Valeura Energy Inc

TSX:VLE

Earnings Call Transcript 2023-Q2

[Robin Martin, executive]

Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us for the Valeura Energy webcast, where we'll discuss our second quarter 2023 results, which were released yesterday. I'm Robin Martin, Vice President, Communications and Investor Relations. And on the call with me are Sean Guest, our President and CEO; and Yacine Ben-Meriem, our CFO.This event is being streamed live and is being recorded today, August 10, 2023. A replay will be made available through our website later today. In a moment, I'll hand over to Sean and Yacine, who will speak to a slide presentation that will be shown on screen if you're joining through MS Teams or can be downloaded from our website if you're joining by dial-in. After the prepared remarks, we'll do a Q&A session and questions can be submitted through the Teams app at any time by clicking on the Q&A button at the top of your window or you can e-mail them to us using [e-mail] bear with me as I get the slides going here. So before we get going, I'd like to draw your attention to Slide 2, which is our disclaimers and advisories about the materials we'll present today, in particular, noting the cautionary statements around forward-looking information.So with that, Sean, I will ask that you unmute your line and you can go ahead.

[W. Guest, executive]

Thank you, Robin, and thank you, everyone, for joining us here today. Yes, Robin, if you can just go to the next slide. Thank you. Yes. So it was about just 16 months ago that we were really still talking at Valeura about growth, the type of deals we are trying to do and how we're trying to transition the company into really a cash flowing business from the money that we had at that time from just the cash flow. We announced last year the closing of the KrisEnergy acquisition in the Gulf of Thailand in April. We closed that deal in June. And then in December, we announced Mubadala acquisition, much larger and closed that deal in March of this year.Now immediately after that, we had our Q1, end of Q1 and that was really just a balance sheet issue. We said you could see that the assets were all brought together, you could see the overall assets and liability to the company. But at that time, we really were not putting out to people any financial results of the cash flows. We were trying to explain what it was. But Q2 is really about -- this is the first quarter where we're really demonstrating that these assets are real and are producing cash that is coming out to our balance sheet. And that's really what we're going to talk through here today.So we've gone from where we were 16 months ago as a cash [indiscernible]. We're now looking at just Q2 with a revenue of $174 million that led to a cash flow of USD 70 million. And I'll really let you seen take you through that in more detail. The other thing we've seen is we've taken over operatorship continual drilling program on the assets on Jasmine, Nong Yao, and Manora. We've seen good cost performance. We've had a few issues on Wassana. But still, when it comes down to the key elements of guidance, we're still extremely pleased that the production guidance that we put out immediately after the acquisition, we still stand by even with the Wassana field currently being down.But importantly also, now that we've had a quarter of working with the team there, we're really starting to see that the OpEx numbers we put out, we're going to be able to bring those down slightly. And importantly as well, now that we've brought the costs of the 2 companies together, we've got this down to a single rig sequence, we're starting to see the CapEx savings becoming real. So for us, this is really the time you're starting to look at that as really a true strong cash flowing company and we're extremely pleased to see Brents starting to rise and the additional value that that will bring into the company.So thanks, Robin. Can we just have the next slide? And just a couple of things I want to point out currently is that our market cap is about $181 million. But with the cash position that we have, this really gives us an enterprise value of about $93 million, which is still much lower than we expect that should be. The key element for shareholders though, is by being involved in the company is to see that share price accretion that we've seen almost 4x in the past year. We still see with the metrics that there's much more we can go on it given the cash flow and the reserves that we've got. But we really have transitioned the company now and we're now looking at a strong cash flowing business.Thanks, Robin. Maybe just the next slide. So a bit of a reminder of the assets. Now again, the map on the right is the Gulf of Thailand. We have 2 fields up in the north, which are Jasmine and Manora. And then down in the south, we now have 2 fields Nong Yao, part from Mubadala and then the Wassana asset, which we got from KrisEnergy earlier last year.Jasmine has been the focus of infill drilling campaign this year. A lot of success on those wells, good cost delivery. And really, the field has now got to the point it's delivered in the past quarter, we delivered its 90th million barrel, which is what we like to say and point out was this field was commissioned, the FPSO was brought on site in the first production with an expectation of 7 million barrels, right? Another point as we look at this year, we do see we'll likely take some more activity on in Jasmine and accelerate some of the wells that were planned for '24 into Q4 of '23.Nong Yao, we completed 2 wells. They're both successful and have added additional volumes. Importantly though, is the Nong Yao C, so the third platform there, that extension project. While we look at the MOPU for that kind of sailing additive around the end of this year. Work is ongoing on that even now and there's a pipeline vessel there that's out installing the pipeline that will run from the Nong Yao B platform over to the new one at Nong Yao C. Additionally, this year too, we look at accelerating some of the infill drilling for '24 into '23.Manora, the field up in the north, the most northerly field, 3 infill wells were done there just this quarter on the back of the success of the drilling last year. These have added to the production, are adding to the reserves and we expect that we'll probably have 3 more wells to drill there in '24, '25, that type of period. And again, this is a field that was due to be abandoned in 2022. When we came on board the new drilling and pushed that to '25 and we see the potential now to push that out a bit further.Now Wassana, while we did get that on in the quarter -- [Technical Difficulty], sorry, Robin, can you mute that?

