Orrön Energy AB (publ) (ORRON) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Thank you very much. Welcome, everyone. Good afternoon or good morning. Welcome to the Lundin Energy Q1 2022 Results. We'll follow the usual form. Nick will take us through the highlights and operations, and then Teitur will follow on with the financials, and Nick will round it up at the end with a little summary. For the Q&A, again, we'll follow the usual form. We'll take questions from the line first and then I'll host any that we get through the web. So thanks very much for joining and I'll hand over to Nick.

Well, thank you, Ed, and good afternoon or good morning if you're joining us from North America, and welcome to our first quarter 2022 results discussion, which will likely be our last before completion of the Aker BP transaction. As usual, I'll cover up the operations update and then I'll also talk through the Aker BP deal status and then Teitur will walk us through the Q1 financials. Then of course, we'll open-up for your questions. First of all, the key highlights for the quarter. I'm really pleased to report our business continued to deliver on all fronts, with strong production and financial results. This is underpinned by world-class assets and of course, strong oil and gas prices that we're experiencing. You can see that production came in at 191,000 BOEs per today for the quarter, which was towards the top of our guidance range. Our key projects are all on-track. The Johan Sverdrup Phase 2 topside was successfully installed on schedule and we are on target for first oil in Q4 this year. And we have a pipeline of 5 new projects, including the large Wisting development heading towards project sanction by the end of the year. Our high quality cash generative business delivered strong financial results with continued industry-leading operating cost, you can see here at $3.7 per barrel, which is in line with our guidance. And we generated record quarterly revenue of almost $2 billion in the quarter, which yielded free cash flow for the quarter of $822 million, resulting us further deleveraging the business with net debt reduced to $2.1 billion at the end of the quarter. And the AGM improved, the quarterly dividend increased by 25% to $0.5625 per share, payable until completion of the Aker BP transaction. And we also continue to deliver on our decarbonization plan, electrification of Edvard Grieg is on track for completion in the Q4 of this year. The MLK wind farm in Finland is now fully online and we continue with top quartile ESG ratings. I wish to remind you, if we continue the business as is, the Company would be carbon-neutral from operational emissions by the end of this year. On the combination of Lundin Energy's E&P business with Aker BP, we are on track for completion of the transaction on the 30th of June, 2022, which I'll discuss in a moment. So in summary, we had an excellent start to 2022 and all of our key business priorities are on track. I'll now cover some of the details supporting this performance. So firstly, looking at production. Our world-class assets keep on outperforming, deliver production in Q1 of 191,000 BOEs per day which was towards the top of the guidance range. And you can see that's now 27 quarters running that we've met or exceeded guidance. At the end of the reporting period, Edvard Grieg experienced the failure of some electrical systems, resulting in an outage for almost 4 weeks. Production has now partially restarted at about 75% levels and will ramp-up to full rates during May. We took the opportunity to accelerate the Edvard Grieg plant shutdown works, which were originally scheduled in May to coincide with this temporary outage, which significantly reduces the impact. And we now only have a few days of planned outage of Edvard Grieg in May to coincide with Utsira terminal plant shutdown. So with the good performance in Q1, the outlook for the business and our general conservatism around our estimates, the full year production estimate remains at or above the midpoint of our guidance range, which is unchanged at 180,000 to 200,000 BOEs per day. And now turning to our world-class assets, which underpin our business. Johan Sverdrup continues to perform at an extremely high level with Phase 1 operating very stably at 535,000 barrels of oil per day gross with extremely high production efficiency and you can see stellar operating metrics, operating cost of just over $2 per barrel and exceptionally low carbon emissions, more than 100 times better than the world average. We continue to see excellent reservoir performance, which we believe will lead to increased reserves and plateau extension and this has been worked in the license partnership. The photo here shows how Johan Sverdrup looks today with the newly installed Phase 2 processing platform at the field center. And to give a sense of scale of the 5 bridging platforms, the whole facility stretches over 1-kilometer end to end. When Phase 2 comes online, this will lift the full field capacity level to over 755,000 barrels of oil per day and to put that in context, it's about 1/3 of Norway's total production. Looking now at Phase 2 of Johan Sverdrup. The P2 topsides were successfully installed on schedule and we're now in the final commissioning phase and drilling of the subsea wells has also commenced. Critical activities for first oil of approximately 95% complete and the project is firmly on-track for first oil in the fourth quarter of this year. And it's a real opportunity to see earlier production if the project continues to see progress ahead of expectations. Costs are unchanged from the PDO, but I expect these to reduce as unused contingency is released through the remainder of the project. So in summary, Johan Sverdrup continued to deliver above expectations and everything is on track with Phase 2. And in the Greater Edvard Grieg area, we're delivering on the upsides that will keep the facilities full in the long-term. At Edvard Grieg, the power from shore project is on track for completion in Q4 this year, on which point we can expect similar levels of emissions performance to Johan Sverdrup. This project is a key element of our decarbonization plan and we're planning for another infill well program. Having completed the Solveig Phase 1 and Rolvsnes EWT tie-back projects last year with good success, we're now embarking on the future program of 3 further tie-back projects with the aim of achieving project sanctions by the end of 2022. The significant further upside in the area and I expect to see exploration and appraisal drilling here for many years to come. And there is an outage that the big fields get bigger and Edvard Grieg continues to live-up to this with reserves currently standing at over 2 times the original PDO and with potential further upsides. Performance from the 3 infill wells drilled and completed in 2021 are ahead of expectations and a future infill well program is being planned for spud in mid-2023, and you can see some of the potential locations shown on this slide. To help mature the program, we are currently acquiring a further 4D seismic survey over the field, a technology that's been extremely successful to-date in understanding the movement of the fluids in the reservoir will help derisk the opportunities for infill drilling. And we've already extend the pathway at the Edvard Grieg area by 5 years from the original PDO to end of 2023 and our aim is to keep the facilities full in the long-term. We are on-track to bring forward the Solveig Phase 2, Rolvsnes full field and Lille Prinsen tie-back projects for sanction at the end of this year to take advantage of the temporary tax incentives. Both the Rolvsnes and Lille Prinsen projects will further progress our understanding in exploitation of the basement reservoir potential in the area where we see significant opportunity of up to 300 million barrels gross. These