Pantheon Resources Plc (PANR) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Pantheon Resources Plc Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand you over to David Hobbs. Good afternoon, sir.

Thank you very much, indeed, Alessandra. Good afternoon to everyone. Thank you for joining us. We're going to be updating you today on progress since our last update and talking about upcoming activity. We'll be reiterating why we're pursuing the strategy that we laid out just over a year ago, continue to work on that with a single-minded focus on turning our assets to cash flow and we'll be describing 2 initiatives that provide exposure to optimization of that strategy. First, the drilling of the Megrez-1 well to appraise the East and top sets of Ahpun and second, moving the gas sales forward. However, as we'll explain, these are options that give us a chance to retain more of the value for shareholders rather than being the only path forward. We're going to lay out a conservative view of the time line to get to first oil production. And I know that there are a lot of participants who are interested in the technical underpinning of both the Megrez-1 and the reservoir quality question overall and we've arranged for Roger Young to present his work and address any questions that you may have in that regard. I'd ask you to note the disclaimer, but not to spend time on it right now. And just to reiterate that our primary core focus for the company is developing the 1.6 billion plus or minus billion barrels of independently verified resource bringing it to cash flow as quickly as can be achieved as -- and as undilutive a fashion in order to retain as much value for our existing shareholders as possible. We've made a lot of progress since we last updated you, including the fund raise to cover the cost of the Megrez-1 well. That pad is under construction. It's more than 50% complete as we sit here today, and preparations are beginning to mobilize the rig in line with the expected time line. I don't think anyone requires to be reminded that it's bigger than 600 million barrels. Bob and Jay will talk about that more in due course. We announced earlier this week that we had appointed Philip Patman as our U.S.-based CFO, which is part of the continuing consolidation of our activities here into the United States. And we've agreed the appointment of advisers on a success fee basis to move forward with strategic funding and ultimately to an IPO, and we'll talk more about that in due course. The investment case that we are laying out and have laid out is competing for capital in an environment where the big 4 basins, those are the basins that are most active in the U.S. Lower 48, have been attracting most of the capital and we need to be competitive with that in order to achieve our strategic goals in terms of raising the funding to develop the Ahpun field, and subsequently out of the cash flows of that, the Kodiak field. We have done a lot of work on benchmarking and in engagement with investors, both potential and existing. And what this slide lays out for you is that the investment case is competitive, both against the companies who have been focused here on those big 4 basins and also against half cycle cost of activity in those basins. Our core strategy, as we said, remains developing the resources that we've discovered. And what we've said is that anything we do that appears not to be aligned with that must pass the test, does it help us to achieve that value faster at less dilution of value or at higher value. And the 2 initiatives that we're going to focus on today are enhancements to that core strategy. The first is drilling the Megrez-1 well to secure the development time line for Ahpun rather than start having a stop go on that development time line. And success in the Megrez well will enhance the start-up ramp-up cash flows because the wells are going to have higher initial production rates and therefore, reduce the size of the cash [ sync ] to get to cash flow self-sufficiency. In terms of the engagement with the Alaska Gas Development Corporation -- Gasline Development Corporation, sorry, that is being pursued because it provides us access to non-dilutive funding and therefore, reduces the expected value dilution in our overall financing strategy and we can address that in more detail in due course. But those 2 initiatives, if they work, expose us to a higher upside for investors, but development of the core resource is not influenced in any way. Geologically, there is no reason why results of Megrez would alter the underlying assessment of the Ahpun and Kodiak fields. And in terms of access to funding, there are -- that we will have to pursue other options in the event that we don't ultimately see the AGDC project move to fruition. So I'm going to hand over to Bob and Jay at this point to discuss Megrez both in terms of the prospect and the activity.

Well, thanks, David. So this well is really truly a collaboration between Bob's group and the engineering and the operations group. As David said, we're targeting 609 million barrels over 3 Tcf of gas. Roger will show you and Bob will talk about these sands are the Eastern top set east of the Dalton Highway, our pad is along the Dalton Highway. So we're drilling a directional well. It's a relatively simple well. It's about 10,400 feet measured depth, about 8,400 feet total vertical depth and the maximum angle is about 50 degrees. And we've worked with Bob's group and with Roger and with SLB, with US Coring, and Bob jumped in at any time to ensure that we can get all the data that both we and Bob and his group want to get out of the Megrez well, including coring and sidewall cores and e-logs, et cetera.

