Equinor ASA (EQNR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

[Presentation]

Welcome to Equinor's 2026 Global Supplier Day. My name is Kristina Helland-Hansen, and I'm Head of Procurement for Wells, and I will be your moderator today. Every year on Supplier Day, Equinor welcomes suppliers and interested stakeholders together and discuss relevant topics in the industry. This covers existing and future suppliers. Today, we are streaming live from ONS in Stavanger, which means we have people attending also virtually. However, before we proceed, some practicalities with regards to those present at this venue today. In an emergency, an alarm will be activated, or a spoken warning will be given through the speakers. Please follow the instructions and leave the premises. Emergency exits are marked with green exit signs, as you see on both sides here. And the assembly point in an emergency, if an emergency occurs, will be in the front of the main entrance. So [ M1 ] on this map. There is elevator access to the second floor. In the event of an evacuation from the second floor, dedicated PSS personnel will assist people with disabilities and ensure their secure evacuation from the building. First aid equipment and defibrillator are located at the reception of the Stavanger Forum. There are no planned [indiscernible] nor emergency evacuation tests. So if we hear an alarm, please we should then evacuate. Smoking is only permitted outside. The theme of this year's Equinor Global Supplier Day is Safe, Reliable Energy Every Year. We all feel the challenging context and the need for reliable energy supply is key both for our people in Europe but also globally. During the next hour, we will cover how we have responded in Equinor by launching our new strategy and how we have sharpened and expanded our future portfolio opportunities through the NCS 2035 project. We also need to face and tackle key challenges together, fast-track our subsea portfolio and deliver value through innovation, scale, standardization and technology. To discuss these topics, we are joined today by Chief Procurement Officer, Jannicke Nilsson; Senior Vice President of the New Business [indiscernible] Projects and Subsea, Gunnar Nakken; and our Senior Vice President for Technology, Arne Gurtner. We will use Slido through the session. So submit your questions through this. Either you could scan this QR code and/or you could log into slido.com and enter the event code ESD26. We will pick as many questions as possible during the Q&A. Try to be specific on who you want to answer your questions. There will also be microphones available here in the audience and then you just need to raise your hand. So we hope you all got the QR now. I will also show it in -- at the end. Before welcoming our speakers on the stage, we will start with a safety moment. In February, every year, the annual reports from Norway's Intelligence and Security Service are published. One of the most significant risks facing our industry is the possibility of unauthorized access to critical safety systems. A key message from the '26 report is that Norway is actually facing the most serious security situation since World War 2, and states that the attacks on critical infrastructure are likely. The energy sector continues to be a potential target. And for the first time, supply chains are explicitly highlighted as a potential weak link. A cyberattack on a critical supplier like you can quickly become an operational issue for Equinor. And we've had some incidents the last years where we learned a lot, and I want to share the key learnings with you. The importance of supplier cyber resilience, strong business continuity plans, clear communication channels and the ability to maintain operations even when a critical supplier is disrupted. So if your company were a hit by a cyberattack today, how quickly could you continue to support Equinor's operations? Think about that. And building a security culture is actually a collective effort. Equinor's [ My Security Actions ] can be summarized in 3 simple behaviors. First, we expect everyone to speak up when something seems wrong or suspicious. So see something, say something. Second, be aware what information you handle and how you handle it. So protect that information. And third, stay alert to social engineering attempts and ensure both physical and digital access controls are followed. So prevent unauthorized access. Equinor relies on all of our suppliers to work systematically with security within your own organizations and also across the value chain. So train on this together. By working together and keeping security high on the agenda, we can help ensure that our people, our operations and our assets remain safe and secure every day. So then we're ready for our first speaker, and please welcome, Chief Procurement Officer, Jannicke Nilsson.