projects will add high margin barrels and contribute to extending the plateau production at the Edvard Grieg facility. And now turning to the Alvheim area, which has a track record of continually growing reserves and creating value and we continue to progress multiple opportunities in the area. With 3 new projects being progressed, the Frosk and Kobra East/Gekko projects are now in the execution phase and the concept studies are ongoing at the Trell & Trine development with the aim to submit a PDO in the middle of the year. All these projects have been progressed under the temporary tax regime and have great economics with breakevens of in the range $25 to $30 a barrel and together will add 70 million barrels of gross reserves and deliver gross peak production of up to 45,000 barrels a day. It's really encouraging that we see these projects moving forward and continue to find opportunities and create value here and I think there's still more to come. And last year, we have increased our interest in the large Wisting oil development to 35%, creating the next production core areas of the business. Wisting is a high-quality 500 million barrel project with strong economics. The development concept is now being finalized and the PDO submission is planned and on schedule for the end of this year. And as this development will be powered from shore, the project is fully aligned with our decarbonization aspirations. We also see significant exploration upside close to Wisting with the surrounding acreage estimated to hold 500 million barrels of unrisked prospective resources. So this is a high-quality project and supports the long-term production outlook for our business. And we continue to create future value. We have a pipeline of projects with 3 in the execution phase, 5 heading towards sanction this year together maturing around 240 million barrels of net resources and we continue to explore. We brought 5 wells remaining to be drilled in 2022, targeting around 140 million barrels of net prospective resources. And with the start of Johan Sverdrup Phase 2 later this year, the business will consistently deliver over 200,000 BOEs per day and quite possibly up to 250,000. And I believe our world-class assets can continue to yield further value creation opportunities. So I now want to focus on the Aker BP combination and recap on the basis for the deal. Lundin Energy has a track record of creating value for shareholders for over 20 years as you can see from this slide, Since the Company's inception in 2001, the share price has grown from SEK3 per share to around SEK400 per share today while along the way also distributing $2.5 billion to shareholders through spin-outs and dividends, representing an exceptional 28% compound annual average return to shareholders every year for 20 years. And we felt to prosper through the energy transition, we need to build greater scale as well as retaining focus on being low cost in low carbon, which led to the process we ran the last year resulting in a transaction to combine Lundin Energy's E&P business with Aker BP. And in Lundin Energy, we leave behind the renewables business, which is well-positioned for growth. The combination of Aker BP and Lundin Energy's E&P business is a tremendous deal, drawing on the best of both companies to make something even bigger and better, creating a Norway pure-play E&P company of scale, with production growth into the next decade, a complementary portfolio of industry-leading low cost and low carbon emissions assets, which is positioned to be successful through the energy transition. The combined company will be Europe's leading independent E&P company with a market capitalization of about $25 billion and this will be a business as financially stronger through the cycle and is able to deliver sustainable and growing shareholder returns into the next decade. And so I believe this is a tremendous deal for shareholders where the value of the combined business is greater than the component parts. And so for the Lundin Energy shareholders, you can see on this slide what this delivers. Firstly, a significant upfront cash consideration of approximately SEK73 per share, which is just under 20% of the value of the company. Secondly, the opportunity to be a shareholder in the leading European E&P company receiving approximately 0.951 shares in Aker BP for every Lundin share. And thirdly, a retained interest in a standalone renewable business that is set for growth. Overall, the existing Lundin Energy shareholders will own 43% of the combined company and the Lundin family will remain a key investor with around 14%. And in terms of process to approve the combination, the deal has now been approved by the shareholders of both companies. Customary government approvals are required, which we believe will be obtained. And we expect closing of the transaction on June 30 this year. And this is what the combined company looks like. We will have reserves and resources of 2.8 billion BOE, supporting production growth from current levels of around 400,000 BOEs per day to over 525,000 BOEs per day in 2028. And this has been delivered at industry-leading low operating costs of less than $7 per barrel and thus yielding high margin barrels. The combined business will continue with industry-leading low carbon emissions of around one quarter of industry average, providing the combined entity the opportunity to continue a progressive and market-leading decarbonization strategy where the aspiration of Aker BP to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. And the business has the financial strength and cash flow profile to pay growing a sustainable dividend into the next decade. Aker BP has guided 14% increase in dividend for 2021, meaning the combined Group will pay an annual dividend of $1.9 per share post-deal completion and on a quarterly basis and growing thereafter by at least 5% per annum when the oil price is above $40. And so this will be a world-class company by any measure and I'm convinced that the combination with Aker BP is a win-win outcome for both sets of shareholders. And so for the remaining Lundin Energy business, this is a new renewables energy company that is a platform for growth. The business comes out of the gate in a strong position with 3 high quality renewables assets in the Nordics, which when fully built-out will produce around 600-gigawatt hours per annum, enough to power around 150,000 homes. The business will be fully funded with cash to build out the committed projects and will be generating free cash flow from the end of 2023. Being initially debt free, the business will have the capacity to raise capital for growth and acquisitions. The company will retain key members of Lundin Energy's Board of Directors and management team with knowledge of the current asset base and a proven track record of building public companies and creating shareholder value. It's intended on completion of the Aker BP transaction that Dan Fitzgerald, our Chief Operating Officer, will become the CEO of Lundin Energy Renewables who I believe will do a fantastic job, The company will also remain listed on the Nasdaq and Stockholm exchange. We've seen through building our existing renewables portfolio that the market is fragmented and that is a real opportunity to create value in this space and the long-term vision is to grow Lundin Energy Renewables into an industry-leading business with scale and sufficient cash flow to be able to provide the progressive shareholder returns. And so I believe with our entrepreneurial spirit and focus on value creation, there's a tremendous opportunity to deliver on the subjective and we'll announce in mid-May more details on the government framework for this new business. So that wraps up the operational update and an overview of the transaction. And I'm now going to hand over to Teitur who will take us through the financials for Q1.