Thanks, Jay. I was like kind of anxious to jump in there and just say look, I've been in this game for 50 years. This has got to be one of the best prospects I've ever seen. I think the team agrees with that. And we're going to discuss it in more detail with Roger in a few moments on why we believe that. It's a huge prize, and we will get into the details. But it's -- it is a great prospect, world-class, and we're testing an excellent reservoir here. Again, those details in a few minutes but just anxious to step in and make that statement to everybody.

We're going to use oil-based mud, which is a little more expensive than water based, but that reduces the swelling of the clays, which is what has caused us some issues in the past and reduces the drag, and we just believe that we have a really, really great plan for this well as we said, taking full cores sidewall cores, logging while drilling and the e-logs. And as David said, success for the Eastern top sets yields us less capital per 1,000 barrels a day of oil flow rates. So that's good for everybody. And also, as David said, more quickly to self-sufficiency on cash flow.

I'm confident that there are going to be questions about what constitutes success before we get on to this slide, which is merely to remind that regardless of the outcome of Megrez, the Ahpun and Kodiak developments will proceed. But Bob, do you want to talk a little bit about the difference between the threshold and the expectation and what success -- we judge success.

Sure. Right at the moment, our expectation, and again, we'll show you the work that is the foundation for that expectation is we're expecting to see reservoirs between 20% to 25% porosities, 5% to 35% millidarcies. And that is significantly better than anything we tested at Alkaid-2, 50 to even 200x better in terms of the permeability. However, we have a good result. We have good reservoir in the pipeline state well at the Western top set, hasn't been tested yet in that zone. So if we could find that kind of quality reservoir that we've already seen in the Western top set, that would be a good result. We're expecting significantly better than that, but that in itself would be a good result.