[Robin Martin, executive]

Sorry, Sean, taken care of.

[W. Guest, executive]

Yes. So while we did get Wassana on in the quarter, we obviously had some issues there after the quarter. But I would just jump right to the next slide because I do want to talk a bit about Wassana, I'll come back to the production in a moment. But as we brought Wassana into the new team and have really brought the 2 companies together, this has been the focus of a lot of the work of the team in the past few months. We knew that Wassana was developed for a small oil field, but there was an oilfield to the north that was already discovered and another one to the south.Now during the development of Wassana over the past number of years, deeper oil was identified. And what this kind of means now is that there's much more oil there than was initially anticipated. And the work of the new team has suggested that there could be much more volumes than we're currently carrying in our reserves. For that reason, with the rig currently on site there, we're drilling a couple of appraisal wells to really test for some of these upside volumes. So we see drilling 2 to 3 appraisal wells on the field in kind of the next 3 to 4 months to really determine the way forward on that field and how that field should be optimally developed. So that's been one of the great things to bring the team together in the experience.So just going on to the next slide. So focusing on safety and sustainability. Now officially Q2 as we had it, we had 0 LTI. It was a very good quarter. We had 3 quarters of a million man hours of operations and went well. However, people will be aware that Wassana, we had an incident just before the quarter and we have an incident immediately after the quarter. And to us, as we looked at the procedures that were ongoing by our third-party contractor there, they were unacceptable.We had to, at that point, step in, take a safety intervention and we shut down the production until we can actually bring up the quality of the contractor to a level that's kind of required. The important thing is that we took that on ourselves. We just recognized this was unacceptable given the quality of the other assets and how we're offering them with the -- and just needed we're going to have to upgrade that contractor.And then the third thing I want to point out is the change that's gone on in the organization. Wassana has now been brought into the ex- Mubadala organization that we acquired. They've been brought on with all the standards there, the safety oversight and we're really getting much more pleased with how that's operating. Also, in the past 3 months, we've beefed up the organization with bringing on a country manager to look after this. And we've just brought on the Chief Operating Officer who have the role of looking after all of our operations in this area. So we're seeing that strength in the organization that bringing Wassana back into the organization that we are much more happy with the procedures, processes and HSE than that.And the final point I'll make here before handing over to Yacine to talk about finances is, we've had the Board over here this week. We went out to the FPSO. We toured the facilities to get an idea of how these were operating. We're extremely pleased. But also we had our first sustainability health, safety and sustainability committee meeting and really has given us the confidence to move forward on now as we start to look at measuring our emissions, setting targets for ourselves and getting towards 2024 with our first sustainability report.So at this point, I'll hand over to Yacine just to take you through really what were the key financials of the quarter. Yacine?