Thank you, Christina. And it's so great to be here. I must say I've been really looking forward to this part of the ONS. Just a couple of reflection back to the video. Really makes me proud looking into what we together have been able to achieve. We have done a lot of new stuff together, but we also operated and done a lot of maintenance together on existing installation. We have done all this while we have improved on safety. So I would like to use this opportunity to all of you in the room, but also, of course, to all of you on the screen. Thank you for the efforts and all you have done together with Equinor. Being here at ONS has been quite interesting, I would say. So much positive energy, and that's good. But I must say I'm missing a little bit the sense of urgency. I hope that you also feel that when you are around. How can we utilize all this positive energy to really think new? Because that's kind of part of our message here today. We have a fantastic portfolio, and we will go a little bit deeper into it, but together we need all kind of smart ideas so that we can work differently to sanction the portfolio and continue the [ annual ] production for a long time. In June, we shared our updated strategy. It is about providing reliable energy to our world in transition. So what does that actually mean? Of course, it means that we will continue to develop the NCS, building our strong standing here being the largest energy provider to Europe, delivering energy with a lower emission. But it also means that providing -- it is about providing energy to the world. But it is also about the ripple effect: providing work for a lot of people, a lot of company activities in local communities and the progress for society. And reliable [ energy ], what is that? It is, of course, safe and reliable supplies from the Norwegian continental shelf from our international portfolio, but it's also about being able to deliver and develop even more broader energy offering. Because the world is in a constant change and we need to be prepared for the future. And then we do have a world in transition. And with that, there are kind of 4 key elements that we put into our strategy. It's [indiscernible] volatility. It's the mature resource base that we have. And it's technology, including the AI. And then it's the uneven energy transition that we see. And based on that, we feel it's very important to also have a more flexible approach for the future. and we have these 3 main areas. It is about really developing the NCS. Gunnar will come back to that more in detail. But it's not a lot of new greenfield in the project portfolio. It's more about how can we actually sanction smaller fields and do a lot more [indiscernible]. In the international portfolio, we have sort of assumed the portfolio in 9 countries right now. We have [ farmed ] down to have a much stronger portfolio, and we believe this is an area where we will be able to grow. And then we are building an integrated power business and that will be important now where it's possible to have more broad energy offering, but also, of course, for the future, that we are able to deliver more, [ not ] hydrocarbon energy. In the capital market this year, we guided how do we spend our money. So we have guided that 60% will be allocated to NCS, including then the onshore plants, and 30% oil and gas international, and 10% to the power. So this is giving a good predictability we have guided in the period 2026 to 2030. So in this period, this is how we will spend kind of our money and also giving sort of a signal of where we will have the most of the activity. But across our portfolio, we continue to focus on the always safe, high value and low carbon. On the left slide here -- left side of the slide, you see sort of the development on our serious incident frequency. And over many years together, we have improved our safety performance. Oops, fantastically. I don't know what's happened there. And I think if you look back year-by-year, we have taken important step to make sure our people are safe and secure every day. And we do need to continue to improve on our safety performance. But also, as Christina alluded to, we need to also strengthen our security culture. In the middle of the slide, you see our productions ambition. And they should be very clear. It's the 1.3 million barrels on the Norwegian continental shelf up to 2035. And then on the international portfolio, we plan a 30% growth, up to 950,000 barrels in 2030. And to deliver the growth and also enable the transition, cost and productivity trends must be reversed. I've included 2 curves here. I could have included a lot. This curve is showing that we have -- the operation costs have gone up with 60% and our engineering hours have been up [ by 40%]. But I could have shown in many other curves. And together, we do need to find out how we can work differently so that we are able to sanction a very important portfolio. But we do need radical new ideas from you and also from Equinor, so that we are able, in a way, to sanction an important portfolio, whether it's oil and gas in Norway, oil and gas international or renewable portfolio on the power portfolio. And I think we need to have this mindset that together we can make the impossible possible. Some of you may be interested in the power portfolio that we have. And we do have quite a strong portfolio. But as for oil and gas, cost reduction are needed in order to sanction the opportunity space that we have shown on this slide. The pace of the energy transition has changed. And we believe that the systems will require even more flexible and more market-based solution. And that's also why we have changed the way we have organized within Equinor. We have the Power segment, where we are looking into both wind and solar and batteries and also CCGTs. Because we do believe a flexible solution is needed for the future. And again, here, the new solutions, we need your help to find them. And within offshore wind in the middle of the slide, on top here, you can see the Baltic, [ Dogabank ] and Empire [ Wind ], 3 huge projects that are sort of been in execution for a period. And most of these fields will now move into a new phase being in operations, meaning that we need to handle also quite efficient the way we operate, not only how we develop. So what about the international portfolio? We have the 30% growth ambition up to 2030. And here, a lot of our major projects are driving this growth. And 90% of the reserves for 2030 is already covered of projects that we have sanctions that are in execution. In Brazil, we have the Bacalhau, started production back in October, and Raia is definitely on track and we aim to start up production in 2028. The project is quite advanced. The FPSO is 80% completed. The gas export pipeline has been installed. And the drilling operation is ongoing. In the U.K., we are building scale with [ Aduro ]. That's the joint venture that we have together with Shell, and [ Rosebank ] are planned to be on stream '26/'27. Norway, we will, of course, do exploration with [ Skonak ], we'll come back to. But we will also do exploration international. We plan 2 to 2 wells for each year. And we will focus along the Atlantic [ margin ]. In Brazil, for example, we have 2 very interesting wells: [ Jasper ], that's close to Raia, our own field. And then we have [ Tomolino ] that's close to BP Discover [indiscernible]. In Angola, we have taken strategic position with 8 new exploration license. And we are maturing high potential opportunities in Angola and some other countries. And alongside sort of the exploration opportunities and what's already sanctioned, we also have greenfield projects. We have the [ Bedinorth ] in Canada and also in parallel, in Norway, we have divesting. And the reason why I'm, in a way, mixing in the Norwegian listing here, is that with the 2 new greenfield projects that are not sanctioned, we are working very systematic now to try to reduce the cost, because the cost for both these projects need to be reduced in order for us to sanction them. And we hope that that will be possible to do quite soon for us. So if you have not understood it yet, we definitely believe it's a great potential on the Norwegian continental shelf and international portfolio, whether it's oil and gas or renewable. We do need all of you, all good new radical ideas. And we need a stronger collaboration, even though [indiscernible] even more challenging each other, together, we will find good solutions. We need to work differently in Equinor and we need to work differently with all our suppliers. Gunnar and Arne will share some ideas on how to work differently. And I believe that together, we can make the impossible possible, realizing a huge portfolio so that we together can deliver safe, reliable energy every day to Europe and other parts of the well. So thank you.