Thanks. So to summarize, we're not -- until we have drilled the well, until we've got the cores and understand the reservoir, success is going to be measured in terms of the quality of reservoir we encounter. The geometry of the well will determine what flow rates one would expect from that geology. And that's the reason that we won't be today sharing target flow rates or anything. But the critical point I just want to bring home is if the Megrez well encounters reservoirs that would yield flow rates that are commercial, whether they are as good as our expectation or not, that would constitute a success in the case of Megrez. Moving forward then, as we said, we think it's as good an exploration shot as anyone has drilled in a long time. And certainly, we think it's the best well being drilled this year. But in the event that it doesn't proceed, we think we've got a very attractive core development, benchmarked against the competing uses of capital and we will pursue alternative funding pathways in the event that Megrez doesn't deliver as expected. In terms of the gas sales initiative, many of you would have seen that AGDC shared the first phase report, the draft from Wood Mackenzie. The overwhelming conclusion of the report was that the pipeline makes sense for its Phase 1 domestic or in-state gas demand and it secures the optionality for a really much, much better outcome in the event that the full project moves forward. And we will be continuing to engage constructively with AGDC on moving this forward. The -- again, just to stress, if this project doesn't come to fruition in terms of the gas. Our base injection plan, all the metrics that we've shared with people have been on the basis that we will be reinjecting gas. Initially, that requires 1 injection well for every 3 production wells. In due course, you begin to reuse all production wells for injection. So I just don't want people to think there's a one-to-one correlation. In addition, we will need to have injection capacity for more than the potential gas sales offtake as well. So gas reinjection continues to be the base case that we're assuming, and we will only move to a different plan when that has been secured. In terms of the overall timetable, the time line we've shared is assuming that it takes as long as we can imagine for the environmental impact statement, so allowing for 12-plus months overrun on the expected schedule. The corps of engineers has recently adopted regulations requiring it to actually process in 18 months. But we don't want to presume that we're going to achieve the fastest EIS that has been done. And so this is a conservative time line. You'll see that subject to funding, we have plans for additional appraisal, the 3 wells in Kodiak and a further one in the western top sets the precise timing of those to be confirmed. But what is firm in our planning is drilling the Eastern top set with Megrez, continuing the development planning and regulatory approval work with a view to having FID late in 2027 and being able to begin drilling production wells, installing facilities and undertaking the pipeline connection for oil exports. In terms of the gas project, as you see along the bottom there, that is an optimization project, which will add appreciably to the value of the project, will significantly reduce expected dilution but it's not the base case in terms of moving the project forward. At that point, I'm going to pause to address some questions. There will be an opportunity for people to ask questions related to Bob and Roger's more detailed presentation on Megrez and the reservoir quality assessments and the work that eSeis has been doing. For the most part, we are going to respond to questions by aggregating them and answering them in writing where that is the most efficient way of doing it. But there are 2 or 3 questions that have been put both before and during the course of this presentation. And so I just want to address those first. The one relates to plans for a U.S. listing. I just want to clarify because I know it's a question that a number of investors have been asking over the last several months. You'll recall the Pantheon first talked about exploring a U.S. listing back in 2020. So it's not a new topic. But what was clear was that we were at least a year away from being in a position to act on any market window that related to a U.S. listing because there's background preparatory work in terms of building the controls and documentation, et cetera, that would just be good governance for a company in any case. And certainly, that's work that whether we were pursuing a listing or not, Pantheon will be undertaking. What we're aiming to do is to get that work done to a point at which we have between 3 and 6 months maximum runway to get to an IPO. We're not going to proceed with an IPO unless there is good reason to believe based on the market testing that it will be enhancing the value for shareholders. There is limited money being committed to that process because the vast majority of the cost of an IPO are, a, they're back-end loaded. And b, we are -- they're based on success fees. So there has been a minimum level of money spent doing work, which is predominantly required for the effective management of the business to put ourselves in a position where we have a realistic prospect of an IPO should the market allow it. In terms of what specific form that will take, that will be subject to the detailed advice of the investment bankers and the lawyers of the accountants who will be working on the program. So it's not a commitment that we are going to be a foreign issuer on U.S. Exchange or a U.S. issuer on that. That will be a decision that's taken at the time based on the regulations and the tax treatment at that time. Similarly, I'm not going to be definitive on anything that isn't decided, but what I am going to be definitive on, we are not going to be delisting the shares that people currently own on the AIM market in London. We will continue to have listing for as long as it makes sense on both the U.S. exchange and the U.K. exchange in the event that we do conduct the IPO. So I hope that that's as clear as it can be. But firstly, there is not a fire-and-forget cost associated with an IPO that we would only move forward having shortened the runway by having done the preparatory work, which the company needs to do in any case. And secondly, that we are not going to be canceling shares that are listed on the AIM market. In the end, the market will determine where the liquidity moves to. Right now, it's clear the liquidity is on the AIM market and it would be madness to be forecasting the end of that. In terms of -- there are some questions around Megrez, I'm going to leave those for later in the presentation. In terms of time frame for moving forward with the gas project, that is in the hands of AGDC working with Goldman Sachs and potential funding partners. And I think everyone is aware that the Wood Mac report was requested by the [ legislature ] in terms of providing some backstop funding to help ensure that the decision on moving forward with front-end engineering design could be made as quickly as possible. The precise timing, though, of that process completing, I'm not in a position to share anything other than to say that we are engaged in a constructive way with AGDC and the other stakeholders in the project to help ensure that it moves forward as quickly as can be the case. The final question I want to address now before we move into Bob and Roger is why should we have confidence in the ability to arrange alternative funding, given that we have been working on this for the best part of the year. The answer is that we've been working on it for actually somewhat less than a year on the basis there was a lot of preparatory work that had to be done before we could begin that initiative that we have -- we took an active decision to favor off-taker financing over vendor. You'll remember when we started out, we said there were a number of strands that included vendor financing, off-taker financing and potential mezzanine and other ventures. We chose the one that we think has the best chance of delivering the best outcome for investors. We have other activities ongoing, which we're not going to be providing a running commentary on. But I know that the Board is aligned and engaged on ensuring that we deliver certainty around our ability to move forward with the underlying development of the Ahpun and Kodiak fields as quickly as possible and not taking any risks on not having that funded. With that, Bob, I'd like to turn it over -- there are some additional details in appendices, which you can read at your list, but let me turn it over to Bob to you and to Roger.

