Petronor E&P Asa

Hello and good morning. My name is Jens Paes and as the CEO of Petronor, it's my pleasure to be back here in Oslo to present the company's fourth quarter results. It doesn't seem that long ago I was standing in front of this camera, so it's been a busy quarter and I look forward to telling you a few of the highlights of that. We sent out a report earlier this morning, as well as the slides that I'm going to use in a few minutes here. But my main point of being here is to answer your questions, so please send them in and we'll address that after this brief presentation. I'm going to flick through the disclaimer slide. And this is the kind of general outline of the presentation, which is somewhat standardized. I think you'll be familiar with this if you've been following the company. A brief operational update, some comments on the financial performance, the portfolio overview, what I can tell you about investigations, and then a summary before we get to your questions. So in terms of the operational update, we've had, when I last spoke to you, we were forecasting a lifting over Christmas. We were able to lift and sell. Hello and good morning. My name is Jens Pace and as the CEO of Petronor, it's my pleasure to be back here in Oslo to present the company's fourth quarter results. It doesn't seem that long ago I was standing in front of this camera, so it's been a busy quarter and I look forward to telling you a few of the highlights of that. We sent out a report earlier this morning, as well as the slides that I'm going to use in a few minutes here. But my main point of being here is to answer your questions, so please send them in and we'll address that after this brief presentation. I'm going to flick through the disclaimer slide. And this is the kind of general outline of the presentation, which is somewhat standardized. I think you'll be familiar with this if you've been following the company. A brief operational update, some comments on the financial performance, the portfolio overview, what I can tell you about investigations, and then a summary before we get to your questions. So in terms of the operational update, when I last spoke to you, we were forecasting a lifting over Christmas. We were able to lift and sell 881,000 barrels of oil just over the Christmas day and Boxing Day. And we realized a price for that of $73 a barrel. So this actually brings our total sales for 2024 up to 1.8 million barrels, which generated income of $140 million. So that's a record year for us. It was a record lifting and a record year in total. Underpinning that was the production. For the quarter, it was just shy of 4,800 barrels of oil per day, and that's pretty flat with the third quarter. There's two trends there. One is and increasing production efficiency as we've been able to make more of the wells that are available to us and have had more stable operating conditions with the infrastructure. But there's also some reservoir decline offsetting that, which is normal, and we are looking to address that in the course of this year. We've got plans for an additional infill drilling programme that will start middle of the year, and we'll hopefully see the benefit of that in the second half of the year. So you can see the average net working interest production has been fairly flat over the course of this year, but last year we had production over 5,000 barrels a day, and we hope to return to that in the course of this year. In terms of financial delivery, this is a pretty standardized set of numbers that we talk about each quarter. The one I always focus on is in the top left there, which is how much cash have we got in the bank as of the end of the year, which is just shy of $80 million. There's no debt associated with that, so it's a strong balance sheet. Gross assets have crept up to just over $300 million. And the revenue for the year, of which that $140 million that I mentioned before, the total revenue, which includes what we've paid in royalty and production share to the government, is $204.5 million. EBITDA for the year is 100 million. And that's a little lower than last year because we've had to account for an overlifting position. You can see from the chart here, the oil sales for the year include in the fourth quarter an overlift. What we mean by that is that we actually sold more oil than we had in our inventory. We're allowed to do that under the rules of the Geno Terminal. And since the lifting, we've been in the process of paying that back, and we'll be paying that back through the course of the first part of this year. I think we'll reach balance sometime at the end of April and start building up a new inventory through the second half of the year. What that does mean is that we're unlikely to see another lifting or oil sale until probably the fourth quarter of this year. So as we pay back that inventory and then build up a new one. So that'll be a different pattern to the lifting that we've had in the last couple of years where we've seen a lifting every quarter, more or less. And that's... I'm not complaining about that because we can enjoy the benefits of the overlift early. And that was the point of doing that. If you actually look at the kind of source and use of cash through the year on an accounting basis, we started out the year with $46.2 million. We've ended the year just shy of $80 million, 49.7. Oil sales of 140. There's a An accounting adjustment of 35.8 to accommodate the over lift that I mentioned. OPEX costs of $20.5 million, which equates to about $11.5 a barrel, which on a global scale is a very competitive OPEX cost for a field of this nature. CapEx investments were quite modest this year. We've obviously had some commissioning of the new platform at Chendo, but not a big infill drilling campaign in the last year. So only $13.1 million in CapEx. We look to increase that slightly as we entertain the drilling program that we have planned starting in April, May this year. Admin costs $14 million. We talked about this in the last quarterly report, higher than we would like. In that is about $6 million for people costs. And within that is also some restructuring costs because we have reduced the size of the company significantly. in terms of people over the course of this year. So we'll see a structural change in these costs going forward this year. There's also a large amount of money for professional services and that's about five and a half million for professional services and that includes our auditors. We did an interim audit, you may remember, to support the shareholder distribution and And the big moving part is the legal fees associated with our cooperation with the investigations in the US and