Energean plc (ENOG) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to the Energean Fiscal Year 2024 Results Webinar. This session is led by Mathaios Rigas, CEO; and Panos Benos, CFO. [Operator Instructions] I will now pass it over to Mathaios Rigas. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our call today. Obviously, everybody is expecting us to comment on what is the status of the Carlyle transaction. I think we covered everything that was to be said on Monday through the RNS that we made. Carlyle hasn't yet obtained certain regulatory approvals. And we have a date, which [ might not just ] bring it to be today. The end of today, there is a drop dead situation where the deal can either continue or determinated. And I'm really sorry, I can give more clarity today because this is frustrating us. And most importantly, frustrating our employees, who we worry about. And we need clarity on this. And we will give clarity very soon one way or another because we consider it extremely important for the people that work for this organization and very important for the government that are interested in further investment in oil and gas to know exactly where this situation will go. But today, it is results day for 2024. So I will focus more on what we did during the year. It was a great year where our group production reached 153,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day from Israel, Greece and the U.K., which is the core area of operations, excluding what we have agreed with Carlyle, 114,000 barrels a day. The group generated $1.8 billion of revenue, $1.2 billion of EBITDAX, and we are continuing to bring our leverage ratios down. Totally focused on our dividend policy that has been announced and stays in place regardless of the transaction with Carlyle, we have returned so far close to $600 million in dividends, and we intend to continue the dividend policy that has been announced. And obviously, it would be adjusted based on the outcome of the Carlyle transaction. Operationally, the FPSO has been working exceptionally well with a 99% uptime, production increasing year-on-year from both Karish, Karish North location B in Egypt and Cassiopea, which are all online. So all our major projects are fully in production now. In 2024, in line with our commercial strategy, we continued signing gas contracts. We signed another $4 billion worth of contracts in Israel, bringing the total contracted revenue to over $20 billion for the next 20 years. And I want to stress this, and I'll come back to this later. This is a unique situation where we have contracted revenue and certainty of revenue and cash flow over the next 20 years. In Israel, we signed a new $750 million term loan that is refinancing the bond that was maturing in 2025, removing any near-term debt maturity risks. And a lot of people are -- have been asking me if there is an issue if the Carlyle deal doesn't happen, I remind everyone, the bond that was going to be refinanced from the process of the Carlyle deal matures in April of 2027. So there's plenty of time and there's absolutely no risk or pressure on our balance sheet. We continue to develop the major project that we have in our books, Katlan, which is on track for first gas in 2027. And as announced before and repeating today, we have expanded our M&A focus and looking to grow the business in our effort to become the super independent of the region that we aspire to be. On Page 4, I want to take a moment today and remind everyone what has been achieved in the last years. Production has grown to 153,000 barrels a day. EBITDAX has grown to $1.2 billion, group leverage and a lot of people are worried about our net debt levels with $20 billion of contracted revenue, a 2.5x leverage ratio that has come down from 4 and is enroute to continue to reduce. We consider it to be healthy, and we're comfortable with it because of the nature of our business. The nature of our business that allows us -- has allowed us to pay the $600 million of dividends that I mentioned. I remind also everyone that since IPO, this company has returned 162% to its shareholders. And we continue to focus on growing our business and returning more to our shareholders. Moving to Slide 6. You will notice that in the bar of Page 6, we have a single number of 160,000 to 170,000 barrels of oil equivalent a day for 2025 as indicative group production. We will have to clarify once the transaction with Carlyle is over one way or the other, where our production guidance will be. And I'm really sorry that I cannot be more specific today. But this is something that we will have to come back to everyone once we know where we stand. But the message is both parts of our business, Israel, Greece and the U.K. which we used to call the continuing operations. And Italy and Egypt, the disposal group, have very strong production, have very high-quality assets, and we are very happy to continue owning those assets and be a diversified oil and gas group, but we are equally happy and always committed to our signature because that's how we work as individuals and as a company to complete the transaction that has been agreed. This is our ethos. This is how we operate. Moving to Slide 7, which is extremely important to me, and this is the reserve base that we have in our group. 1.1 billion barrels of oil equivalent. 200 million barrels of oil equivalent of 2C resources in the group. So growth potential to replace reserves, reserves that have today a 20-year or more than 20-year life in a unique position to be comfortable to have the resource base and to have the gas contracts to monetize this resource base we continue with our plan to develop all our assets and find more. Moving to the commercial situation on Page 8. As we've said before, our strategy is to sign more gas contracts in order to be able to fill the low months of the season in Israel. So in line with that, we delivered more than $4 billion of new contracts that have been signed over the last year. And in 2025, expect to hear more contracts from us. We are, today, very pleased and honored to be trusted by more than 20 high-quality offtakers in Israel, power plants, refineries, chemical plants, the biggest and strongest industrial players in the country that pay us on time and we have nothing to worry about in terms of their credit risk. So we are very comfortable to continue to sell more gas in Israel and a market that is growing, we see