[Yacine Ben-Meriem, executive]

Thank you, Sean and hello, everyone. Turning to Slide 8. Thank you, Robin. Just reemphasizing what Sean has been saying so far. The company has performed quite strongly during the quarter. I think this slide in front of you, we hope gives you a snapshot of that strong performance. I guess the numbers speaks for themselves with regards to the step change that the company has gone through, but most importantly in terms of how the underlying assets performs.As a reminder, this is the first quarter where it's ended the full year under the Valeura's control. The first quarter Q1, we effectively only have 90 days, which can be recorded under our books. So Q2 really, we hope, gives the audience a true image of what the performance of the company is. So if you look at it from an operational perspective, as Sean mentioned, the average production during the quarter was around 22,100 barrels per day. We have lifted around 2.2 million at an average realized price of $80.4. We will talk in a little bit more detail in the next couple of slides.From an expense -- on the other side, in terms of expenses, OpEx came in at around $46 million, which equates to around $22.07 per barrels. On the CapEx side, it's around $34 million. This has led us to -- again, these numbers, we hope highlight the strong cash generation capability of the assets. Revenue came in at around $174 million. Cash flow from operations came at around $71 million, $70.4 million. And for -- on an EBITDA perspective, came in at just shy of around $79 million.As far as the balance sheet is concerned, again, just highlighting the strength of the current balance sheet of the company. Cash account is around $121 million, outstanding debt is $34 million. As a reminder, we started the quarter -- we started this quarter with around $52 million worth of debt. We have decided during this period to pay down a good 1/3 of it. We have repaid $18.5 million this quarter.Robin, maybe the next slide. Thank you. As far as the production is concerned, as you can see for the quarter we've averaged around 22,100 barrels per day. This really is a combination of performance from all the assets. Wassana, this quarter represents the first quarter that Wassana is contributing its production. First call from Wassana came in around April 28. But I think what might be helpful for the audience is really to try to make the comparison on a pro forma basis with the first quarter, notwithstanding that the company Valeura itself only had 9 days worth of ownership of these assets.So on a pro forma basis, in Q1, the assets generated around 20,500 barrels per day on average. These -- the difference between the 2 quarters around an uplift of around 8%. That uplift is really driven by better performance from Jasmine due to the infill drilling for the drilling campaign there and also contribution from Wassana during that period, which we didn't have in the first period. As you can see from the bottom graph, you can see quite flat production that you tend to get during the quarters. And that's really a reflection of the [indiscernible] of drilling that we tend to perform during this period, we tend to shift from one asset to another in order to maintain that production. Obviously from an upside perspective, the contribution from Wassana have lifted the productions from May and June, as you can see in the graph there.Next slide, please, Robin. And it comes to the lifting. I think it's worth just reminding the obvious that since we are -- since all of our production comes from offshore, which we use floating storage vessels, we only see revenues when we do the lifting. This is not a piped one. So we first have to store the oil and then the oil gets lifted. Usually, in terms of sizes, we tend to do parcels around 300,000 barrels for each parcel. As you can see, lifting for this quarter is around 2.2 million. Contribution was predominantly from Jasmine and Nong Yao as well.Wassana, we haven't seen any lifting yet since the production only came in at the middle of the quarter. However, the lifting from Wassana just occurred after this quarter, after the end of the quarter 2. In terms of comparing on pro forma basis to the Q1, obviously from our perspective, as Valeura Q1, although we have only -- we own the asset for 9 days, there was no lifting during this period. However, from a pro forma perspective, in Q1, operationally, the company -- the previous owner lifted around 1.5 million barrels.This is really due to the fact that in Q1, we have -- our lifting in Q2 was really due to the fact that we inherited -- we had an opening inventory balance of around 