Okay. Thanks very much, Nick, and good afternoon or good morning everybody. So as usual we start off with some of the key highlights for the first quarter in terms of financial performance, and as you can see on here, it's yet again a quarter where some of our key financial metrics are setting new records. As you'll have seen in our report, we continue to split our reporting into continuing operations, which is essentially the renewable business and then the discontinued operations, which is the E&P business. But in the slides, we are going to show here, we are effectively combining those 2 report on a fully consolidated basis as we always have done in the past. So starting off with the production and sales, Nick took you through the production numbers of 191,000 BOE per day for the quarter. We were over-lifted yet again in the quarter. This is the third consecutive quarter we are over-lifted. So the financials are driven off sales and there we lifted 201,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day for the quarter. We will come back on the price realization, but the price realization has been very strong, $104 a barrel for the oil and close to $200 a barrel for the gas in BOE terms. Operating costs continued to be industry-leading low and $3.71 is in line with our guidance, despite seeing certain pressure on electricity and CO2 costs. But in the bigger context of the OpEx, we still remain within guidance. And investment levels came in just under $170 million for the quarter and that's split on $120 million in CapEx and $48 million on E&A spend and then we had some renewable investments of $23 million in addition. So with the stronger macro background we have at the moment, that is obviously generating significant cash flow for the business and EBITDA number just below $1.9 billion for the quarter, which is a new record for the Company and also CFFO on the cash flow statement over $1 billion generated and with free cash flow at $822 million are extremely strong cash generation. And that led to as Nick said deleveraging the balance sheet, still further from our net debt position at quarter-end, just above $2 billion and leaving the net debt to EBITDA ratio at less than 0.5 times. If we then move on to the next slide and look at some of the key metrics that we report against. In the top right, you see the sales volumes we had in the quarter. 18 million barrels BOE sold during the quarter, which is slightly down on the same quarter last year and also on the previous quarter risks, price realizations obviously continue to improve and compared to same quarter last year, 82% up on price realization under the $9 per barrel oil equivalent and even against Q4, which was a very strong price realization in some way, we are still up 30% against the previous quarter. So that generated revenue for the Q1, that's $1.97 billion and generating as I said on EBITDA of just below $1.9 billion which is up 86% on the same period last year. CFFO, just over $1 billion during the quarter. We paid cash taxes of $509 million and with the increasing oil price, we also had a significant working capital build of $322 million. So with those 2 items included, we generated CFFO of, as I said, over $1 billion from EBITDA of $1.9 billion. We also had strong free cash flow generation. We had cash flows from investments of $187 million, which is in line with our full year guidance over the period of the quarterly costs we have here is roughly one quarter of the guidance both on development costs and E&A. So as I said, just below $190 million of investments. And giving us an adjusted net profit of just below $400 million, you should be mindful of the fact that we are not charging depletion to the income statement from the date of announcing the deal with Aker BP. So this is under IFRS 5 accounting rules, and that's obviously going to improve the adjusted net results given that the depletion charges, one of our higher cost items going through the income statement. So I mentioned strong price realization. If you look on the chart to the left to start off with, you can see for the barrels result, we realized $104 a barrel of the sold volume. But with the higher gas prices, the blended BOE price we achieved was $109 a barrel and you can also see at the bottom of this chart that the proportion of gas sales to oil sales is not surprisingly as increasing. So in Q1, we had 86% of the revenue was oil and 14% was gas related. And on the chart to the right here, you see the make-up of our realized oil price. So the Dated Brent for the quarter was averaging $102 a barrel and due to timing effects, in other words, when we lifted our cargoes during the quarter, we had another benefit accreting to $2.4 a barrel, given that after each lifting, we are pricing that cargo to 5 subsequent base and the timing of those lifting played well into how the oil price behaved during the quarter. And then we had a slight discount on the physical sales of $0.50, that's also significantly lower than if you look on the average of the previous 3 quarters, it was $1.50 discount. So we have a $1 barrel lower discount than we have seen over recent quarters and often led to $104 a barrel realized price on all the cargoes we lifted. Looking then briefly on gas, we realized a price of $194 a barrel per BOE and the pricing mechanism is the same as in previous quarters, but we are selling everything a day ahead. So we are fully exposed to the spot gas price market both in the UK and on continental Europe in relation to the Johan Sverdrup cash flow in industry. Then looking at operating costs. As I said, the unit cost for the quarter at $3.72 with absolute costs for the quarter at $69 million. And you can see in the light blue bars at the bottom here, how the impact has come through in our OpEx costs on electricity and CO2 costs. So if you look, compared to Q1 last year then electricity prices, which is what's powering Johan Sverdrup facilities are upward close to $230 per share compared to Q1 last year. And also CO2 taxes are up 70%, which is why you see that light blue increasing fairly materially over that period. But nevertheless, in the context of being generating $1.9 billion of EBITDA to have an operating cost of below $70 million, it's very well managed through our operations team in order to keep these costs under control and therefore, generating yet