continuous growth. And despite the war, it is remarkable what is happening in Israel. I was there last week. Despite the war, we see a continuous increase in demand for gas. We see a regional demand for gas. Egypt needs more gas. Jordan needs more gas. The reconstruction of Gaza will need more gas. All of the region needs gas, and we have to make sure we sell at the best price and to the highest credit quality names without the need for major investments in infrastructure that we have today. I come back to the key number on Page 9. $20 billion of gas sales contracted over the next 20 years. This is a very important number, underpinned by a floor price. So we have certainty of cash flow, and we obviously have the seasonality. And on this slide, we show the levels of the take-or-pay and the annual contracted quantities, which obviously, we want to meet. And our goal will be to fill the boat as we've always said. So produce as much gas as the FPSO can produce and as much gas as the wells can produce. We continue to sign new contracts. You will hear shortly in the next months, more gas contracts being signed. And we're continuing our efforts to export gas, I remind everybody, Katlan has no export limitations. And as I said earlier, the region needs a lot more gas. So a little bit more detail of how our operations are doing in Israel on Page 10. We have signed now a gas contract -- sorry, a drilling contract for operations, drilling operations to take place in 2026. And we have 2 firm wells. Those will be Athena and Zeus, wells that are development wells for our Katlan project. We have 2 optional wells to drill with the Saipem rig that will come to Israel in 2026, and we have many different options. On this slide, you see the various structures that we have in the Katlan area that haven't yet been classified as reserves. I point out Dionysus, which is the next target. And this could be our next drilling target to add more reserves and resources to our portfolio. If we move to Page 11. I A lot of people are asking me, what's next? Where is growth going to come from? Beyond Katlan, where we have very low-risk wells to be drilled to find and prove more resource, 35 bcm of unrisked prospects today, but with a very, very low risk. We have 2 more blocks that we see on this slide. The area is called Drakon, used to be Hermes and Hercules. They have now been officially classified as discoveries by the Israeli government, meaning that we will be working on development plans to bring this gas into the FPSO and continue the plateau of our operations in the future. So not only we have Karish, Karish North, Katlan, Tanin, that remains undeveloped. We have the additional wells that we're planning to drill in Katlan, and we have 2 new blocks with gas discovered that remains to be undeveloped. So plenty of opportunities in country to continue the growth and continue optimizing the production for the FPSO. Great update on what is in the perimeter that we had agreed with Carlyle, Egypt, Italy and Croatia strong resource base, 64 million barrels of 2P reserves in Egypt, 79 million barrels of 2P reserves in Italy and another 4 million from Croatia is a great portfolio of assets. all the assets with the exception of the small Croatian development have been now developed. There is no development risk. All assets are in production in countries that we're very comfortable to operate, in countries that we know very well. So as I said earlier, we are happy and committed to the transaction, but we are happy here to keep those assets and keep growing our business in countries that we really like and trust. Beyond those countries, I move now to Page 13 and come back to Greece. Greece Block 2 on the west side of the country, West of Corfu on the border with Italy. We have a very exciting block. We are the operator. We own 75%. Our exploration team sees potential of 5 billion-barrel discovery and a 9 to 10 Tcf gas prospectivity with very easy commercialization as we are on enroute of the gas pipeline that goes from Azerbaijan all the way to Italy and very close to the Greek market if we need to bring gas into the country. We are working on a farm-out process because we want to reduce the risk and share the risk with others. The well cost is $60 million. And it's very interesting to compare with the cost of other operators drilling in the region. Next step for this exciting block is to take a drill or drop [ precision ] or farm it out during 2025 to be able to maybe use one of our options for the Saipem rig to drill this well and prove the potential of the country. What we see is a big turnaround in Europe. We see countries coming back to the energy reality that energy security is required and any prospect that can bring oil and gas resources to European Union countries is now supported as opposed to the last years that we were only hearing support for green projects, which are continuing but countries like Greece are taking a very different view, opening up operators, operations and opportunities for us. On our main Greek projects, on Page 14, the carbon storage project or the transition of the Prinos field into the first CO2 project in the East Med, very solid progress in the project. We have secured not only the recovery and resilience funding of EUR 150 million from the Greek government. We have received an additional EUR 120 million approvals from the Connecting Europe facility, bringing the total funding grants for the project to EUR 270 million. So we are continuing to mature the project with the support of Greece and the European Union to make this the project that will help the country decarbonize, help the heavy industries decarbonize. And obviously, when we are ready, with a full business plan we will present it and look for partners to join us in this journey of decarbonizing heavy industries in the East Mediterranean. In Page 15, I know it's not -- the first priority these days following developments around the world, but we are continuing to reduce our emissions intensity. We are down now to very low levels, well below sector average. And we're continuing every effort we can to be leading the sector in our ESG ratings. And although, as I said, this is not the top of the town, this remains for us an area of responsibility amongst the team and also for the countries of operation. With that, I'll hand over to Panos to go through our financial results. I'll come back to close at the end. Thank you.