950,000 barrels. And in the end of the quarter Q2, we had around 780,000 barrels sitting in inventory, which will get obviously lifted during Q3. In fact, most of it has already been lifted.Looking on the -- in terms of the realized price, as you can see for Q2, our average price was around $80.40 per barrels higher than what you see in terms of Brent and Dubai. As a reminder to the audience, our price tend to be linked to the Dubai prices. We came quite slightly above what the expectation was. As you can see from our guidance previously, it tend to be more closer to Brent. But for this quarter, we came higher. On a pro forma basis, in Q1, the lifting -- the average price at that time was around $84.50, that's really just a reflection of a softening of oil prices during the second quarter.The price differentiator for us when it comes to the assets have also softened a little bit during this quarter. This is really due to some lower refining margins, especially when it comes to our end clients, which tend to be the prior refineries.Next slide, please, Robin. Which kind of leads us to the -- to how this impact the actual financial performance and the cash generation of the company during this quarter. I think from a strategic perspective, we tend to be driven by cash flows and we hope that this slide just gives you an overview of how that cash flow is generated in the business. So starting from the left-hand side, you have our revenues of $174 million, deduct from that $23 million of around 13%, which represents the royalties that we have to pay for the government effectively giving us a net oil revenues of around $151 million.OpEx came in at $46 million. OpEx is a metric that we tend to use on our site, which we strip away all the noncash items. And also specifically I guess for us for this quarter, some of the accounting treatment that had to be stripped away due to the closing of the transaction from [ Topaz ]. For people who are more financially minded, we do have a reconciliation at the back end of this presentation, in appendix.OpEx, that $46 million equates to around as we mentioned earlier around $22.07, slightly below our guidance, but that's just reflective of the quarterly expenses spent during this quarter. SG&A came within as expected. That also stripping away some of the -- what we tend to describe as one-off cost, which is quite small, it's around $700,000, which gives us a pretax cash flow from operation of around just shy of $100 million. That $100 million, we do have around accrued taxes and PITA taxes and SRBs, which is around $29 million.Just again, just as a clarification to our audience, these taxes are accrued. When it comes to taxes in Thailand, they tend to be paid in half of the year taxes, PITA taxes tend to be paid in August and the other half tend to be paid in May. That point will be completed in the next slide. But just as a reminder, as far as obviously it says, is paid only 1 year, has already paid once in May in areas. So 2022 numbers has all been tax, for example, will only get paid in May. Which basically end up with a cash flow from operations of around $70 million, which leads to -- which leads us to -- which well covers our expenditure when it comes to cash and also gives us room to also repay down the debt and pay for any other cost that comes in.Next slide, please, Robin. Which ultimately leads us to our cash position. I think cash is quite important for us, especially when it comes to our kind of executing on our strategy in terms of growth. So here on the left-hand side, you see our opening balance for -- in Q2, which was $271 million. The $179 million bar there is really the tax that we had to pay in May, reflecting the 2022 performance. This is something that we inherited as part of our acquisition of Mubadala. So if you strip away that tax payment, our -- effectively one way to look at it is our effective cash balance at the beginning, which is really taking away or stripping away that cost that was before our acquisition, we attractively started the quarter with $93 million.Adding our cash flow from operations during this quarter, we also paid the last payment when it comes to the MOPU. So now happy to report that we own the MOPU 100%, the MOPU on Wassana. And then taking consideration interest payment and as I mentioned earlier on the repayment of the debt and also a change with working capital, we end up with a cash balance of around $122 million for this quarter. Now just to point something that cash balance from both ends also includes some restricted cash, which is quite small in any case.And I guess with that, I'll hand back to Sean.

