Trinity Exploration & Production Limited (TRIN) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

June 14, 2023

London Stock Exchange GB Energy earnings 54 min

Earnings Call Speaker Segments

Operator

operator
#1

Good morning, and welcome to the Trinity Exploration & Production plc Full Year Results Investor Presentation. [Operator Instructions] The company may not be in position to answer every question received in the meeting itself. However, the company will review questions submitted today and publish responses to it where it is appropriate to do so. Before we begin, I'd like to submit the following poll. I'd now like to hand over to Jeremy Bridglalsingh, CEO. Good morning, sir.

Jeremy Bridglalsingh

executive
#2

Good morning. Welcome, everyone, to our 2022 full year results and strategic update. Today, we'll be going through a series of slides. There are a number of them here, a lot of information. We'll be focusing on some slides with more detail than others. So today, in support, I've got Julian Kennedy, Chief Financial Officer; and James Menzies, Chairman of the Technical Committee. And James is here to take you through the exciting Palo Seco area. For those of you who are not as familiar with Trinity and new to the Trinity story, a quick synopsis on who we are and where we are. We are a Trinidad-centric company. We operate licenses and sublicenses on the West Coast, onshore and East Coast of Trinidad. We produced primarily oil in around 3,000 barrels for the last 3 years, which represents around 5% of the national oil production. The Trinidad government has been in recent times quite active in terms of promoting oil and gas, and we've seen 2 bid rounds recently coming to completion, with a third one coming up soon, and fiscal reform in a positive direction over the last 2 budgets. Today's session is really aimed at trying to get across 3 key messages to you. Around our capital allocation, which the capital allocation plan does include retaining cash to shareholders, but it's broader than that. It is about looking at the way in which we choose our projects. Julian will take you through a little bit more on that as it relates to choosing the right projects with the right metrics, namely payback periods and cash on cash returns. We'll also focus on the immediate catalysts that we have in front of us. We are drilling a deep exploration well in the Palo Seco area, the Jacobin well, which we'll go through in more detail. James will describe to you why that is interesting to us, and also talk about the Buenos Ayres block, which at this point in time overall that we've been successful in our bid for the Buenos Ayres block, which adds further runway to the Palo Seco acreage area. And finally, the other last point is around maturing the Galeota field, which holds 69% of the reserves and resources and has the potential to be transformative to Trinity when we unleash and exploit that asset. Just touching on this slide very quickly. We've refreshed the Board in recent years and we've also strengthened the management team. And as a result of that, we have a much clearer strategy which we are depicting today, and we've got a management team that can now deliver on that strategy.

Julian Kennedy

executive
#3

I'll run you through some pieces here on our results. I'm not going to dwell on them because you've seen these from the annual report and from our release. The key thing here is our underlying engine -- our base business, which through the operation of our guys in the field, through workovers and recompletions, has maintained production in around 3,000 barrels a day consistently for 3 years. And that turns out a consistent and improved EBITDA last year. But the key thing, clearly, everybody is aware of this, is that at the end of 2021, we hedged our oil price. Russia invaded Ukraine, and we took a 10.4 million hit. You should also be aware that those hedges rolled off at the end of last year and into this year, we are unhedged. We remain a relatively low-cost producer. We've talked about $30 a barrel as a result of the cost pressures that everybody has seen around the globe as a result of that war. But it is a resilient business, and we are challenging ourselves to keep those costs low and to drive those costs down. Rolling on to the guidance that we published yesterday. The range here is largely as a result of the program around Jacobin. It depends on our production and therefore, CapEx and operating cash flow that flows from that depends on the degree of success that we achieve in Jacobin. James will talk about what the well will penetrate. And it also depends on the time of when we bring the well into production. There is a range of CapEx. And we're spending roughly about 70% of our CapEx growth projects from Jacobin, but also on maturing the Buenos Ayres drill targets, for the blocks that we were successful on yesterday. And also the work to recast the potential in the Galeota area. Just a further word on capital allocation. As Jeremy said, this is broader than a dividend and returns policy. This is a fundamental change in the way that Trinity does business. The E&P world has changed and Trinity is changing as a consequence. The era of trophy projects is over. We need to focus on projects that get to a return quickly and that gets to a cash on cash return. But that involves minimizing the capital that we spend, being much more efficient and prioritizing those projects that we chase. And the projects that we're looking at are -- they're fit for purpose for the size of company we are. They are repeatable. So the Jacobin-style of well can unlock opportunities both within the acreage that we've held previously, but also in acreage like Buenos Ayres that we were awarded yesterday. For the shareholder returns, we have committed to a proportion of the operating cash flow of 15%, between $50 and $80 a barrel realized. Part of that will be paid in a modest, but we believe, sustainable dividend. And beyond that, through either further buybacks or through special dividends. Beyond $80, we're looking to return at least 20% of our operating cash flow to shareholders. ESG is important. We are -- we have been very focused on the social side. We do a lot with our fixed line communities, and we're proud of what we do, particularly with the -- on the education side, in supporting children from those communities beyond the 11-plus. We've also launched a scholarship program with the University of West Indies for those that -- for a couple of students per year. We've got a robust governance on the Board, and it's something that I am championing in terms of refreshing policies and the framework and procedures there. Environment is something that we are working on, and we are measuring at the moment our Scope 1 and 2 emissions. We're sampling wells across our asset base to provide that baseline from which we can move forward. But we recognize the importance of that in this financial environment.