Thank you, David. I'm going to move this to the first slide, which you've already seen. I just want to say something before -- kind of before we jump into this, this is going to take just a couple of minutes. I've been thinking about this over the last couple of days. And I've been in this project since the very beginning, and it's now 16 years. I think I can honestly say that we are in the best position that this company has ever been in. I'm talking to a lot of investors who've been either in Pantheon for a long time or at Great Bear for a long time. And we -- as David has presented and Jay has alluded to in the beginning of this. We now have certified reserves by the largest, some of the most prestigious auditing firms in the world. And some of these resources are not only certified but they are valued. And I've noticed over the last month or so, having conversations with people that they do not understand that these different groups, independent experts have actually given us a value for some of these resources. And I just -- this should give confidence to people and our shareholders on the value of our company. We're about ready to embark on this well, Megrez, as I stated, it's a world-class exploration project. And we're only doing it because it enhances all of our attempts to get the Ahpun field on to development. It's clustered. These are a cluster of resources that are around the Dalton Highway, and Megrez or Ahpun East is part of that project. It's -- we're testing 600 million barrels, very low geologic risk. We're looking at a very high-quality reservoir. As stated, this is the best reservoir we're going to be testing. Roger is going to be spending time explaining that, how we get there, and we are drilling this along the Dalton Highway. And on this, the object of the first well, obviously, to find light hydrocarbons, but also maximize the amount of data that we're going to collect. So we've had this slide up a couple of times in the past. I'm not going to talk in detail of it. But I will say one thing. It does show we have found a lot of hydrocarbons already in the Kodiak field. We've found a lot in the Ahpun top sets in the West. We're drilling up there to the shallower, the next set of top sets, which are Megrez. And I just want to say something about the amount of hydrocarbons we've already found, the 2.5 billion barrels of hydrocarbons we've already found, explored for and found, so I'm pretty proud of the team, everybody, the geologists and the engineers who've been -- who have done this work. And we're moving over and we're testing Megrez which is, again, shallower, just the next set of top sets, younger and really, really excellent reservoir. I'm not going to talk in detail off of these 2 slides after I -- in a few minutes, I'm going to turn it over to Roger, and he's going to explain to you what these mean but for the geoscientists and the people who are knowledgeable and we're looking at it, the slide on the left, the color displays with the -- particularly, you see where the well plan is what we're targeting and what we've already hit at Ahpun, West and the top set over there. The reds and the yellows where we're drilling are telling us we're going into some pretty good reservoir. And when you look at the next slide on the right there, which is another amplitude display of the -- using what we call the AVO display, you see all these greens. That is telling you something. You can keep these -- when we're drilling the well, you should have these 2 slides just kind of looking and saying, this is -- the expectation from these 2 -- this data is we're going to be hitting some very, very, very good reservoir. And just as a point of interest, and we've brought it up in the past and had other webinars and other talks. We have intersected this reservoir already, but they have not been intersected where we see a track geometry for hydrocarbons. So if you look at the line on the left, at pipeline state above the Ahpun top set, we have sidewall cores that are telling us that already hard data that this is good reservoir, 20% to 25% porosity. And in one of the side wall cores 35% permeability, significantly better, significantly better than anything that we've intersected but importantly, tested over at Alkaid-2. I think with that, I'm going to turn it over to Roger because he's going to explain all this. And I think that's what most people are waiting for. So Roger, over to you.