[W. Guest, executive]

Thanks, Yacine. Yes. So just looking at our guidance, again, as I talked about a bit at the beginning, we put our guidance fairly quickly after closing the deal. And really, we've had now time to really work with the team and understand that a little more as well as bring synergies between the 2 companies as we bring both of the 2 companies together. The important thing is our production guidance remains unchanged. Again, I note that while Wassana is currently off disappointingly, we're still well within our production guidance that we have there.The important ones are really the OpEx. And we really see as we've come in and started to look at this, so we've seen I think some drops in the OpEx, which is good. If you were looking -- and you would have noticed for this quarter that the OpEx was actually only about $46 million. I think it's a little bit less than that for Q1. So with those 2 numbers for the first half of the year, it would look like we're going to come in well under that OpEx. However, I'd caution that normally, the way the company works is there is a lot of workovers that are done that are coming as operating costs. And those normally take place in the latter half of the year.However, right now we think those will be on the order of maybe on [Technical Difficulty]. Those are included in the budget predictions, but those are contingent about -- upon the work being required. So we're pleased to see the OpEx numbers coming down. And the other one, importantly, is we've brought the company together and started to rework the sequence is we're really seeing those additional CapEx expectations of $180 million to $200 million. We're now looking at a range of $155 million to $175 million for CapEx as we go forward.And again, this is the first quarter of full operations. We're really looking forward to getting another quarter behind us as we really start to refine these numbers a little more. And that will then let us really step into 2024 and look at how we're going to work on these numbers and add more efficiencies as we go to '24. But the important thing is even after 1 quarter performance, we're starting to see those savings that are going to come through as cash back to the company in the end. So good news on that front.So Robin, just turning to the last slide. So look, bring it really back to a summary is we have transitioned the company now as to a company that has a strong cash flow. We've got the good production there and we've shown that we'll be able to increase that from Q1 into the second quarter. The important thing that I didn't touch on here, but we have in our other presentations is reserves -- finding of new reserves.We've had the rig working full-time drilling on the different fields. And we expect, as we work these numbers through with our external reserve audit at the end of the year, this is going to add new reserves in that will replace a lot of the production that we've had. Historically, the company has always had about 100% reserve replacement for the past 6 years and we were looking for that to continue as we go forward.So again, strong cash flow now. And this isn't just both the next couple of years, we see that cash flow continuing into the future. And importantly, leverage to a Brent price, again, which we're seeing currently on the rise. And finally, as I pointed out in the last slide, as we bring the companies together, we're really going to start to see synergies getting down costs that are even going to improve the financial results of the company even more. So cash flow, extremely important.Growth. Talked a bit about some of the organic projects in this portfolio. We're looking at increasing the production for next year as we bring on the Nong Yao C project as well as the Wassana pilot wells getting once we get that back on production. So we're looking at '24 as having higher production. But obviously, as we get closer to doing our full budget and projections for '24, we'll be giving guidance towards the end of the year. So that's it on this portfolio of opportunities.M&A, we've demonstrated that we could come over into Asia and we could do these deals, which have been highly accretive to our shareholders. And we did that with about $30 million, $35 million cash in the bank and with Valeura not being a known company here. We are now one of the larger independents in the region. We've got strong cash flow. And all of these factors have now made us recognized in the region so that we're starting to look at other deals and people are actually starting to talk to us about potential deals. And importantly, the cash that we're bringing in is really going to help us as we look at other deals on a cost of capital basis, right? So showing we can do deals and we see more deals coming.The other thing I'd like to point out, which I touched on, is -- and this is something you can look at for many of the analysts here, you can do yourself, is we are currently trading at a significant discount to our peers. Even though we've had this large jump in share price, we've now shown the cash flow potential. Currently, we're trading at about USD 4,000 a flowing barrel. And of our international peers that we would compare to, they're trading at almost $25,000 a flowing barrel. If you just look at reserves, we're trading at about $3 for our 2P reserves and that's less than half of our peers.And additionally, the point we made was that our enterprise value is currently just under $100 million and there's a value from our reserves auditor, so the value of the assets comes in at just under $270 million. So a significant discount to that. So while we've done well this year, while we're still up in price for year-to-date, we see this is just the beginning of the value increase we can have and that it's still a good time to buy into the company.So with that, I'd like to thank you all. It's been an exciting first quarter and we're very pleased to be able to start to get those numbers out here. Thank you very much.And at this point, I'll hand back to Robin, will go through some questions.

[Robin Martin, executive]

Thanks, guys. Okay. Just bear with me a second, we have a bunch of questions coming in. [Operator Instructions] First question will go to -- and I'll paraphrase most of them here. With cash building, what's your capital allocation strategy in general for 2024 and beyond?

[W. Guest, executive]

Yes. So first of all, obviously, the key thing that we're looking at is the cash flow from these assets and how much we recycle back into the assets to continue to, as we talked about, having that growth in production and then trying to maintain the production going forward because these assets still return very good value. It will then be really looking at as we're in '24 at what's the pricing at, how quickly are we building up cash in the company? And what are the other opportunities that might be available to us as we look at how we're going to utilize that cash?So at this point, we do know we're going to continue to work on these assets. We are looking at other assets where we can see utilizing some of this cash foundation that we're starting to build up. And then it's a matter of just looking at whether there is any return to capital is considered to shareholders next year. But I would just caution, it's a question that comes up a lot from people, the important thing for us at this point in time is that we actually build up a solid cash foundation that allows us to have the flexibility to choose the best options, whether it's recycling the cash into the assets, taking on growth or return on capital. But the important thing is to actually make sure we build up that cash foundation first.

[Robin Martin, executive]

Okay. Good. I think you presumed a bunch of the questions that I've got in front of me here, but I'll voice them anyway. With cash building, is there a possibility that you're considering a big acquisition in Southeast Asia? And in particular, is there any possibility of getting something like a big GAAP asset into the portfolio?

[W. Guest, executive]

Yes. No, I was completely lost. No, definitely. That's really something we're looking at. And I think I've commented before, but a lot of my background with Shell and [indiscernible] has been in gas assets. With the transition that's going on in energy, it's assets that we'd like to get into. And we do see lots to do here in assets that we expect to be coming on the market. So yes, we'll look at how we utilize that cash as we talked about, how we utilize debt to make those deals happen. But yes, we do see going after some significant gas assets.