Jeremy Bridglalsingh

executive
#4

Thanks, Julian. So one of the strategic options, what is its sequence, what's the focus? First off, we have right in the near term, Jacobin, which is part of the Hummingbird play that James will take you through. That's currently in progress. The Buenos Ayres block is second in terms of when we're going to activate on that, but it's really good news. So from yesterday that we were successful with our bid. And then once James has taken you through those 3 -- those 2 areas, I'll then take you through what is the third focus area, which would be East Coast, Galeota in particular.

Julian Kennedy

executive
#5

So now, if we could switch to the other part?

James Menzies

executive
#6

Great. Hi, everyone. Yes, I'm James Menzies, as Jeremy mentioned, I chair the Technical Committee for Trinity. We're a committee of the Board. So our remit is really to help advise the Board and Jeremy on the technical work done within the company. Has it got the right resources? Is it the right people? Are they looking at the right things? And so we're not an executive team. We are advisers, but the committee is made up of experts in geology and geophysics from the outside world. So we bring in really leading-edge geophysicists, for example, the experts in acquisition, processing and interpretation. We have very good geologists that we can bring in to work with the teams in Trinidad. So I'm going to take you through the mature Southern Basin, where Trinity's onshore acreage is. And just as we get into there, looking at this slide, I hope you can see this satellite image of Eastern Venezuela and the island of Trinidad, which is just at the top of the picture there. And what I want to show is these in Venezuela Basin is a very, very prolific. As I'm sure you know, Venezuela has been a big oil producer. And what you're seeing there is the Orinoco Delta that is slurging sediment out towards Trinidad. Trinidad is very, very close to Venezuela. And you can see the sea is full of sediment, which -- it gives rise to the beaches of Trinidad not being spectacular, they're not Caribbean blue seas because of this sediment that comes from the Orinoco Delta. But if you go to Tobago, which is in the Leeward side to the north of Trinidad, you'll find lovely, lovely beaches, so that's where you should be going on holiday. But over time, this Orinoco Delta has moved around. And I'm going to show you where the reservoirs sit. But in the last 6 million to 10 million years, that delta has moved, and it's given pulses of sediment towards Trinidad. So I'm going to keep the geology light, but there are some simple things that you can follow. We're going to talk about how things were done in Trinidad traditionally. It's a very unusual setup we have there, as you'll see, it's like nowhere else in the E&P world. We're going to look at the 3D seismic and what we've learned from it and what it means for Jacobin and the Hummingbirds in the Lower Cruse, and I'll explain what that means in a sec. And then the Lower Forest, which is a very prolific interval, which I'll show you. And we've got a new model there, which we have insight on. And then why is this important for Buenos Ayres, which is this new block, why we like it? So the first thing I want to start with is, onshore Trinidad, it is very mature. So there's a slide here in the presentation which shows the onshore well density. There have been 13,000 wells drilled onshore. I mean, that's a huge number. And if you just look at where those wells are located, you'll see a massive concentration in this area called the Southern Basin in the Southwest of Trinidad. And what I like about this map is it also shows not only the activity that's been going on, but it shows some of the structural trends. So you can see some liniments, I was trying to draw a line here going -- now I will be able to draw a line. There we go. Let's try that. Going along here, see, there's a liniment here, then the next anti-flying sits down here. These are the high -- the structural highs that people have been drilling wells on. And so you can get a good sense of the structural stuff, even without looking at any geology whatsoever, this is where wells are located. The other liniment you might pick out is a line which goes like this. It goes -- I kind of got that wrong, but it's called a fault. It's called the Los Bajos Fault. I'll show you on the map in a second. But that has given rise to a lot of drilling. And it shows you how important faults are to where oil is trapped in this onshore play. Before I leave the slide, the other thing to note, drilling started here in 1857. It has been going on 150 years or more. I mean, it's insane. But really, they got