All right. Thanks, Bob. I'm going to first explain what AVO is, amplitude variations with offset. And then when you're all experts at AVO, we're going to go exploring. Seismic data shot. It shot with lots of sources and lots of receivers. This results in some ray paths going vertically and also some ray paths that are at angles. The ray path that goes vertically, samples the physics -- it samples the rock in terms of its compressibility and its density. Whereas the ray path going at an angle, they sampled the rock in terms of compressibility, density and shearability. So we have -- the physics are different. We have 2 different sets of what's going on here. In fact, we can actually take one seismic survey and turn it into 2 different volumes of information so we can play one off of the other. It's not all that different from when you -- on the medical industry when you get an MRI and you get a CT scan. Sometimes you need one, sometimes you need the other. Sometimes you need a combination of the 2 to be able to assess what's going on. When we're using these 2 different data sets to understand our rocks, you can understand how a shale is very layered. Therefore, it will be very shearable compared to a sand that is not layered. In terms of fluids, water is not compressible. The oil with gas in it is compressible. Gas is very compressible. So these 2 different data sets, if you want to call them that, these 2 different volumes can give us a lot of insight into what's going on in the rocks. But we have to learn what it is when we compare one data set to the other data set, what is it we're really looking for. So what we do is we cross-plot the 2 data sets. The two important things about the cross plot are, firstly, how far do the points move from the origin. And secondly, which direction do the points go? So every point in the data set falls somewhere in this cross-plot space. On the cross-plot on the left, you'll see where the arrows emanate from, that's 0.00. That's when the data sees nothing. And then when a seismic [ stay ] starts to see something, the point will move in some distance in some direction. The distance it moves is very important because that's very much a function of lithology. It's a function of fluids. It's a function of thickness. And the direction it goes, which is also called AVO type, gives us a lot of insight into what the rock properties are, whether it's more porous, where it's laminated or blocky, it often can help infer depositional [ faces ]. So this is a very interesting data set to have, especially when you have the 2 to work together. Discoveries we've made already, the current Ahpun top sets and the Kodiak basin floor fan fall in the area circled there. These sands are harder than the shales. That's why they fall in the direction that they do. That means that the sands are falling in that direction, the shales fall in the opposite direction. We're going to change and go to the Megrez play. Megrez is younger, it's shallower, it's more porous. The sands are certainly going to be softer than the shales rather than harder than the shales. So the whole AVO story flips and turns the other direction. So the circles that you see now are where the Megrez sands will fall. It's not much of a speculation, that is where they'll be. In fact, these zones encircled there are where the sands fall for Horseshoe and Pikka and Willow and Alpine. That's where the Alpine field falls. And within those zones, we're looking for the bright, on the left, volume, the distance from the origin, we're looking for the points to get to red that would signify that they were anomalous. And on the right side, we're looking for the areas where it says 3, 2 and 1. Those are the AVO types of 3, 2 and 1. Those are going to be the best rocks. And within those best rocks, the AVO type 3, they're going to be the best of the best. So now that you're all experts on AVO, let's go exploring. To set the scene, we're going to look in the area of where Ed Duncan has previously talked about how the -- we have these 2 shelf margins prograding, and the confluence of those 2 has created this area that we call the funnel or all the explorers in Alaska call the funnel, and Duncan calls it the super trap. So we're going to look at this arbitrary line. Starting on the west side of that arbitrary line is where the Talitha well is. Continuing down the arbitrary line, we go to Pipeline State.

Before we do this, I want to make a point when -- that when Roger just [ blightly ] passed through when he said Alpine, he's very modest. Alpine is a 1 billion-barrel oil discovery on the North Slope and is the last truly known billion barrel oil discovery on the North Slope. It's producing -- Roger is one of the people attributed to making that discovery using these techniques. So I just thought I would just point that out again. Sorry. So he kind of jumped over Alpine there. I thought I would just chuck that in. Go ahead, Roger.