[Robin Martin, executive]

Okay. And you'd mentioned returns to shareholders, a very specific question here. What do you think about the idea of initiating a buyback authorization and then just using it at some point down the road when it's appropriate? Is that something we'd consider?

[W. Guest, executive]

Yes. So first off, I'm trying to figure out there whether the person is actually really asking for immediate cash back or just to put something in that looks like we're going to do it. As we said, the #1 priority is the cash build and understanding our financial situation as we get into next year and then to be reviewing that with the Board as to what we do. But what is the best way, if the Board were to consider any returns of capital, what is the best and optimal way to actually achieve that. And at this point in time, we don't have a comment on that.

[Robin Martin, executive]

Okay. Okay. Question on OpEx. And I think you've addressed this in part in your prepared remarks, but the question is with production being relatively flat quarter-on-quarter basis, should investors expect that OpEx and CapEx are also going to be flat?

[Yacine Ben-Meriem, executive]

Maybe I'll take the -- maybe I'll start with the CapEx and maybe swing back to the OpEx here. I guess as far as the CapEx is concerned, the bulk of our CapEx tends to be on the drilling side. And as Sean mentioned earlier on, we will have a rig basically working every day for the remainder of the year. So directionally speaking, I would say that CapEx ought to be the same quarter-by-quarter for this year. And indeed, that's the same kind of observation we see as well when we do a pro forma basis in terms of the last quarter as well.Going back to the OpEx, as Sean mentioned earlier on, maybe stepping back a little bit here. OpEx tend to be flat operationally and notwithstanding some of the cost optimization that we have instigated this quarter, which we hope will generate some further -- we've already seen some positive results and we do hope and expect to see more coming over the quarter-on-quarter.But we do have some work program that will occur in the second -- for the remainder of the year, as Sean mentioned, is related to workovers and also some maintenance. So from an OpEx perspective, at this point in time, and assuming these workovers do occur, which are still contingent on the performance of the wells themselves and some of the production overall, we do see a direction that the OpEx will go up compared to this quarter. And you can see that -- I mean, just to give more guidance as well, OpEx for the first quarter on a pro rata basis were very similar to the OpEx for this quarter. So you can see the delta when it comes to our guidance there.

[Robin Martin, executive]

Okay. Carrying on, on income statement items. Question here is with cash generation ongoing and a large portion of the noncash charges related to the acquisition now being behind us, is there a potential that we see positive net income going forward?

[Yacine Ben-Meriem, executive]

We hope so. The short answer is we hope so. There's been -- I think it's a good point. It's a good question, actually. We've seen quite a lot of one-off costs that were basically charged for this quarter. I mean, obviously, as we move through the quarters and we go -- and as we move through the quarters, we'll see these one-off costs kind of disappearing. It's worth highlighting from an accounting perspective, in the first quarter, we've booked quite a large earning due to the bargain price mechanism. It's pure in accounting treatment. And that has -- I think just as a reminder to everyone, in Q1, we made more than our market cap in terms of profit that quarter. But I think going forward, we see that loss reversing we hope, especially with a better performance in terms of the assets and also higher oil price.

[Robin Martin, executive]

Okay. A few questions on tax as well, while we've got you in the hot seat. You've seen any update on restructuring of the business and potential to apply tax losses going forward?

[Yacine Ben-Meriem, executive]

I think from our perspective, obviously the whole restructuring is really driven by operational [indiscernible] firms. Our ability to achieve that tax restructuring and the benefit of consolidated is really the cherry on top. It's an ongoing process. But as I said, fundamentally, we're more focusing on operationally putting the 2 companies together. If there is any information, obviously, we'll be communicating to the market in terms of that outcome as well.

[Robin Martin, executive]

Okay. And speaking of putting companies together, sort of a comment and a question from an investor here. Great to read positive notes on future potential in both Manora and Wassana, which is obviously related to putting the businesses together. Can you provide more detail on what the upside opportunities look like for further infill drilling in Manora and also for the opportunity in Wassana?