after it in 1906 with mechanical wells, and over 3.5 billion barrels of oil has been produced out of this basin along with 12 TCF gas. So it's prolific and it's very, very mature. Now with all that well data, which is unusual in the E&P [indiscernible] wells, what is also very unusual is we had hardly any seismic. So if we look at the seismic lines in Trinidad, they're a very sparsely spaced. There's not much of it. The quality is a bit iffy. But there is some 3D seismic. And on this map, we're out showing the outlines of the 3D, which the state company has acquired over time, but really hedged themselves. So this hasn't been readily available to the outside world until we came to the license round, which we're going to talk about. And the one of that particularly interest to us is this one outlined in red called the Northwest District 3D, which covers the basin that Trinity operates in principally. So lots of wells, very little seismic. In terms of the reservoirs that we are going to be talking about, again, I'm not going to go heavy on this, but remember the Orinoco Delta splurging sediment out from the Southwest. This is a section of the reservoirs in onshore Trinidad going from West to East. And I'd highlight here box in red is the area we are interested in. And so you can see sort of 6 million years ago, there was deltaic sediments being pumped out, and it's formed what we call the Upper Cruse. They're for the Lower Cruse of deltaics. And we're going to talk about that. That's the reservoirs we're really interested in, the Jacobin. And then higher up, we have the Forest Interval. So you'll see the Upper Forest, the Lower Forest. And that is the main producing units that we see in the Palo Seco area. So where you've got that high density of wells, most of them are producing out of that forest -- the Lower Forest interval. So they are our key reservoirs. The other thing I'll draw your attention to is there's some shales. You see on this chart, these little -- the dark brown gray are shales, and they're sort of [ squingy ] sediments that allow us -- and they're important for how we see the structure evolve here. But they're nonconformities and they allow -- they basically take up a lot of movement in the rock, and I'll explain a little bit more why that's very important for us in understanding the structure and the picture we have in Palo Seco. Having said that, we'll move on to how did we find oil or go looking for oil in a mature basin that has no seismic and millions of wells. And the trouble is, you're almost deluged by well data. It's so much of it, trying to make sense of it is extremely difficult. And the way it was done is geologists would assume we had a plain dip. And in this map, it's tipping away to the Southeast. And you can see a cross-section there showing a well-top, so they're taking a formation top and trying to correlate it. However, the correlations are not giving you a picture of a nice plain dip. They had no idea what the subsurface structure would look like. And so the geologists basically put faults in where they can't correlate a nice trend. And so they put a fictitious fault or something that's not really seen in reality, but they think it must be there because the correlation doesn't work. And so you end up with a lattice, what we call a chicken wire of dip and orthogonal faults, and you end up with this series of cells that we're showing on this map. This is a real live structure map from the Cruse interval in Palo Seco. And you can see it's just a lattice of cells. And what they would do is then they'd look in each cell and see how much oil that could hold, each cell. And then look at the wells that are there, you see how much oil have been produced, and they take one from the other and come up with an idea of how much oil might be remaining. And that would be a net oil sand map. And so over the page here, giving an example in the same area. On the left is our chicken wire, on the right is the net oil [indiscernible] map. And they're shading it here in green, where they see oil still present. The dark green is showing a high concentration of oil, where they believe there should be a lot of oil left behind. So how it was done is they will look to these dark green areas and go looking to spaces in between the wells that have been drilled in the past to look for new locations. And this, of course, is the super mature basin. So you're looking at very closely spaced wells and very, very small areas to go drilling in. But largely -- and really, this is targeting the Lower Forest, as I mentioned. So you can see, pretty much, there isn't -- we can see where there's oil seems to be left behind. We don't know why. There is no coherent geological