Thank you, Mathaios. Good morning, all. As presented in the trading statement in January, 2024 was a record year for Energean. Despite a very difficult geopolitical situation in the region, we delivered in all our key projects in Israel, Italy and Egypt. More specifically, the group recorded in 2024, an increase in revenue and profitability by more than 25% year-on-year. Revenues of $1.780 billion and EBITDAX of $1.160 billion. All these while keeping costs under control with cost per barrel below $10 per BOE and the G&A cost below $40 million. 2024 was a capital-intensive year as you can see, with the FID of Katlan and the M10 module lift in Israel, the Cassiopea gas field in Italy, and NEA/NI project in Egypt, resulting in a 25% increase year-on-year on the CapEx spend, which was recorded at $615 million. Unfortunately, our exploration efforts in Morocco and Egypt, where we committed close to $120 million were not successful, and this investment is now fully written off. Finally, we completed successfully on budget on time around decommissioning obligations in both U.K. and Italy underpinning our commitment to be cleaning up everything that we have produced and delivered in accordance with the regulations and the needs of its country. Our net debt position came within guidance at [ $2.950 billion ] and our leverage at 2.5x, continuing the trajectory towards our target leverage of below 2x. I remind you all that our leverage ratio beginning of 2024, only 24 months back was at 6x and now it's at 2.5. Moving on to Slide 18. We have now addressed all short-term maturities of our debt with the signing of the $750 million 10-year term loan with Bank Leumi and the extension of our $300 million RCF to 2028. Our strategy after a few years of fixed cost of debt through our bond issuance is to increase our exposure now to floating rates with the expectation that given the tenor of our loans, we will benefit from any potential softening of the base rates. On the graph, you can clearly see that for the last 4 years, our chosen debt capital structure protected the business from the rapid increase in base rates from 0 to more than 5%. Now from 2025 onwards. And as we're refinancing part of our notes, we want to take advantage of the expected softening of those base rates. Finally, an important metric for us and our revenue profile is a weighted average maturity, which now stands at more than 7 years, the longest we have recorded ensuring a long and smooth amortization of our debt. Moving to Slide 19, please. The reason why we can achieve this debt profile is the structure of the revenue stream that matches a long reserve life. Most of the projected revenues of our group are protected from floor price mechanism, giving us stable and predictable cash flows, especially in Israel and Egypt. Close to $20 billion of revenues are contracted over the next 20 years with a diversified high creditworthy counterparties. $5 billion of those $20 billion still have to be monetized post-2035, that is the year of the last debt maturity, allowing plenty of room for longer refinancings if needed. Slide 20 must be the most consistent page of our presentations since 2022 when we launched our dividend policy. And we want this slide to be consistent and repetitive because it does demonstrate a strong commitment to returns to shareholders to whom we have already delivered [ $600 million ] in dividends on our way to reach our $1 billion target. Our investment principle remains the same. High return organic growth projects like the second oil train commission was expected to be completed in second quarter of 2025. The Katlan first gas that we are currently investing, and we expect to come on stream in first half of 2027. And of course, as Mathaios mentioned, the drilling campaign of 2026, where you have 2 optional wells and we're very excited about our targets within our portfolio. Of course, transformative and/or value-accretive M&A is always on our radar, and now with regional or our focus expanded in the wider EMEA region, but always applying our disciplined and opportunistic approach that has delivered for us in the past years. I'll finish with the next slide. This is pretty much the same. We have discussed in our January presentation, you won't see any changes. As Mathaios said, we are in the middle of the last few hours and days were more clarity around the Carlyle transaction will be made. We are guiding on the continued operations. We'll give you some indicative for the time being, metrics for the wider group. So our guidance is 120, 130. If we were to add the full group that would go to 160, 175, regarding production. Our net debt numbers stayed at $2.7 billion, $2.9 billion. Our cash cost of production at $400 million to $440 million. If we were to include the rest of the portfolio, that number would need to be increased by around $200 million. I want to emphasize that a big part of that cash cost of production is royalties, the real cost of production, cash cost production is close to half of those numbers. On the cash G&A, we don't expect any big change, maybe $10 million if we include -- an extra $10 million if we include the full group. On the development, $400 million, $430 million, the inclusion of the rest of the group that is now finished with the CapEx will only increase by around $70 million to $80 million, so we don't expect any additional CapEx in the rest of the portfolio. Our exploration expenditure for 2025 will be light, expecting 2026 and the drilling campaign that we will announce later in the year. And our decommissioning expenditure at $55 million to $65 million mostly in the U.K. If we were to include Italy, that number would increase by around $30 million to $40 million. And with that, back to you, Mathaios.