Norway, which was about $3.5 million in total for the year. And so the remainder of that 14 is office costs and IT. And we're making some steps to reduce them as well. So you should see a lower number when we get into 2025 on the admin costs. The rest here, I think, is pretty formulaic, some working capital changes and debt repayments. We finished off the working capital loan that we had outstanding at the beginning of 2024, and so we're debt-free now, as I said earlier. Then nearly $8 million has been dividends from the Congo asset that go to our minority shareholders in that entity. And so that leaves us with a total of 80 million in cash. And this is part of the story because we've been paid for the significant lifting over Christmas. We've been paid for that in January, which is an input of $64 million that arrived at the end of January. And about the same time, we also made a distribution to shareholders of about $26 million. And so, you know... In the round, we have, as I stand today, cash of about $115 million in the bank earning interest. Just comment on shareholder value. And it's been pointed out to me that I probably wouldn't stand in front of a share price performance if it wasn't a good story here. So I don't make any apologies for that. The operational strategy has delivered. cash that we've been able to share with the shareholders and has obviously also driven a growth in the share price. We've had a build-up of cash in the year and that's been very evident to the market. So a 37% increase in the share price over the last 12 months and at its peak of 14 NOC per share, we did the distribution to shareholders of 2 NOC per share. So it offering another 14% return to shareholders. So I think there's a very positive story here. And I think the main point, though, in discussing this is that we're with the strong cash position that I just mentioned. The board is in a strong position to evaluate options for an additional distribution that will be recommended to the AGM later this year. So a brief portfolio overview. If you're not familiar with Petronor, our production comes from Congo Brazzaville, the PNGF Sud license. Gross production from that field is just shy today of 28,000 barrels of oil per day. It's operated by Perenco, and our net share is 16.83% on a working interest basis. And as I've mentioned, it's high-margin production. We have a redevelopment project in Nigeria in the Aje field. Our main efforts there have been in consolidating the partnership through an acquisition. Our current position is an economic interest of about 20%, which we acquired from Panora a few years ago. And through the acquisition of New Age's Nigerian interests, we look to increase that to an economic interest of just over 50%. So that's about achieving alignment in the partnership for the way forward, as well as establishing our position in the group. We see the potential for an attractive development there that would yield about 25,000 barrels a day of oil equivalent, but largely gas. And gas is considered a transition fuel for Africa, and we could see that as something that is a very investable proposition in that part of Africa. Although we've got exploration potential in both Congo and outside of the Aje field in Nigeria, our pure exploration play is in the Gambia, in the A4 license. which is a proven basin now with production immediately to the north of us and prospects in our acreage that's analogous to that production. And prospects that are beginning to, from the work we've been doing, we're beginning to see seismic attributes that support the chance for finding hydrocarbons in these prospects. So we're working on that with some excitement. Looking at the bottom chart here, the kind of numbers that I'd like to draw your attention to is two sea resources of 36.7 million barrels of oil equivalent and two P reserves of 17.2 million barrels. And if you look at the Congo production, which is the PNGF Sud field complex, Those reserve levels and resource levels means that at current levels of production, we have over a decade of production in 2P reserves. And if you then take into account the Congo part of the 2C resources, there's the opportunities on what we understand today to double that. So this is long-lived production and production and a very attractive asset. The chart on the bottom right shows you something that we measure on a monthly basis, which is the production efficiency, which is if everything is working, what would the field be capable of doing versus what it's actually doing on any month on average. We're used to having this at pretty high levels. Through 2023, it was averaging about 93%. experienced some production instability through the first half of 2024 because of infrastructure interruptions, as well as a building list of wells that required workovers. Thankfully, we're seeing both of those issues being addressed now. And you can see on the fourth quarter, the increase in production efficiency that was being achieved. So we're now back at the levels that we're used to this field performing at above 90% in terms of overall efficiency. And that's down to, you know, good work on the work of a program and also better stability in power generation now that the field is self-sufficient in generating its own power rather than relying on third party power. And this has led to just much more stable production. It also leads to less workovers because it's those interruptions that actually stress the the downhole pumps, which like to keep working rather than being switched on and off all the time, like many things. Outside of the improvements in efficiency, we're also hoping to have an increase in the productive capacity of the field through the infill drilling program that will be focused on Chibuela East. We have five wells planned. The rig is arriving in Congo from Gabon in April. And we will hope to see the benefits of that program start to take effect in the second half of the year with us getting back up to, as I said, above 30,000 barrels a day before the end of the year. Brief summary of AGE, just so you can see what it is. It's just sitting offshore Lagos, right on the landing of the West Africa gas pipeline, which runs across the African margin in that position. The project is about half a TCF of gas with associated liquids. And at least 5 million barrels of oil underlying that, we think that that may be more. And we're working on that to define an upside, which has been identified. And, you know, around the AGE field, we see exploration potential within the license that we have, as well as nearby discoveries that need infrastructure. So it's well positioned to be a leading industry. piece of development for this part of