explanation as to why it's there. It's typically a mechanical calculation has been done. But nonetheless, this is the technique that's been used for decades and decades and decades. Now Trinity elected a couple of years ago to try and understand the subsurface a little bit better. Now there's a map here we're showing on Slide 8 of this presentation, which is the onshore geology of Southwest Trinidad. And first thing you see is that Los Bajos Fault where I tried to highlight earlier, that cuts across. You can see it's a transform fault. It's very, very obvious, and that has been an important fault for trapping oil. We're also highlighting Trinity's acreage in Palo Seco's [indiscernible] of that fault in blue and in Fyzabad north of that fault. They're the 2 operated areas that we hold right now. And the Northwest District 3D seismic is also highlighted, so it covers a huge amount of that area. And Trinity acquired the circa $1 million, 2 pieces of that 3D over their existing acreage, Palo Seco and Fyzabad. And we bought that seismic and we put a lot of technical effort. In the last 2 years, we've put some -- what I'd call technical heavy guns here. So we put in some experts to work that data hard. Now the data is challenged. I'm going to show you some lines in a second. It's not easy. But we believe we've persevered with it for this long, and we've actually come up with an understanding of what the structure looks like. And why this is important is because actually no one else has done it. The only people who have seen this data so far is Heritage, that's the state company and the ministry. But the people from the outside didn't really see it until this license round, that's the first time they had access to it, really. Here's a line across the Palo Seco area. You see it's a big line. It shows well locations, all those wells kind of terminating -- they're really producing from the area between the blue and the green. So that's our Lower Forest. It's a prolific zone out here, very closely spaced wells. And you can see someone's interpreted there are red faults going down there, the middle of that line. It doesn't look obvious, but we see big displacement down deep. So the purple and blue is in the deep section are heavily offset and only minor, minor offsets that shallows. But nonetheless, those minor offsets do trap oil, and we would think that the bigger offset has got actually a better chance of trapping oil. So that gives you a sort of example of the kind of seismic data quality we're talking about, which was challenging. We did make a structural interpretation based on that, and it was pretty hard work to be honest with you. I mean, it wasn't clear initially. But when you work the data, you can come up with a full patent that seems to be coherent. On this Slide 10, we're showing the full patent from Fyzabad, so it's up in the north. It's a very difficult area seismically. It sits on an anticline. The seismic quality is particularly bad. But nonetheless, we had the experts come up, they come up with these faults. On the left-hand map, we can see the black lines of faults. We're also showing these shaded areas, labeled 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. These are high net sand oil areas. So these are what we think is the sweet spot that we've identified. And on the right-hand side, you can see that, there is no structure on that right-hand map. That's purely from calculating what's available in a cell. But when we marry it with the structure map, we see that there's a coincidence. For example, one, the Area 1 sits on the high throne side of that fault. This area down here, 4, sits on the low throne side of that fault. 2 sits between two faults on a high. So we can now start to explain why we have areas of high concentration. Where in the past, we were just going off calculating it from kind of a random lattice and a bunch of wells. So we now start to see that there's a coherence between that net oil sand and the structural model. When we look at Palo Seco on Slide 11, we can see quite clear, it's much better. The data quality improves radically down here. And now we map quite big full trends through this area, sort of roughly going almost north south, sort of Northeast Southwest, some big faults, which gives rise to big structural closures. And you'll be ahead of me, I'm sure, in thinking that, yes, these structural trends are absolutely coincident with where we see concentrations of oil in the shallow sections. So these maps are the Lower Cruses, the deeper reservoirs, and all the production comes from our shallow in the Lower Forest, largely. Some wells have penetrated this interval. So we know this play works and there is oil produced from