Thank you, Panos. Let me close today's presentation with the slide on Page 23. We have redefined our area of operation. I repeat what I said before. We are very happy to continue with or without the assets that have been agreed to be disposed to Carlyle, and we have expanded our area of growth to include Africa, Middle East, and we will continue our efforts to repeat what we did in Israel. We want Energean to be the independent that is dominating the East Med, but also other parts of the geographic focus. West Africa will be a key focus for us going forward because we see a lot of resource and a little potential there, and we want to repeat the success of the Med in that part of the world. Well, that is underpinned by what we talked about today, the long-term gas contracts in Israel that give us predictable cash flows, give us the bedrock to allow us to continue to develop assets. Our sweet spot is gas discovered resources that remain undeveloped either because they were discovered by small operators that didn't have the operating and financial capability or by majors that are below their thresholds. And this mirrors what we did in Israel. We took over a discovered undeveloped gas resource and made it into the success that we've talked about today. In the short term, as Panos said, we continue with our target to pay $1 billion of dividends. Our new dividend policy will be announced once the transaction is either completely or terminated. We were absolutely correct, not to make announcements until we have clarity on the deal, and I'm saying exactly the same thing today. A lot of our investors have been questioning whether we created confusion. It was absolutely the right thing, not to speak until we know where we stand, and we maintained that position. We've been around long enough to know that deals close only when money hits accounts. So until that happens, we maintain the existing dividend policy, and we will announce a new one once we know where we stand. As I said earlier, commercially, we will continue to sign gas contracts to grow our sales in Israel and the region, and we will continue delivering on time and on budget projects like our second oil train, which should be onstream by the middle of this year that will increase our liquids capacity and give us redundancy in the FPSO and continue, of course, with the solid progress on our CO2 project in Greece. In the medium term, we have -- and we're focused on delivering the projects. Katlan is coming, a new drilling campaign is coming with opportunities both in Israel and in other parts of the portfolio. And we will focus on the next M&A opportunity for the group. And long term, this is a strategy that will continue to be the company that pays a reliable and predictable dividend based on solid cash flows underpinned by long-term contracts and delivering on what we've delivered so far value from opportunities that we have a huge competitive advantage compared to everybody else. But if you look at our competition, the majors, of course, are very strong and are very good for the very big projects. But for projects like Karish and this kind of operation, we have a huge advantage against anybody else because we've done it before. We've delivered on 100%, and we are able to operate in any condition both subsurface and above surface. We operated successfully even during the war, so we understand how to navigate around complex geopolitics. We understand relationships with governments and what is important for countries of operation, but we also understand what is very important for all of us, and I'm speaking as a shareholder now, which is to return money to our loyal and long-term shareholders, and we will continue to do that. With that, I thank you for participating today, and I'd like to open the floor to any questions.