[W. Guest, executive]

Yes. No, definitely on Manora, I touched on that in the presentation. And the team having now drilled the wells, looked at the numbers they got and the success there. They see probably 3 more wells on Manora in kind of the '24, '25 period, we really haven't got into details on the sequencing, but that's kind of out there.Now on Wassana, really is -- we're really looking at this as the upside volumes could be quite a bit more than we've actually carried on reserves. But again, you have to get into that appraisal mode. And that's why as we work through with the team on this and they kind of brought back this potential of the field, we wanted to get that information fairly early on to try and look at those results as it will really guide our decisions that we'll take on facilities for Wassana. In other words, are we looking at something that we need out there for another 2 to 3 years? Or do we need it for another 8 to 10 years?So that's really why we're trying to get on with those wells. And what's interesting, we have had the question from people as to what wells should I be looking at closely that you're drilling? And we've kind of said, well, no, most of just what we're doing is infill, adding production. It's about statistics. We're going to put 20-some wells down and you're going to have a high success ratio and that will add volumes. But the Wassana ones will be quite interesting to see if they could open up some real potential. So we will release those results once we kind of get them over the next couple of months here.

[Robin Martin, executive]

Okay. On the topic of field life, a question related to decommissioning here. I realize the Q2 financials show the present value of decommissioning. Can you give some color on when you would expect to see actual cash payments for decommissioning? So I think this question is really asking about extension of field life and what we're expecting for the various assets.

[W. Guest, executive]

Yes. So as we've talked about in the past, Thailand has a mechanism when you get near end-of-field life that you do have to start putting some of that money aside. So to give you an idea, 75% of the abandonment cost of Manora has already been put aside, set aside on a cash basis. And next year, we'll put aside the last 25% on that one.The other fields, you constantly do a review of them as to where the reserves are at relative to initial reserves, what's the financial capacity to field remaining. And those discussions take place every year with the government. And we're obviously looking to -- as we do more activity here that's increasing the potential of the field to cash flow from the fields to try and defer having to put down any of those abandonments. So we still see the abandonment, as we've said well -- the reserves that you see, say, always say abandonment is 3 to 6 years out there. Every year, it just keeps deferring. And since -- as we've shown in our plots, since 2017, abandonment has always been 3 to 6 years out there. And every year, the reserves keep getting replaced. So we really see much more potential here to keep deferring that. And that's kind of the reason you would have seen recently, we just actually renewed the contract on the FPSO on Jasmine field out until 2028.

[Yacine Ben-Meriem, executive]

Maybe, Robin, just to add to that point, I mean it's worth highlighting that decommissioning kind of security, there's a company -- actually, any company in Thailand has to provide to the government doesn't have to be in cash. There are other methods that satisfy that obligation be it a letter of credit from the bank, bank guarantee. Obviously, from our side, considering we acquired Mubadala's asset and that decommissioning security was required to be submitted earlier on.And also to reimburse effectively the last -- the previous owners on security deposit on that, we have to use cash. Obviously, going forward, we'd like to seek support from financial institution to effectively use their credit rather than our cash. It's something that as a company we're working quite hard on it as well.

[Robin Martin, executive]

Okay. Very good. Final question, is the political situation in Thailand impacting the company in any way?

[W. Guest, executive]

No, honestly, it's really not, business continues as normal here and it's fine. We can see that sometimes, given the government still in a transition mode that some of the approvals were even related to kind of our corporate restructuring may take an extra few months in there when you need the approvals. But generally, it's been fine. We haven't had any issues.

[Robin Martin, executive]

Very good. Okay. That completes the questions we've had submitted. Just a reminder to the audience that if there is anything you'd like to follow up on, feel free to reach out to us using [e-mail] or any of the other contact details that are available on the website. Happy to engage after the call if there's anything we can help with. So with that, over to you, Sean, to wrap it up.

[W. Guest, executive]

Yes. No, again, I'd just like to thank everyone for joining here today. It has been very exciting for us to just get out these first numbers, to be looking at really the magnitude of the business that we're running here and as we brought the Board over to go down and just meet all of the team, meet the assets, it's a huge transition for the company that's extremely exciting. And we really just see this as a first step in the region with the new relationships that we've established and with the recognition of Valeura now in Thailand. Thank you very much.

[Yacine Ben-Meriem, executive]

Thank you.

[Robin Martin, executive]

Thanks, everyone. That concludes the call.