Bob, thanks. So the arbitrary line goes from Talitha to Pipeline State, then to the end of the shelf margin, then we're going to jump across the funnel or super trap to the shelf margin on the other side. To continue setting the scene, the HRZ, the [ high ] radioactive zone, as it's called, that's our prolific hydrocarbon source. Here on the left, I'm enhancing what the Talitha well looks like. The first track in that Talitha well shows the lithology, the sands, green -- I mean, the sands are yellow, the shales are green. And the second track is a blow-up of the porosity. The green in that porosity is oil. As you can see, it's filled with oil from the HRZ, all the way up to the seal. Every sand is filled with oil. That's billions of barrels of oil in place, just a testament to what a tremendous hydrocarbon source we're sitting on top of. This is the area we're going to explore today. This is the funnel area. So what we're looking for in terms of AVO is large distances from the origin, meaning it's anomalous. In other words, we're looking through the reds, as shown in the cross plot and in the seismic section, this is the seismic section of that cross plot. So the color bar on the cross plot is the same color bar that's used in the seismic section. So we're looking to see where the reds are. And the first thing you'll notice is, well, there's a whole bunch of reds there. That's a very anomalous horizon. Something is causing that to happen. So we're going to click on it and see what -- how it maps out. So the map on the left is showing what that -- what the contiguous body looks like that the computer has pulled out. But the color of that map on the left is the color of AVO types shown in the cross plot just below it. The greens are Type 3. The reds are 2s and then there are some very light reds that are 1s. Greens are the best. That's the best of the best. But what's even more impressive is that this map does not contain Type 4s and 5s. I often see when I'm using AVO to explore, which is what I do every day. When you have a map that is 3s, 4s and 5s, it tends to not work. When you have an anomaly that's 1s, 2s and 3s, it tends to work a very high percentage of the time. In other words, there is a difference between the Type 3 and a Type 3. A Type 3 that has neighbors of 4s and 5s is something else probably. When the Type 3 has neighbors of 1s and 2s, those are the ones that work. So continuing down, we pick the next horizon. Another map, 1s, 2s and 3s, perfect. It doesn't get better than this. The next one below it. There's another one. 1s, 2s and 3s again. And the next one, 1s, 2s and 3s. You put them all together, you see how nicely it all falls together in that trap. This is a spectacular set of stacked anomalies. What could possibly be causing this? These are just anomalies. I'm a great believer in Occam's razor. See Occam's razor playing out over and over again. In my words, Occam's razor states that the simplest solution to explain a set of circumstances is likely the correct one. Simple. That's what works. So here we are with these prospects sitting on top of a prolific hydrocarbon source that has put billions of barrels into the rocks above it. We have a trap that's set up above it that's caused by the funnel. We have numerous -- not just one, we have numerous AVO anomalies with AVO signatures that are the type that work. How do we best explain what's going on? It's not one, it's multiple, and these anomalies are consistent with what's found that Horseshoe, Pikka, Willow and of course, Alpine. My opinion, that the simplest way to explain all this, is that we are sitting on a trap that is another elephant. We have a new elephant by the tail here. When you look at the management explanation or prediction of 609 million barrels and 3.3 Tcf of gas. That is from 3 of these horizons. Pantheon has mapped 9 horizons in this, and we're just talking about 3. This is really, really exciting stuff, it's tremendous. And the simplest way, always remember that the simplest way to explain something is the one that's right. Do you want to say something about it, go ahead.

Yes. I want to point out that Roger and using Roger's technique in the tighter rock, we've already found, again, 1.6 billion barrels. This stuff is the classic seismic attribute work that you use around the world for looking for conventional good reservoirs with hydrocarbons in it. And that's what we're seeing here at Megrez -- at the Megrez location, we're going to hit a number of zones, and we're going to test out the idea. I'll turn it over to you.

So there are no specific questions relating to the technical case, but there are a couple that I know people brought beforehand. The first is, can we reach all of the 9 horizons that we've mapped from the [ West ] of the river.

No. The answer to that is no. The -- but I want to point out that because of the nature of the trap that we're testing, which is actually a structural trap, there's a big structural nose that's associated with it and a fault that gives us some of the trap. We have the ability to test several zones stacked on each other. If this was just purely, purely, purely a stratigraphic trap, just a simple, very simple stratigraphic trap, that could be a difficult situation. It's not the normal situation. But we do have the ability to test probably 3 zones.

David, ultimately, with a larger rig, we can -- and I have looked at every one of those, we can reach the majority of them with a larger rig. We can reach a longer reach to get take...