Thank you, Jannicke, for sharing our updated strategy, your views on the changing context and also our portfolio and what it takes to still be a reliable energy supplier. Now next, we will invite Gunnar Nakken, Senior Vice President for Projects and Subsea, to the stage to talk about the way we will develop the NCS to maximize value and our subsea project portfolio that will help us get there. Welcome, Gunnar.

Thank you, Christina. Good to see you all. So I will talk about how we're going to work to develop and maximize value on the NCS to realize the ambition that Jannicke also explained, delivering 1.3 million barrels per day in 2035. So as you see in the middle of this slide, to do that, that represents a substantial volume of activities. But due to the maturity of NCS, smaller discoveries and also the cost level increased significantly the last years, this is not sanctionable, not profitable if we continue delivering as we have done so far. So here, we need radically new ways of working. I think, first and foremost, Jannicke, as you also said, internally, in Equinor. And then also, of course, together with our suppliers and all our other stakeholders. Because doing this within the time frame we are talking about here, that means a radical shift increase in productivity, cost, speed and so on. So this is a huge change. The volume, significant 900 wells to be drilled within IOGR and projects. We're talking about 75 tieback projects towards 2035, 250 modifications per year, and a significant [ DCOM ] scope also coming towards us, 8 installations, 200 [ PP&As ] towards 2035. So there is enough for everyone, I think. And the clue here is actually to make it profitable and sanctionable. So even the size of the discoveries are small, this basin represents actually a world class of opportunities on the NCS, consisting of IOGR exploration and tieback projects. And within IOGR, we have identified around 230 projects, representing approximately 1 billion barrels recoverable resources. And these are a lot of projects with low -- very low breakeven, but also very short payback time, and a significant value that we will create around existing infrastructure. And then we also need to fill our project pipeline. And here, we have mapped around 200 exploration prospects containing also more than 1 billion barrels recoverable resources. And we expect to identify even 200 more. And out of this, we have established our ambition -- exploration ambition of around 250 exploration wells towards 2035. And then looking into the third element, our tieback portfolio consists today of around 65 tieback projects, also with about 1 billion barrels of recoverable resources. And we will high-grade and optimize and expand this portfolio further through our exploration activity. And through this, also sustain a delivery pace between 6 and 8 tiebacks per year. And as you see on the right-hand side here, through the next 18 months, our plan is to sanction 21 tieback projects across 3 waves of projects. And this will add around 500 million barrels of resources to Equinor. And that is roughly similar to 2 Johan Castberg fields actually for Equinor in 18 months. So it's not the big elephants anymore. It's many small, but it is comparable volumes and also investments we are talking about. So what do we mean when we see -- say, let's talk about radical new ways of working internally and in the industry? First of all, we have established a very clear ambition where we need to be in 2035. So here comes the -- from 2 to 3 projects where we are up to 6 to 8, 300% increase in productivity and also reducing cost and time with 50%. Sounds very ambitious. And it is. But this is what we need to make the projects profitable an sanctionable. That's one element. But this is actually also what we need to do to lift the performance into top quartile when it comes to subsea tieback project performance. And why shouldn't we? I mean with this portfolio with you guys, all the competence in this industry and also internally in the company, and expertise and experience we have on ourselves, definitely, we need to deliver this in top quartile. So that's actually what we are talking about. Then we have bullet points, redefine the way we work, [ I shall ] work to develop a project like this. So we have redrawn our work processes, don't do all small details and also radically revised our decision processes. And this we have done to reduce interfaces, simplify increased flow, speed and so on. So a huge change in itself and everything implemented already in our governing system. Another key change is converting from internal technical requirement in Equinor to industry standards and simplify and standardize our concepts. And this is a main key, I think, both to reduce lead time in our projects, but also cost in our supply chain. But there is also another very important element in this, and that is that we will reduce the technical risk in our project by standardizing our components in the projects. This gives us the possibility to change components [indiscernible] project if we have a change or have to stop a project. So this is also a very important element of standardization and why we are focusing a lot on that. Then we have also consolidated our marine activity in my unit. So this is to drive synergies across the whole portfolio and optimize our vessel activity significantly. And finally, by standardization, we are also able to aggregate our demand of components on a portfolio basis. So we collect the demand for all single projects into different components, and by that, we can increase volume of components significantly and move to the market in a completely new way. And this also opens the possibility to create much better predictability for our suppliers and also the possibility to optimize the whole value chain in the industry. So all these bullet points, I think, represent radical changes for many of us. And I will end my presentation to give you some more details on what we have done on changing from Equinor technical requirements to industry standards. So during the last 6 months, we have actually removed our technical requirements. And this is, of course, 50 years of experience, a lot of important experience written in technical requirements in Equinor. But we have now removed them through a very systematic process driven by our professional ladder. And we are only keeping requirements that is important for safety or are contributing to reduce cost as an overlay to the industry standards. And this was in place in May this year. It has reduced the number of requirements with 90%. We have 40,000 requirements, internal requirements, and it's reduced now to 4,000, what we call standard supplements, [ SDSs ], as overlays to the industry standards. And we have an ambition to go all the way on this slide to the right and remove these supplements and fully use the industry standards the next years. The main opportunity we now explore together with our suppliers is actually to optimize our standard catalog of subsea equipment and align this with the industry standards and the minimum of needed overlays. We also need to invest a lot, as we see it, in competence building in this area. I realize that even we have established the structure in the governing systems and so on, they are in place. But it's also a huge effort to change the culture and also the understanding of this, both internally and with our suppliers. So I hope you see that we have had a lot of efforts the last year in the NCS 2035 project, changing our operating model and the way we work. And hopefully, you also see this as a good foundation for new ways of working in the industry to realize and maximize the value on NCS. I know we need a really strong collaboration and integration with our suppliers, with our partners, with authorities and other stakeholders to succeed on this journey. And I must say, so far, really, really engaged and energized by seeing the response from you the last months, but also meeting with the suppliers and all the stakeholders here on ONS, everyone really forward-leaning and really interested to be part of this journey. So I'm really optimistic when it comes to way forward and delivering on this ambition. So then I think it's time to move to the next deep dive, technology, which is also, of course, an important part to realize the ambition. Thank you.

Thank you so much, Gunnar. And what an important message and what an opportunity set we have together and also challenges that we need to solve together with all of you. So now we are really looking forward to hearing from our Senior Vice President for Technology, Arne Gurtner, on how we can deliver value through technology. So stage is yours, Arne.