another strong EBITDA margin of 96% for Q1. Then looking at tax on the income statement. The reported tax rate was 75%, which is lower than what it normally would have been and that relates to some interest rate swap gains we had on some interest rate hedges, which are all non-cash, but because there deemed to be ineffective following the Aker BP deal, they're being fully charged to the income statement, which therefore reduced the effective tax rate. But if we strip out the impact from that plus the FX loss that we had of $36 million, then our operational tax rate is more or less bang on the Norwegian marginal tax rate of 78%, which is also what you would expect to see in terms of effective tax rate when you strip out certain financial items. And at the bottom of this slide, you see the chart which shows the actual cash tax payments that we have to make. And in Q1, as I said earlier, we paid $509 million in cash taxes in Norway. And depending on FX, we are paying installing 2 further installments in Q2 this year of NOK4.5 billion per installment, so NOK9 billion in total. And based on the quarter-end FX rates to the NOK, that should come in at just above another $1 billion of cash tax installments in Q2, which still relates to 2021 tax liability that we have on the balance sheet. And in Q4 this year, we will make the final tax installment to fully settle the 2021 tax bill and that's estimated currently to be another $44 million to be paid. So if you look at the balance sheet for the discontinued operations at the moment, have a book tax liability of the $2.4 billion as of end Q1 and that therefore relates to what remains may be left of 2021 tax liability plus the tax we have accrued for the first quarter this year. Then looking at the actual cash generation, we mentioned this upfront, with very, very strong cash generation with the high gas and oil prices we have realized. So before allowing for working capital movements, we generated $1.33 billion of cash flow from operations after tax. And as I said, with an increasing oil price, the receivables we're building and actually with reducing investment levels, our payables are also reducing, so combined that led to a working capital movement of $322 million. So therefore we reported CFFO to the cash flow statement of just over $1 billion. And as I mentioned, cash flows from investing activity is just below $190 million and that's how we derive our free cash flow number before dividend payments of $822 million. Dividends paid relating to the 2020 dividend declared, which was paid in early January this year of $128 million, so that fully settled the 2020 declared dividend. And that therefore led to yet again hefty debt reductions as we have spoken about net repayment of debt during the quarter of $540 million, leaving a cash build of $145 million. In terms of the absolute debt we reported at the end of Q1, just below $2.7 billion of gross debt outstanding, $2 billion in bonds and just under $700 million in term loans and a small drawing of the revolving credit facility. And we had cash of just below $600 million so that therefore left a net debt of $2.1 billion. And you can see on the extreme right of this slide that we continue to have extremely good liquidity within the business in addition to the $600 million in cash, we have an undrawn RCF of $1.4 billion. All-in, we have $2 billion of available liquidity to draw from. And in the bottom left here, you see the impact from the transaction with Aker BP where the agreement is that renewable business from the vertical will retain $130 million of cash. So when you look at our balance sheet under the continued operation, you will see, we recorded a net cash position of $130 million. And you will then see from the discontinued operations balance sheet that we, in addition to that, also have $468 million sitting within the E&P business. So combined, those 2 items make up a roundabout $600 million in cash for the Group in total. Then quickly on dividend, the AGM at the end of March approved 25% dividend increase as Nick mentioned to $2.25 and already in April 1, we [indiscernible] ex-dividend on the first quarterly installment of that new dividend and on April 7, you should have received the equivalent of $0.5625 per share in dividend payment. And assuming that the deal with Aker BP closes on June 30, which is the plan, then that would have been the last dividend distributed by Lundin Energy AB and then the next dividend you will receive will be through your Aker BP shareholding and the Aker BP dividend distribution will then occur during the third quarter of this year. And then just a quick housekeeping slide on our guidance, effectively everything remains unchanged in relation to what we guided at the CMD earlier this year and you see all the numbers here confirming guidance is unchanged. And before I hand back to Nick, I thought it would be interesting just to have a look back in time, given that this is our last quarterly financial presentation to market, and what we've done here is, look at cumulative performance since inception of the Company back in 2001 and looked at some of the key financial drivers for the business over that period. And you can see here on the production front, we have produced over 400 million barrels BOE over that period. Over recent years, obviously, all of that's come from the Norway business. But if you look back in time, we've also had production out of Southeast Asia, out of Africa, out of South America even and also from various places in Europe and that production has cumulatively generated the EBITDAX of over $22 billion over this 2021 year time period. And also very significant, the cash flows from operation, which is a post-tax cash flow generation of over $17 billion over this period. And some other fun facts on the bottom left here. Peak production, which I think occurred in Q3 last year for a full day stream 216,000 BOE per day. That was obviously all coming out of Norway at that point in time and the highest realized price we've had on any given cargo over the years is $144 a barrel and that was on Alvheim cargo in the mid of 2008. And as you've seen through recent quarterly presentations, our cash taxes are also ramping up and cumulative, we have now paid close to $3 billion in cash taxes. So with that, I will hand back to Nick for some concluding remarks.