[Operator Instructions] Your first question comes from the line of David Round with Stifel.

Right. A couple from me, please. The first one, look, I know you can't say much on Carlyle. What I would wonder whether you can talk about is just a process around how you will find out whether the deal is terminated or not. I suppose I'm asking whether you expect to know floor at the end of the day? Or is this still go on for a couple of weeks, if there are still approval discussions ongoing. The Second question, I think, is for Panos. I mean, I appreciate your comments on net debt and agree with those. I'm just wondering sort of if I can look at liquidity, and you've talked about sort of $400 million, $500 million of liquidity at the end of the year. I appreciate you're having to balance a number of things right now, Katlan, dividend, et cetera. But in your mind, what is the right liquidity number for the business? And how might you expect liquidity to move over the next few years?

David, thank you. I'll take the first one and Panos obviously the second. On the process with Carlyle. As we've said, the drop dead date for the deal is today at 12:00 midnight. So -- and we could either terminate the deal both sides or there could be an agreement to extend. What will not happen is keep this going for too long. I hate not being able to give my investors, the governments and employees clarity on where we are. I repeat, we are committed to the deal. We're doing everything we can to close the deal and get the approvals that actually is not our responsibility. It is Carlyle's responsibility when we were in their position when we bought the assets from Edison. It took us 6 months to get all approvals in place. So it is their responsibility to deliver the approvals. We are supporting as much as we can, once today is over and the discussions that are happening today are over, we will be able to define if there is going to be a next day or not. But as I said before, we are -- we have reached the end of our patience levels because this is actually a good portfolio to hold on to if the deal doesn't happen. So Again, I apologize for not being able to be more clear, but ultimately, it's the responsibility of the buyer to be approved by governments, not mine.

Yes, on the liquidity, yes, as you said, there are a few moving parts. But as a principle, our liquidity targets and available access to funds, including the RCF is to be around a $300 million to $500 million type of liquidity plus access to the available lines for us. As I've said many times, this is not a company that will be warehousing $1 billion just for things that may come up as M&A opportunities or and organic growth opportunities. Our strategy has always been to return money to our shareholders or delever. And then if and when there is a big M&A opportunity or something like that, then as we did with Edison transaction, we'll go back to shareholders. We present the opportunity and they can support us or not. This is not a company that is set up to manage [ 3 quarter of $1 billion ] of cash, unless as we had done with a big project we had in 2019 with Karish development at the time, that was funds earmarked for specific developments. So I hope I answered your question regarding the debt profile, yes, we are comfortable keeping this side of debt, and I've explained to many shareholders that they have to treat this debt structure completely differently than any other E&P company. If those 155,000, 160,000 barrels of production were an oilfield with a 5- or 6-year type of profile yes, probably, I would be worried and I would be trying to get below 1x type of leverage levels. This is 20-year profile. This is not just a reserve profile. People know today where and at what price we will be selling in 2039 and 2040, I don't think you can compare this with any other independent E&P reserve profile. And that's why we would like and we are comfortable sustaining this type of debt levels, especially given the tenure that we have achieved, which is 7 years. Having said that, and for the [ avoidance many ] doubt, doesn't mean that the 2.5x is where we want to be. As I have communicated many times, our comfort levels are between 1.5 to 2x, depending on the capital intensity of the period that we are recording this ratio.