Thank you, Christina. I'm delighted to be here with you this afternoon. Well, Gunnar just shared the enormous amount of opportunity on the Norwegian continental shelf, but also the transformation required to deliver on our ambitious goals. We need to find more, we need to develop faster, recover more from existing fields, and all of that at lower cost. Technology is not separate from that agenda. It's indeed very integral part of it. And remember, not a single barrel is found, developed and produced without technology being involved. And we know that. And the next chapter of the NCS will require an even stronger technology muscle, combining our subsurface experience, our operational excellence, our data and the capabilities of all of you, our suppliers. So let me show you how this may look like. Every second, our operations create new information and new data. More than 85 billion data points flow into our systems every day, combined with decades of operational experience and rich collection of subsurface competence and knowledge. But data alone does not create value. Value is created when data becomes insight, when insights become better decisions. We are using advanced seismic technology and artificial intelligence to look again at things we already thought we knew. We are connecting facilities, equipment and people through integrated operations. We're using digital twins, industrial AI, and increasingly, autonomous workflows to transform how we discover, develop and operate. Together with you, our suppliers, our partners; we are turning technology into safer operations, better productivity and lower costs and more competitive projects. That is how we extend the longevity on the NCS, and that is also how we grow internationally. Let me show you some glimpse of what that may look like. And I'll start below the surface. This is [ Deli ], our deep learning solution for seismic interpretation. And traditionally, interpreting big seismic models could take weeks and months, and now Deli solves part of this workflow in days and hours. And that does not mean that we are replacing our geoscientists, but it means that we're giving them stronger tools to work with. And artificial intelligence in this respect can help us identify new possibilities and work on data which are ungraspable by humans. And since 2024, this unique combination of data leading subsurface competence and insight and technology has also contributed to 27 recent discoveries. And that's, of course, particularly important on the NCS. This means that some opportunities that were previously too uncertain, too small, too expensive to pursue may become opportunities to progress when we can investigate them, reinterpret them and move them on to the funnel much quicker. Finding an opportunity is only the beginning, of course. We then have to identify the best way to develop it. And traditionally, expert teams have planned wells and concepts with a... [Audio Gap] That there may be more outcome. The outcome space is bigger. There may be thousands, even millions of outcomes. And that is where AIM, our AI solution for maturation, helps to change the way we work. Instead of assessing only a handful of options, AIM generates and evaluates the broader solution space. It brings data engineering constraints and economic variables altogether and allowing experts really to compare far more alternatives altogether. The technology is already being used across the Equinor portfolio, our projects. But also, I'm glad to say, on a few partner-operated projects. AI can help find new opportunities, design better wells. But the real test comes when the drill bit is turning, right? So NCS, we heard it, means more exploration, more tiebacks, more recovery from existing fields. And that also requires us to make better decisions while we operate, while we drill and not weeks afterwards. Today we are increasingly combining seismic pictures with measurements directly from the wellbore, technologies such as real-time fluid identification tell us if we're approaching gas, water or oil. We can feed back that into the drilling process. We can also understand more about the rock formations and bring that data in and combining all these measurements with comparing back to our geologic models, apply data science on top of that. We just get a much, much better picture. And the result of that is, of course, better well placement, reduced uncertainty and more value from every single well we drill. Once an asset is producing, the opportunity shifts from finding value to protecting and maximizing it throughout the entire lifetime. Across our integration -- integrated operation center, I said, 85 billion data points daily. That means 25,000 sensors across 35 installations continuously monitoring equipment and process conditions. The challenge is not really collecting the data any longer, but the challenge is to recognize what's in that data and act early enough. And one example of that in our portfolio is what we call [ Omnia Prevent ]. It uses machine learning and AI solutions to monitor critical equipment and identify deviations before they lead to failures. And that gives our operations crew and team time to investigate the plan and to do the right intervention ahead of failures and loss -- and prevent losses. And that is, of course, a fundamental shift from calendar-based maintenance methods, which the industry knows well. And that delivers lower cost, higher value in our operations. And when we operate -- when we kind of scale that across equipment, across