Well, thanks, Teitur. And I've just got one slide to finish here. In our mission, in everything we do has been long-term value creation for shareholders and the transformation of our business is focused on that objective. And on that theme of value creation, I want to leave you with 3 key messages. First, we are continuing to deliver strong operational and financial results in the first part of 2022, which, of course, is supporting a growing sustainable dividend the company is providing. The second message is that the combination of Lundin Energy E&P and Aker BP creates the leading European independent E&P company, which I am convinced is a win-win outcome for both sets of shareholders and we'll go on to provide long-term sustainable shareholder returns for all our shareholders. And third, the remaining Lundin Energy is an exciting new renewable energy-focused business, which is positioned for growth and will be led by a tremendous team with the Lundin entrepreneurial spirit. So those are our first quarter results. But as this is our last quarterly report for Lundin Energy, I'd like to finish on a personal note. On behalf of me and our team, I'd like to thank you all, our shareholders and analysts for your confidence and support over many years. It's been a real honor to work with you all and have the benefits of your feedback and insights. But I think the next chapter of this great story as it unfolds, I'm convinced that we can look forward to many more years of value creation through the Aker BP shareholding and also through the Renewables business that we're going to take on and grow. So thank you for your time. And as usual, we'll now open-up for questions, which I think Ed will lead for us. So thank you very much.