Yes, I think that's what the question was getting at. I recall when we were determining how far to [ reach ] across the river, it was based on what could we reach from a development perspective, recognizing that the development wells are slightly more complex than just a simple 45-degree exploration.

Yes. And looking at that, we thought we could get to the extreme Eastern edge. And if we got to within that edge, we'd probably drain all of those sands outside of the -- marginally outside that edge.

Yes. And the second question is slightly -- it fits into the they're talking about it stage. And if we got a success at Megrez, I think my guess is that the hardest thing in the world is going to be to keep up Bob quiet rather than we're going to be reticent about promoting it. We -- over the course of the last 12 months, we've definitely encouraged into the industry discussion that there have been a number of papers related to our rocks that have been presented at various conferences and stuff. That activity will clearly step up. And in general, there's a lot of engagement that Jay and Bob and I and other members of the team are having with industry, I suppose, it shouldn't come as a surprise that a lot of those discussions don't happen in public, they happen privately. The -- but there's certainly no shortage of making sure that the relevant people are aware and introducing a broader community of people to it. I think there may be -- there are a few more questions that are sort of more specific. They relate to IPO process and that kind of thing. We'll address that in the written answers that we'll eventually post. There are 2 outstanding questions, though, that I think we should answer. The first is, it looks like we've got no drilling timetables for 2025. And I'll kick off, but Jay, I know you may want to say a bit more. Clearly, the drilling window outside of using gravel pads is winter. And so any drilling that we haven't got currently funded is subject to funding. In the event that we were to be drilling further appraisal of Megrez, for example, that could happen any time during 2025, subject to funding. But in terms of the other wells, they would all require, I suppose, Jay, do you want to talk a little bit about how quickly we could get that together.

Yes. We certainly could get together drilling for the winter of 2025, 2026. And as David just said, that would be either Talitha B or follow-up wells at Theta West or possibly if we have the funding, both of those and have a nice road that goes to Talitha B pad and on and out to the updip Theta West. So that could certainly work subject to funding, and those will be pretty exciting wells, obviously.

Can I add a comment. One of the things that I think that people take for granted is -- what they should understand is, with Megrez, we're, again, drilling off a gravel pad, which means that we are -- and we're collecting whole core sidewall core data and we're getting that data. And I fully believe we're going to make a discovery. And once we do, let's -- we've logged the well, we've released the rig. And there will be a period of time, a short period of time in which we will analyze that core data. And as David has said, to make our decisions on how we're going to test the well, but we will go out and test the well probably early in the winter. So kind of in December, we've collected the data. Ed Duncan has already talked to the different labs to expedite the data such that we can make decisions on how we're going to test the well. Up in Alaska, that's not the normal process. In Alaska, you have a winter, you drill a winter well, you go out, you collect your data. Next winter, you come out and test it. So we have the advantage -- advantage of actually as a continuous process with short breaks to test the well and maybe even later in the year, with the pad, maybe even do a slightly longer test -- production test. So we will have a continuous process of evaluation and testing of this well if it's successful. For many people, that could be a drill season and then a test season and then another test season, particularly if you have multiple tests and you want to do it for more than 15 minutes or a day. So it's -- we have the ability to expedite that process. So that is going to be -- that's the way I see it over the next 12 months. Just on Megrez, I mean it's a fantastic thing that we, again, have the gravel pad and then are going to have the ability to do that.

And if we wanted to drill an additional well to probe other parts of it, we'd have that flexibility. So it would be -- it's simply we didn't want to put down plans that we didn't have funded. But actually, because of the gravel pad, we have the opportunity for activity throughout next year in a variety of different ways. Jay, there's a question about timing for completion of the pad, mobilization, expected spud what do you want to.

Yes. So as David said earlier, the pad is actually more than 50% complete. We've targeted a 1 November spud. We think that is easily achievable. It would be great to actually spud a little bit before that. We're not promising that, but that would be a nice thing to have. It's not a long well. We think the well will be completed by the end of November, there or thereabouts. And then we will have collected our data. We'll turn it over to the experts for analysis. And then once we get that data back, we will have collected some PVT data, lots of logs, core, sidewall cores. As David says, we will analyze that and determine do we do a small frac, small asset frac, whatever it might be to complete this deviated well. It's not going to be horizontal. It's not going to be a vertical well, but it deviated well to the -- so that we get the best completion possible.