our operation, small, small adjustments lead to enormous value creation. Technology has always been very, very central to Equinor's success. Now the industry has repeatedly solved challenges we didn't think we could solve. And technology was an enabler then, and technology will continue to be an enabler for the future as well. But we need to be disciplined. We are not developing technology for technology's sake. We are targeting the opportunities that we -- where we think we can create the biggest value, the biggest impact, and improve our competitiveness in operations and in our projects. Of course, AI will increasingly be integrated across the full value chain, from subsurface to trading. This will change tasks and ways of working. But technology rarely removes the need for good people, good competence, good collaboration. And that reminds me of the famous, and contrary to the famous song title, video did not kill the radio star. And that is exactly how I see this industry also pursuing its opportunities going forward. The winning combination will, of course, be technology, deep domain insight, and develop that together with industrial execution muscles. Many of the things technologies, approaches we take in Equinor, we have developed with suppliers, partners, research communities and even startups. And we bring decades of operational experience, petabytes of data, structured data. And we have an ambitious growth strategy in our company. And now I will invite Jannicke back to share how we can maximize that value together. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Arne. [indiscernible] on here. So just one last slide for me. And I hope you understand it's a huge opportunity set out there. And we strongly believe that we need to change in Equinor. We also need a stronger collaboration with all of you. All these radical changes, we can't do alone. We need support from you. We need you to challenge us. So I would like to highlight 3 sort of expectations. And the first one, I know it goes without saying, always prioritizing safety, security and sustainability in everything we do, so that we make sure our people, assets and the environment are safe. And then we talked about it, all of us: simplification, standardization, repeat and scale. We do need to simplify the way we work in Equinor together with you so that we together can increase the productivity. We will move from, as Gunnar already said, away from the technical standard towards industrial standard. And we also need help from you to help us to see what's the big step, the next step, that we need to take. We will also improve, by this simplification and standardization, we will improve the commercial availability, the lead time. And also, we believe, improve the safety if we're able to industrialize even more. But in order to scale, we also need to have a better long-term plan from Equinor, working together with you, so it's more predictability and what is coming next year and the year after. And we need all of you to bring good ideas, radical ideas, see how we work differently with others, bring that to us, ideas that no one have listened to, bring them back to us so that we can discuss it. Identify barriers. And please help us together to see how we can move this forward. We have done fantastic stuff together historically, a lot of complex projects, complex stuff. This time, we're actually asking you to help us to simplify and standardize, and by that, changing the portfolio so that we can sanction it together. This middle part, I'll spend a little bit more time on that than the first and second. And of course, we understand that simplification, standardization make it possible to repeat and scale. That's the big culture change in Equinor. So we do understand that. But we also believe that we can do it and we also believe there is a cultural change that we need help and support from all of you so that, together, we can simplify and standardize, and that by that, being able to repeat and scale. The last part is about enhancing the performance and promote competition. We will strengthen our performance [indiscernible] in Equinor, and we will also look differently to how we reward the outcome. We do believe that high performance should be better than not high performance. You should see it back in the way we -- related to what you earn. So where it's possible, we should not look to the hours spent or equipment used, but what is good productivity and how can we make sure it's a win-win situation. We do believe also that healthy competition remains essential in order to drive innovation, efficiency and also the value. And I hope that we together will be able, and I do believe also that, together, we will be able to improve productivity and also reduce the cost together. So the opportunities ahead is I find it very interesting. I really look forward to the journey ahead. I hope that you do as well. And if we combine the Equinor portfolio, with all of your experience, all the global experience and all the ideas that are out there, I'm sure we will unlock the next level of performance so that we can do more on oil and gas in Norway, international and also more within the Power segment. By improving the performance together, we will then be able to deliver reliable energy every day together. I hope when we meet next year, we see that together we have been able to make the impossible possible. But now it's time for Q&A. I hope there are some questions. We will open for that. So I invite the rest of my team up.