Your next question comes from the line of Werner Riding with Peel Hunt.

It seems the discussion around various potential gas export options in Israel reduced somewhat new discoveries and resources beyond Karish from Katlan that you mentioned, Hermes and Hercules are also to be allocated toward keeping the FPSO full and supplying the domestic market. So is that fair? And I'm wondering whether or not Israel has actually maybe asked you to keep all Israeli produce gas for the benefit of Israel. The gas export is now less likely?

No is the answer on both. Nobody has asked us to keep anything for the domestic market. I think everybody recognizes that this is not a domestic situation. This is a regional gas market. And of course, geopolitics play a role. But we are here to produce gas and sell it to the highest credit quality buyers. And there is obviously a lot of demand in Israel. The companies are very strong, and we are very happy to sell gas to whoever wants to buy it and be able to pay it on time without taking any credit risk. And we do trust Egypt because we're there, and we are committed to the country. But there is no doubt that Israeli buyers are actually paying a lot faster and with a lot more reliability than the Israeli -- sorry, than the Egyptian market. So the answer to your point there is no. There's no -- we haven't reduced anything. And I did mention that we are actually talking and negotiating contracts. There is always the midstream that needs to be considered. There are 2 pipelines today that go to Egypt, 1 through Jordan and the other one, the EMG pipeline. There's a new pipeline that is being planned called Nitsana that we have expressed an interest to participate, to book capacity for the midstream because this is not just who buys the gas, it is how you get the gas to market. So the plumbing is extremely important. And we are actively participating in that project as well. So we are -- our #1 priority is to, as I said earlier, to fill the boat, sell as much gas as we can. But I repeat something that is very important to us. We're not going to sell gas at any price just to show production numbers. And we have been criticized that sometimes we missed production guidance. We could bring the price down and sell the last molecule of gas. That's bad business. So we are maximizing returns and yields from the gas we have in the ground. And this is happening today in Israel. It could happen tomorrow with Egypt or Jordan. It could happen with any market that is willing to take this gas at the right price. So yes, everybody is focused on production numbers. I understand that. But I'm more focused on cash flow and returns to shareholders because that is ultimately what counts, not to give headlines of production. It is how you convert this production to a reliable dividend to my shareholders. That's my key focus.

Your next question comes from the line of Sasikanth Chilukuru with Morgan Stanley.

I have 2, please. First, I was just wondering if you could give your preliminary thoughts on the M&A strategy. How potentially retaining assets would change your strategy, you're expanding into new countries, new geographies versus expanding in your -- in the countries that you are currently operating in, that would be helpful. The second one, I wanted to get your thoughts on Epsilon but then again you've some [indiscernible] it looks like the startup has now gone to the second half of 2029. The license in itself has been extended as well. I just wanted to check what you're thinking on that project?