Yes. Thanks, Nick. Now, Soph, I hand over to you for any questions on the line, and then you can hand back to me and see if there's any on the web.

[Operator Instructions] We have a question from the line of Teodor Sveen-Nilsen from Sparebank 1 Markets.

Congrats on a very impressive performance in the past decade and also strong performance in the first quarter this year. 3 questions from me. First on Wisting and gas export. Just wonder, do you plan to or does Lundin plan to make an investment in this potential pipeline from Wisting, [indiscernible] thoughts around the gas export from Wisting? Second question is on the new Lundin Energy or the Renewable business. Just wondering on the growth areas, and Nick, you mentioned that that will be an M&A week or should we expect mainly that comply to pursue wind power opportunities or also hydropower, and other renewable opportunities? My final question is just on realized oil prices, which has been very strong, of course in Q1, also seen from other companies. What's the status this far in the quarter? Have you seen also higher realized oil prices than the average spend?

Teodor, thanks for the comments. I'll cover the first one and then Dan will do the second one who is with us, and then Teitur can cover for your oil price question. So on Wisting, the gas export system is part of the project. So there is some allocation of cost to other owners, but which we are not sort of ready to talk about, but it will be part of the overall plan of development for the Wisting project, including the export system. So hopefully that answers that. And so Dan, maybe you'd cover off the question around how we're going to grow our Renewables business.

Yes. No problem. Teodor, I think, although we have a majority of wind assets in a small hydropower plant, I think our strategy is going to be all of the technologies in the energy transition. So I think we'll start in the Nordics because that's the area that we know most about. We've spend a fair bit of time in the market in the Nordics and starting the renewable generation, but I think the opportunity is set around the transition and seeing the emerging technology come out to finish the energy transition beyond the generation focus we will be looking and looking at opportunities to create value in that space as well. So not just wind, but all the technologies.