Thank you so much, and thank you for your presentations. And as Jannicke said, it's time to engage with you all. And we'll have the QR code up here again. So scan, put in the code, put in your question and direct it to who. It would be really nice if you put in the name in front of the question. We also have microphones in the audience. So then you just raise your hand and we have 2 people helping out with the microphones. So I have one question in front here, but I'll start with one that came in here before, and then you can get the microphone. So Jannicke, how do you foresee that the frame conditions will change going forward?

Big question [indiscernible]. So what we do see is that the world needs more energy. And whether it's Norway, international, we work very systematically also to make sure that there are predictable frame conditions to continue to develop what we planned for, the oil and gas in Norway and international power. But also it's up to us to make sure that there are predictable conditions for all of our suppliers, that you are able to understand in a way the scope, that you are able in a way, together with us, to make sure that there is a minimum scope, not a maximum scope, that we can drive down or increase our productivity, and by that, reducing the cost. So it's something we hope that you will see a change, but we can create more predictability also for all our suppliers.

And then we have your question here. Please introduce yourself.

Yes. My name is [ Howard Stepfold ]. I'm the CTO of [ Axis Group ]. So my question is directly towards the change of going from technical requirements, TRs, in Equinor, and over to more global recognized standards, which are present in the industry today in a vast amount. We have APIs, ASM, ASMI, ISOs, EM and even national ones, NS, which are not recognized as EM. So this is a very comprehensive landscape to navigate in. And from my point and from an integrity point of view in Axis, we like the TRs quite much because they were actually simplifying this jungle of international standards that have been present for a long time and, of course, still will be in the future. So that's one thing, if you can give us some thoughts about how you came to this decision, because I assume you have had the same discussions in Equinor as well. And secondly, I think a very important one for the whole audience here is, for future modifications on your assets, how do you foresee modifications are to follow the new standards. Because the original build is according to TR, will the modification project follow the new industry standard strategy you have? Or when you modify on something built on the TR, how does that impact the modification projects?

Good questions. And I guess maybe you, Gunnar, would like to start on that.