Sasi, thank you for the question. M&A strategy. Core area of operations remains demand. This is the countries that where we know the rocks and we know the above surface and geopolitical issues. So countries that we've been operating in the countries that are open for business for us because geopolitics sometimes puts limits on where oil and gas companies can go. So wherever we can go in any country that is open to us, we will go and operate. Expanded geographical focus. I think we showed the map that includes Africa, I mentioned West Africa. I think there's a great opportunity to build a super independent that is focused on that part of the world as well. What we focus on first is the rocks. If we have the right rocks that have the resource that we can convert into production, then the rest, what I call the plumbing, building an FPSO. We've done it drilling deepwater wells. We've done it, building pipelines. We've done it complex projects even in the middle of COVID Or in the middle of the war, we were able to operate. So I think we have a proven track record that we can operate in the most challenging situations. Financial capability, you have seen that we were able to fund every project either from equity or from debt or from debt capital markets. So we have a proven track record in raising the funds required even when we were a much smaller company. I remind everyone in 2017, when we took over Karish, we were a company that was only producing a couple of thousand barrels from Greece, and we were able to deliver a $1.7 billion project along with no partners, no one else joining us because we were able to take fast decisions and we were committed to the country. And this is what we bring to every new country that we go to. We make the country a priority. We take fast decisions and we are able to deliver on any condition, some surface facilities and geopolitics. So core remains the Med, Africa, more importantly, West Africa is the next area of focus. Sweet spot for us, discovered gas resource, we will not go and do frontier exploration drilling. This is not us. We will not risk shareholder funds in unknown plays, but we will go in, take over assets that have been discovered and developed them for the benefit of everyone. Excellent. There are a couple of things happening in Europe and more specifically in Greece. The last few years, we've heard countries, including Greece, is skeptical about new oil developments. You have seen that we had -- we have written off investments in exploration blocks in Western Greece in Yannena because the country did not want to see exploration happening in that part of the world. Epsilon is an oil field development. So it has to be in line with what the government wants to see happening. And it has to coexist also with our carbon storage project. The whole Prinos area is transitioning to this very exciting opportunity to store CO2 and decarbonize the country. Epsilon is a great project from a returns perspective, but it is an oil project in a European Union country that needs European Union policy and Greek policy to be supporting it. I see a major change. And I see that happening in more countries in Greece. I see countries starting to talk about energy security as a priority. So oilfield projects are coming back to be favorable. I see banks coming back to the sector and knocking on our door saying, we would like to support you. We saw a major group of banks led by Bank Leumi, funding our operations and taking out debt capital markets in Israel. So a lot of parts that we're missing, which was funding government support and oil developments in Europe are falling in place to allow us to continue with the project. But it has to be done in conjunction with the conversion of the whole area into a carbon storage project and the decarbonization plans of the country. So great project, a lot of value. It's not going to be material. It's not going to make a huge difference to a company that is producing today 170,000 barrels a day. So I don't expect that it's going to be a huge driver of growth for us but it's a good project. It's very similar to the project in Croatia, actually, a very high-quality asset with very good returns, but not material for us. So we are in a wider portfolio where we are optimizing assets. It depends a lot on what other use of funds we have for our investments. We may decide to bring a partner, we may decide to develop it ourselves. It's there, it's proven. It is producing actually today. There's an extended reach well that brings oil from the Epsilon field into our Prinos facilities. So we know the oil is there. We like it. We will take the decisions in due course to allocate funds or not.

Your next question comes from the line of Matt Smith with Bank of America.

The first question I had was around the dividend, noting that you'll sort of communicate a new dividend policy on the back of clarity on the transaction. I guess I just was hoping you could add some color sort of why the dividend policy needs to be clarified i.e., is this around when the dividend -- current dividend level might increase in future. Any color you can give around sort of your commitment and confidence on the current dividend level and frame in the future might be helpful. And then secondly, could I ask a comment -- operational comment on the liquid train on Karish, sort of just to understand its current status in terms of its production levels and where we will get to once the commissioning is fully complete there, please? And then sorry, could I perhaps ask a quick third one, just a clarification on the net debt guidance adjusted for -- if the transaction were not to go through. Did you say that the net debt guide would be unchanged or apologies did I mishear that?