Yes. Teodor, this is Teitur. On your oil price question, I mean if you look at Q1, the flat price average around about $98 a barrel, but our cargoes are priced off the Dated Brent Index, which averages, as I said, $102 a barrel. And then in addition to the timing impacts as I explained was another $2, so we realized $104 versus $98, that's the flat price. But so far in Q2, the Dated Brent Index has come-off somewhat and it is now trading at a slight discount to the flat price again, but I guess it'll all play itself out depending on how the Russian barrels are going to impact the physical supply-demand balance in Europe during this quarter. That is certainly ones we saw playing out in Q1 and we will just have to wait and see during the second quarter, how exactly that's going to play out. Look, as I said, that's the moment, there is a slight discount to the flat price again.

Okay. Understood. And congrats again on very strong results.

And the next question comes from the line of James Thompson from JPMorgan.

Okay. Nick, Teitur, Dan, thanks very much really for the presentation. Nick, I was wondering could you maybe just go into the kind of balances on AG again and a little bit more details to try and understand kind of what happened there and what are you doing to make sure that doesn't happen again?

Okay. Good. Well, I can for sure do that. So we had an electrical system failure around the gas export compressor and of course, if we don't have a gas export compressor, we can't produce oil. So the system went out and we've now partially repaired it and we're back online, as I mentioned, is around 75% level and we will see us ramp-up to full levels over the coming weeks during May. This was unusual and I think a bit of a surprise to us, but I think we understand why and we have -- good thing is we had quite a lot of spares because if we didn't have the spares that we had, we would have been a lot longer out and so we've -- I mean it's one of the reasons why we've had such high uptime over many years actually at Edvard Grieg. So as I say, we are at 75% levels. Now, we'll be coming up to full rates quite shortly. We did have a planned shutdown in May, planned at Edvard Grieg. And so we took the opportunity to accelerate that work to do them during this unplanned outage, which of course greatly reduces the impact. As I mentioned, we do still have a short outage that happened in May because it's still a terminal where the oil flows to through the pipeline is shutting down. And so when that's shut down, we have to shut down. But that's only a few days and so we've greatly reduced -- we've sort of taken the most of the shutdown during this unplanned outage. So when you put together with our Q1 strong performance, our outlook for the business, which is strong and general conservatism in our estimates that we've had and how we've pitched our estimates actually over many years to make sure we do meet guidance, we anticipate that we're going to come in at or above the midpoint of our guidance range, which is unchanged from the original guidance of 180,000 to 200,000 barrels. So hopefully that gives you enough context.

Yes, that's great. Thanks, Nick. And secondly, I was just wondering, I mean we've had a lot of conversation over the last weeks and months around cost inflation. And I just wondered in terms of, sort of the projects that you're planning through 2022, you had likes of Lille Prinsen and things like that, how are sort of cost customers kind of developing through that process and how much of a factor is tightness in the supply chain when thinking about getting those projects to PDO?

Yes. No, I mean it's a very good question and I think we are seeing cost inflation. I think if you look at the biggest investments that we as a company estimate is Wisting. I think that project is a bit more mature in terms of estimates and they've taken quite a lot of contingency and a provision for this in there. So I think if we look at that one, we don't feel concerned. But it is an issue, but it's a bit early in the projects to understand that, but I mean, what you have to understand is that the tie-back projects are actually low-cost projects overall and high-quality economics. So I don't think this is going to play too much of a bearing on things. I think the other thing is the schedule is going to be important as well and we're not under pressure to do these projects quickly. It's all about doing them efficiently and that can be part of the mitigating circumstances when you start to plan and commit to these projects, but it's really a bit early to comment on that with some away from sanctioning some of these.

Okay. Thanks for that. That's my question. Thanks very much for having a very interesting equity flowing through the company to cover over the years which yielded the very best to the future.

James, thank you very much.

James, thank you.

And the next question comes from the line of Yoann Charenton from Societe Generale.