And if we're thinking of intersecting 3 different zones, that's why, again -- and ultimately, in development, one may well be combining what the geometry and whatever else. So that's the reason. Until we actually see what it is we're intending to test, it's just not possible to be definitive about what the expectations it has. Roger, I think it's probably one for you about do we -- can we tell anything about the phase risk in terms of for example, is there free gas, are we seeing a difference between oil and water? Is there a chance that it's going to end up like Alkaid-2?

Trying to determine -- separate gas from oil on seismic, it turns out to be really quite difficult. It sounds like it should be easy because gas is far more compressible. But if the amplitudes that we have here are really not consistent with it having free gas. Free gas should get a lot brighter than we're even seeing right now. So no, I don't see evidence of free gas even though it's tough.

And Bob, yes.

Can I add something. We're -- in terms of geologic distance, we're stone throw away where we've tested light oil from the same source rock. It's in the same part of the generation window. It's a light -- all these things are light oil reservoirs with a certain GOR bang. That's what -- that's the expectation. That's what I think overwhelming with the seismic attributes are telling us. Roger's key point is in this reservoir, the -- what we are looking at, we can now individually, we're seeing the individual reservoir, something we couldn't see to the West, but we're seeing these stacked individual reservoirs and being able to identify and give a feeling for thickness, get a feel for -- and what is the fluid type.

How thick do we think -- are we looking for [ 10 100 ] or 1,000 foot sands.

Okay. So in the geologic environment that we're in, these sands are going to be somewhere between -- each individual one would be 75 to, let's say, 125 feet thick, stacked on top of each other. The best part of the reservoir at the top. It's -- you can look at published stuff at Horseshoe and Pikka, it's going to look very similar to that.

I'd just like to remind everybody that we're 6 for 6 using Rogers AVO on finding hydrocarbons.

So just to one final thing, and maybe I wasn't clear earlier. When we're looking at the different initiatives, we're not doing this sequentially, we're doing this in parallel. We've got ongoing activity relating to alternatives that don't rely upon either Megrez or AGDC activity coming good. It's not that we're focused solely on those things hoping for a good result and then we'll pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off and go to the next plan. We're running everything in parallel, a number of things are not mutually exclusive. If we're in a position to monetize the gas, that doesn't mean that we're not interested in a strategic transaction with a potential partner, et cetera. So the full attention of the Board is on running all these processes in parallel along the way. I'd say there are some other specific questions that have been asked, and we will group them together and post the answers. But I just want to thank everyone for investing the time to engage with us. Thank you, Roger and Bob for sharing some of the details under the hood science. But to leave you with one clear message, which is that we are working together as a team to deliver the cash self-sufficiency from developing the resources we've already found, that nothing is going to distract us from making sure that happens and anything that we're doing fits clearly into boosting the ability to deliver on that. We will, over the course of the next several months, be providing some updates about specific parts of the project, not in terms of corporate webinar talking about the company so much as talking about processes because it's clear that investors have concerns, for example, about regulatory -- the regulatory approval and how we get there. They have questions about what the potential gas market may be. And so we will seek to make sure that we provide the information to help investors to make informed decisions around what level of risk they are comfortable with. But I can tell you that in terms of the Pantheon Board, we are very comfortable that we have a development plan, which we've sought external validation, not just of the resource but also the development plan for people who developed these things in Alaska before. So project assurance work that we'll be hopefully in a position to share and bring investors to the same level of understanding of the risks and the potential of this as we all have from inside the tent. And with that, I'm going to pass you back to Alessandra for a few administrative details and thank you once again for joining us. Thank you. Well, thank you, Jay. Thank you, Roger, for your time.

David, thank you very much for that, and thank you all for updating investors today. [Operator Instructions] On behalf of the management team of Pantheon Resources Plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good afternoon to you all.