here. It's not a -- we're not looking to open a play here, but it's largely unexploited. So here we have the 2 intervals in the Lower Cruse, you can see the structural configuration. And this is what's basically driving a series of structural prospects throughout Palo Seco that we are calling the Hummingbird portfolio. So we have 8 to 9 that sit within our acreage. Some of those still out into neighboring blocks, some of them spit out to PS4, which is a recent acquisition of ours. But we have a series of prospects, which we believe are structurally controlled and which have demonstrated the trapping ability by the Challenge Fault and which we've seen oil produced for [indiscernible] the block. The best of these is Jacobin. And it's highlighted here on this map, on both maps here, on the west side, on the low side of quite a big fault, and that's going to be an important fault for forming the track. So here on Slide 12 is a cross section of Jacobin. And also the block map, if you like, on the left is showing the location of all our other Hummingbird prospects. And on this cross-section, we can see lots of wells going into the shallow Lower Forest producing oil, and green patches are basically oil-bearing reservoirs. It's certainly an extensive schematic, but you get the idea. What we're -- I mean we are going to drill as well through this Lower Forest. So we are going to find oil up there. We're reasonably confident of that. But really, the prize is down deep in this Lower Cruse section here, where we're looking at trapping against that fault. And we can see 3 zones, we call it the TF6, 7, 8, where we believe this reservoir is going to be present and a very good chance that we're going to have hydrocarbons, which are undrilled. It's going to be big pressures down there. In terms of the well itself, over the page, you can see the -- some of the numbers around it. We're looking at a 1 in 3 to 1 in 4 chance of success, but individually for these kind of sands. However, when we do the probabilistic analysis and you wrap up the chance of finding something from these different intervals, the chance of quite good is that 63% that you will find at least 1 oil zone. Now in exploration terms, 63% is very, very good. You rarely find anything north of 50%. I mean, that is more of an appraisal actually rather than exploration. So the chances are attractive. In terms of size, when we do the probabilistic analysis, we think the mean outcome is 5.7 million barrels in place. If we want to dream, there is a P10 number, either the 10% or less probability that we could find 10 million barrels down there. So for Trinity, in terms of the world's scale exploration, this is not big. In terms of Trinity's scale exploration, it's huge. Trinity -- and I'll come back to this later -- Trinity is an 18-million-barrel company. If we have got 8 or 9 prospects here that have a mean of 5 million to 6 million barrels, you start to get -- and that's in place, but you can see we are going to impact our reserve base pretty substantially if this play is proven and starts to work. Okay. So that's a deeper structure in the Lower Cruse and the Hummingbirds. Now I just want to have one more insight study about -- because this is really important, particularly for Buenos Ayres. And this is when we look at the 3D seismic in the Lower Forest that is a very prolific zone or shallow. And what we see on the 3D, and I hope even the nongeo audience might go pick out, is in this interval, in the middle of this line, you can see the 2 horizons -- I think one's called BML and the other's called TCR -- but between them, we've interpreted a bunch of little faults and some dips, which we can correlate very well over the 3D that look discordant, i.e., they don't look to be parallel with all the other bedding. There's something going on there. It's a structure -- and now we didn't know if that was real, was it noise, was it something out of the plane there? The seismic can fool you in all sorts of ways. But actually, we can map it out, and we believe these really are full-founded structures. And it's unusual to have that much dip reversal from a cold band structure that actually disappears. You can see you can't continue these faults into the subsurface. What's happening is they're falling out in that shady zone at the unconformity that I mentioned at the start of this presentation. So you've got a very tight rolling, very tight faulting, and you are creating a series of compartments, which are trapping oil. This zone is drilled up to death. I mean, we've got hundreds of wells in here. So we know this works. And this is how the Lower Forest interval is being tracked. And this explains why you can find oil all over the