Yes. Thank you, again. I'm joining in -- provide -- I mean, saying thanks again for engaging with the sell-side throughout the years. Just a question I would like to come back on, which is on this power failure that as you say, Nick, was unusually happening a month ago or so. Just trying to understand or likely this is to repeat in the future if you might provide any color on this.

Yes, I think I can be sure this isn't -- we're not going to see this same failure again in the future. And so we have spares and I think you shouldn't be too concerned about this. It is behind us in my view and we just got to get the final bits done and then move on. And this is quite unusual. So I think it's not something you need to think about as a future factor to take into account.

Okay. Thank you again, Nick, Teitur, Dan and Ed.

Thank you very much, Yoann.

And we have one more question from the line of Mark Wilson from Jefferies.

Thanks for the presentation. Thanks for the perspective on the past title uptick of that, particularly that the highest cost cargo was in 2008, a year I wouldn't have picked out as a high cargo year. But anyway, I would like to ask a question regarding, could you remind us of the benefits of sanctioning a project like Wisting before year-end in terms of the tax benefit and the value on that asset?

I think I'll leave Teitur to answer that one.

Yes. It is -- it has actually quite a big impact, particularly because you can fully depreciate the CapEx against the SPT tax regime. So, on a NPV basis, it improves projects quite significantly, and it obviously varies a bit from project to project, but the more CapEx intensive a project is, the higher is to benefit or I can think we can say sort of over-arching for all our projects, it tends to reduce the breakeven price for NPV8 breakeven by around about $10 a barrel breakeven and it increases the IRR in some cases close to 10 percentage points improvement on IRR. So that is quite significant, which is why we think it's extremely important that we actually need this PDO at the end of this year.

Got it. Okay. Thank you and thank you for being such a good investment case over many years. Good luck in the future with the Renewables and everything else that you will be going to do.

Thanks, Mark.

Thank you, Mark.

And no further audio questions. So I'll hand it back.

No. Thanks very much indeed. Yes, we got a couple of questions from the web. I think 2 of them we can deal with in one go. Nick, can you maybe just talk through or maybe it's to Teitur, just start to just talk through, I know you highlighted in your slide, the dividend and when the last Lundin dividend versus when you're going to get an Aker BP dividend because I think there has been some confusion over the June 30 completion and then the dividend schedule.

Yes. So as I said on the slide, so we have our AGM at the end of March where the shareholders approved 2021 dividend distribution of $2.25. And as usual, we distributed the dividend out on a quarterly basis. So already on the day after our AGM, we've had ex-dividend on the first quarterly dividend for that 2021 dividend, which as I said, we paid out in April. And in normal circumstances if we had not done the Aker BP deal and ignored that, then our second dividend payment would have happened in July. But with the Aker BP deal which is set to complete at the end of June, then the next dividend Lundin Energy shareholder will receive actually be through the Aker BP shareholding given that the Lundin shareholder will swap alone Lundin Energy share with an Aker BP share and therefore will receive Aker BP dividends post completion of the transaction. So that's the short answer is that as a Lundin Energy shareholder, you have most likely received your last cash dividend from Lundin Energy and your next cash dividend will be paid out through your holding in Aker BP.

That's normal course of dividend but, of course, as a cash payment of SEK0.73 per share that will come in early July as part of the transaction.

Thanks. Thanks, gents. But last question again is on the merger. What jurisdictions merger control clearance is required? And what is the status of the reviews by the Norwegian Energy Ministry and Finance Ministry?

Well, it's a cross-border merger between Norway and Sweden, which has been approved. And the key outstanding approval we now need is from the authorities in Norway. And subsequent to that, there needs to be like share of dividend where Lundin Energy distributes out the Merger Co, which is a new company in Sweden, which will hold all the E&P assets and the shares in that Merger Co will then be distributed out as a dividend in kind to our shareholders and those shareholders will then swap the shares in Merger Co with an Aker BP share and thus become shareholders of Aker BP.

But I think it's fair to say in terms of the approvals, we don't see any risk to this. Still, it's going to close on June 30 and some of the approvals we have and we just haven't got all of them yet. So it's going to come in the coming weeks and we don't see any risk.

Okay. Super. That ends the questions from the web. So with that, I'll draw the meeting to a close. Thanks very much everyone for joining, and have a good day.

Those who are on conference call, thank you all for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.