC filings of industry peers in connection with their preparation.

In light of the additional operation procedures discussed above, our principal executive officer and principal financial officer concluded that, as of the end of the period covered by this report, our disclosure controls and procedures were effective and the deficiencies in the operation of the disclosure controls and procedures related to the Mining Disclosures as of the end of the period covered by the Form 10-K/A were remediated. Even with the implementation of the additional operational procedures discussed above, our management recognizes that any controls and procedures, no matter how well designed and operated, can only provide reasonable, and not absolute, assurance of achieving their objectives and our management necessarily applies its judgment in evaluating the cost-benefit relationship of possible controls and procedures.

Changes in Internal Control over Financial Reporting

No changes in our internal control over financial reporting (as such term is defined in Exchange Act Rule 13a-15(f)) occurred during the fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2022 that materially affected, or are reasonably likely to materially affect, our internal control over financial reporting.