block in areas where you wouldn't normally expect to see it. So I want you to hold that thought. I'm going to skip through this just to say, look, this Lower Forest interpretation of the rotated blocks and the depper faulting are the 2 critical things. And I want you to hold the thought, and we're going to look at Buenos Ayres now. And why is this important? Because when we look at Buenos Ayres on Slide 16, it's outside of that heavily drilled up barrier. In fact, it's what we would call a virgin block. No one has drilled here. It's been avoided. Why has no one been here in a basin that's had drilling for 150 years, and no one's followed? And the reason over the page is this. When you look at the seismic line across it, it's a big hole, it just goes into a sourcer. And if you ask any explorationist, they ain't going to go looking for oil in this incline. So it's been untouched. However, on this line, which runs from our Palo Seco blocks on the right-hand side across the [indiscernible] line, we have learned a lot from this 3D seismic about what traps the oil in that interval, that Lower Forest interval. And we think we can take that across into this Palo Seco block. Now when we came to look at this bid round, the ministry was giving away this 3D seismic. We had paid $1 million 2 years ago. And it was a killer, I was paranoid. Actually, it's turned out to be brilliant because no one else has had 2 years to work it and understood quite what it means in the way we have. And we believe this has given us a real competitive edge that no one else has. When we look at this line on Slide 18 of the Palo Seco area, here, we have our little fault compartments here, we flattened it here to really emphasize these fault compartments and how well they're imaged. Now when we go into Buenos Ayres, in the same interval, we see the same thing. We see these rollovers, the discordent nature of these things. They look a little bit strange, but with this high-quality 3D which the ministry kindly supplied to us, we can map out what these things look like. And if I flip on to Slide 20, here it is, you can see a lattice, low and behold, there is a lattice of faults that we see right in the cross boundary, going into the hole, very, very close to our Palo Seco acreage. And these things, if you like, this is a chicken wire map that actually is made from real data, from seismic. It is isn't something that's been dreamed up by the geologists because nothing matches. This is actually hard data that's supplied to us. On this little snapshot, we're looking at 4 or 5 of these little fault panels, but they're extensive. When we chase this down into the hole, there's a lot of them. And so over the page here, you can see, in context, in the middle map, yes, we get a lattice network. All of these, we think, have potential to trap oil. We're 500 meters from the block boundary of Palo Seco, where the play is prolific. And we have a deeper, Lower Cruse, the Jacobin lookalike structures are also there. So suddenly, we've got an embarrassment of riches when it comes to prospective drilling targets. If we can make this work, this hypothesis plays out, we have the opportunity to double, treble, quadruple our reserve base just from this one block alone. And in terms of size, these things are -- well, the deep ones are 3 million to 11 million barrels in place. The shallow ones, 7 million to 9 million barrels in place, and we can see more than 10 of them. So when Jeremy mentioned this is scalable and repeatable, this is what he meant. I'm going to skip over that slide. So effectively, I think this has given us -- we think the 3D has given us a real competitive advantage. We were -- it was annoying to pay $1 million, but actually, that's -- it's been a bargain. That is the biggest bargain Trinity has had. We had to push the data to the link. This is why we don't think any other company can just pick up this data and understand it. We've worked 2 years and we've put really, really top-end interpreters on a world-class scale to work on this. And I don't think anyone else out here can really replicate that anytime soon. I think even the state companies recognize the effort we've put in and actually are wanting to understand better what we've learned. So I would say Trinity are leading the market in the knowledge of this play and how it's working. I mentioned the resource potential, I don't need to go on about that and your feasibility. But I want to leave you with the idea that we've got a competitive edge. We've got lots to chase here. We've got very good chance of success, and there's good reasons founded in hard geology and geophysicists as to why this has an excellent chance of working. And I'll stop blabbering.