Matt, I think we covered the dividend policy multiple times. And as I said earlier, we were prudent not to make announcements before we have clarity on the deal. And we wouldn't want to be in a position where we had announced the policy and then had to pull it back and reannounce a new one depending on what happens with the transaction with Carlyle. So I'm repeating what we said before. We will give clarity once we know where we stand with Carlyle. Now we also said very clearly in the presentation, it is in the last slide, we have the target to pay the $1 billion unchanged with or without the Carlyle transaction. The only thing that happens with Carlyle, it accelerates part of this plan into 2025 because there's a special dividend that brings us closer to the target sooner than we would otherwise get to but we are still committed to the plan. Nothing is changing with or without the transaction. Now will we be able to grow the dividend. This is something that will be defined once we have the M&A opportunities sorted out to see what we need to invest to grow. Because yes, we want the dividend to continue, but we also want to continue the growth. You asked a question about leverage, Panos will take it in a minute. On the liquids train. The liquids train had a very interesting journey in its life. It was built in Dubai then instead of coming through the Suez Canal, it had to travel around the world. It stayed in Cyprus for a few months, and then it was lifted on the FPSO very successfully in the middle of a war even without the use of GPS, so we went back to traditional methods of operation. So this is something that we're very proud that we succeeded in doing. The project is progressing and will be completed by the -- June. And once it's done, it gives us 2 things. First, it increases our liquid processing capacity, and we believe we're going to be able to push [ 23, 22, 25 ]. I can't tell you the number. We have to see where it comes from, how it operates. But it will definitely increase liquids for the second half of the year. The second thing it does is it gives us a lot of redundancy to be able to operate with 2 oil trains rather than one. So if we need to do maintenance or if we have an unexpected issue that we need to deal with, we have redundancy in the system. So it's a very important project. It will increase liquids. Liquids are very important because we are the only project in the region that is producing today 17,000 barrels of very light oil/condensate. And this is something that we continue to search for because we believe there's a lot more liquids sitting under our assets. And we will be doing all the technical work to find more liquids. Regardless of the gas contracts and our sales to Israel in the region. There's a lot of oil to be produced. And people sometimes don't appreciate it that Israel is exporting oil today. We are selling those cargoes to Vitol so far, and they're going to various refineries. The price is getting closer and closer to Brent. So we're improving the revenue, the yields from liquids, and we need to find and produce more. We have the capacity to store close to 600,000 barrels of liquids. Again, it's a unique situation. The others in Israel are bound by pipelines that go to the shore and have no ability to export the liquids. So they're stuck because of choices of how they develop the assets with a pipeline that goes to one refinery, we have the ability to produce as much oil as we can and export it to the world. And we're going to capitalize on that. So it's a very important project and will increase significantly our operating capabilities. Panos, do you want to take the net debt question?

Yes. Matt, yes, the guidance of $2.7 billion, $2.9 billion is on the assumption that the Carlyle deal goes ahead. As you can appreciate, as I said, there are quite a few moving targets around the assumption that we keep the whole group. If I were to give a soft, but the emphasis is in the soft because I don't want -- especially with those type of metrics, to be either too conservative or too optimistic. I expect the net debt to stay within the 2024 mark, assuming the full group. So you can say around $2.9 billion is the mark we would be aiming for. But please bear with us to see how these discussions conclude. And all metrics will be made available to you when we finalize those.

Your next question comes from the line of Mark Wilson with Jefferies.

You talked Mathaios about investor questions regarding Carlyle deal disclosure and timing. The message I've heard today is that while there remains a chance of extension, the deal is still there, but that you don't want to extend unnecessarily. So I've only got one question. If the long stop date is midnight tonight, could we expect an announcement tomorrow either extending that date or terminating the transaction?

Mark, you will get an announcement as per our requirements for information to the market. And when we have a material announcement to make, we make -- we do it. You saw that we took the initiative to inform the market on Monday to make sure that everybody was clear and we were totally transparent and gave all the information to everybody to know exactly what was going on. So when we have something to say, and it is announceable, we will do it. Whether it is tomorrow or next week, of course, we, as I said earlier, have to give clarity and I hate to be in this position. It is very unfortunate about timing, but we will give clarity very, very shortly.

There are no further questions at this moment. I will now hand back over to Energean team for closing remarks.

Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you for participating today for the interesting and challenging questions. We remain committed to doing what we know how to do, which is to produce and develop oil and gas for the benefit of our shareholders with or without these transactions. Again, I am very frustrated, I'm not able to give you more clarity. But we are in a very fortunate position to have great assets that we are very happy to keep. And we're very happy to be the operators that develop gas resources for all the countries in the Med and beyond. We remain committed to our return policy to our shareholders. We remain committed to being the operator of choice for countries and to become the super independent that the market is missing today. Thank you, and look forward to speaking to all of you very soon.