the basin just offshore Lagos, which is an important population centre in Nigeria. The plan for redevelopment involves an FPSO with gas processing capability with a pipeline to shore and four or five wells either re-entering some existing wells that have been suspended or drilling a couple of new ones to produce the gas and also the underlying liquids. The 30-kilometer gas pipeline runs from the FPSO to the shore. We've bought land in the landing point for that, where we would plan to site an LPG facility right next door to the compression station for the West Africa gas pipeline. So very well located in terms of that infrastructure. Our current effort, as I said, is awaiting the approval in completing the deal we've done with New Age to get us to 50% economic interest in the license. And we have meetings that are being scheduled, we hope, later this month to complete that process successfully. These things can take time in Nigeria, but we've done all of the due diligence meetings with the ministry, and we hope it will be fairly straightforward to raise this up for their to-do list. And so we're looking to get this done as quickly as possible. While we're waiting on that, we are focusing on the subsurface description of the reservoirs and particularly on the depth image of the deeper oil. We're just finishing off some depth image processing that has been ongoing for the last few months and should be complete in the next couple of weeks. So we'll be confirming the potential upside that has been identified underneath the existing gas reservoir for this additional oil potential, which has a big driver on the economics because the liquids do count here. And then alongside that, obviously, we have a regulatory requirement as well as a policy to conduct an environmental impact assessment. And sampling has been underway on that. And we'll have a feedback into the planning for the project development. Just to touch on the exploration potential in the Gambia, as I said, we're conducting a technical work program which really is showing some promise on giving us seismic attribute support for the prospects. The target reservoirs are well understood. They're being produced in the Sangamar field immediately to the north of us. And so we're looking to finalize that prospect description with a view to conducting additional conversations with potential partners. The license phase that we're currently in comes to an end towards the end of this year. And then to move into the next phase, which involves a drilling commitment, we would like to have a partner to do that. So that's the focus of attention in the course of the rest of this year. And we have companies that are accessing the data and the new work that we're doing under NDA. So we're hopeful that those conversations will mature. In Guinea-Bissau, you'll recall that we farmed out our position there, and this led to the drilling of the Atom 1X well. Now, that was completed in September last year, and you'll have to forgive me for being a little coy about the results of that well. If there is a formal announcement of that, then it's down to the government of Guinea-Bissau and the new operator, Apis Energy, to make that. But having said that, there is a general kind of opinion in the industry that this was not a commercial success. But I can say that it did confirm all the major play elements that we had forecast for the area that have a bearing on the future potential of the licence. And we understand that the operator is... evaluating the final results of the well with a view to making a decision on a second well that could be drilled in 2026. So that's all we know at this stage. And we wait with interest to see what announcements come out of that. So obviously, you know, there is a deferred element to the farm out that we did that is contingent on future success. I'd have to say that's, you know, with the results that we know of the Atom 1 well, that that's probably less likely than it was before that well was drilled. But it hasn't completely gone away because if there is a second well, then there is still the potential for that deferred payment to be due on approval of a field development plan and subsequent continuous production. So that's a kind of run through the portfolio. In terms of the ongoing investigation, I think that's really all I can say about that, that they're ongoing. And it's been over three years now that we've been on this journey. And we're cooperating fully with the process in both Norway and the US to help the authorities with their investigation. But we... don't have any real control over the timeline for this. I think given the passage of time and the work that's been done, that we will be seeing decisions being made in the course of this year. But I don't have any insights as to that timing beyond just that belief that we must be at an advanced stage after the work that's gone into this. This has involved a significant commitment of legal resources by the company, and I look forward to a day when we don't have that to contend with. So in summary, stable production from the Congo assets with an infill drilling program to resume in the second quarter of this year and have an impact before the end of the year. The company's strategy is focused on maximizing the value of the existing portfolio and returning excess cash to shareholders. And we've built a significant cash position again, despite the uncertainty. Distribution, the return of capital to shareholders of $26 million that was done in January. So the board will be in a position to consider an additional distribution in 2025, and that will be recommended to our annual general meeting. So a positive outlook for that. That concludes my presentation, and I'd be very happy to take your questions now if you have any.

Thank you, Jens. First question is, how big is the next dividend?

Straight to the meat. Yeah, I think, you know. The board has got a strong position to consider here with cash in the bank today of about $115 million. But we have to weigh that against a couple of factors here. One, as I've pointed out, the next lifting will likely be towards the end of the year, given the overlift position. So we need to make sure that we have provision for any expenditure that is planned during the course of this year. One of the major parts of that will be the infill drilling program. So I think in balance, when we look at that, I think that you can expect that the quantum of an additional return of capital to shareholders will be at least as much as the one we achieved at the end of January. And we'll look to inform the market of what that is once we have the final audited annual report, which will be coming out to us in April.