Jeremy Bridglalsingh

executive
#7

Before you move across from this, just to add to what James has said, I think it's fair to say that based on the technical move, the Board and the management team are quite excited and therefore, yesterday, finally finding out that we were successful with the bid was something that we very much welcome. In addition to the blocks as James has described them, the Buenos Ayres block itself comes as a head license, so it's fully licensed, which is an upgrade to the sublicenses that are 500 meters next door. It means that we will have control of our operatorship and as well as in terms of a commercial nature, but this will not have 2 royalties associated with it as the sublicenses do. It's only 1 new royalty being paid into the state company. In this arrangement, Heritage will be a 15% partner, for which we will carry them through the exploration phase, which consists of various G&G studies as well as drilling 4 wells.

James Menzies

executive
#8

Maybe. I could just pitch one point I think is important on this bid round and I'm going to leave it. We -- Trinity only bid for 1 block. There are whole stacks of blocks that you have seen other companies talk about their awards. We were only interested in this one, and we bid hard to get it. And that speaks to the fact that this is the one that really excites us.

Jeremy Bridglalsingh

executive
#9

Sorry. Thanks, James. Could we switch back to the first presentation? Thank you. So moving on to Galeota, on the back of what James has done, a hard act to follow there, but this Galeota to remind you of what it means to us. On the next slide, Galeota as a proportion of the group's reserves, and it dwarfs our reserves and resources. You're looking at 69% of the reserves and resources being held within the Galeota block, 46 million barrels and 46 million barrels, which are actually in late 2021, we had that PPR done on competency report, which essentially is a third party taking a look at the reserves and resources that we had in Galeota and they evaluated that. [indiscernible] and associates came within a very close tolerance range that has given the Board and management comfort that the management [indiscernible] is quite solid. And as an example, next door to that, the reserves and resources pie chart and donut is a reminder of what a portion of those contingent resources could look like by way of a production graph if we had exploited them. And this is the core project content usually 8 wells into the RDT all discovery well area. I mean it doesn't actually -- it didn't actually exploit all of the 2 reserves and resources, just half of that, but you can see that sort of type of production profile on top of what we do can be very transformative for us. So what are we doing with Galeota? We commenced the farm down process in late 2021. Reported that in May 2022 when the fiscal reform that we are anticipating did not materialize. There was some sequence fiscal reform proposed in the 2022 budget. I was read in October. That's been legislated for in early 2023 to some extent. It did go a certain way in terms of improving the economics for the Galeota block, but it's not quite exactly what we were lobbying for. We will continue to lobby both as an individual company, but also with other options to demonstrate the value of some of these projects if the feasibility is correct. But the task in the farm down process, we looked at a lot of things. There were some really top-class companies in there, they looked at the subsurface, they looked at it to solutions. And when it came to the surface solution, what we will propose them was, in essence, a project that was going to cost somewhere between $200 million to $250 million, which is quite a lot in terms of capital to put upfront to risk towards the project. And we've reflected on that. And as Julian has said, the E&P world has moved on. When you think about capital efficiency, part of that is looking at the capital intensity up front. So we are looking to reduce the costs, the upfront costs of the project in probably perhaps 25% of what it used to be before. Therefore, we're looking at how can we change the concept? Instead of putting a platform down, is there a different way to approach this? Well, we've commenced a tender process. We have received proposals from various companies in generic houses to help us work through that. And the intent is that we'll commence working with one of those houses in the near future and in the next month or 2 work out what that concept will look like so that we can, in September, in our only when we receive markets with the interim describe to you what that concept looks like and perhaps for some scoping metrics around that. Further to that, the other aspects of the Galeota field that we're looking at is within the existing [ Fincess ] field, where we produce 1,000 barrels or so every day. There's still 2P reserves to see and even 2 new reserves there in our own infrastructure that's already there. So you're looking at an opportunity perhaps to defer drilling package on to one of those platforms, drill into a similar slots and exploit reserves that are within the field. And that can be, again, fiscalized very quickly. So projects with short cycle times, low capital intensity. So recapping that tell you what does that mean with those 3 strategic choices? And this graphic that you see here excludes the [indiscernible] development that we showed 2 slides before. Well, the production here on the graphic on the left-hand side, which is very similar to the one that we showed in or around on the 2021 final results last year, shows the base production as quite resilient. And then on top of that, you see a risk -- on a risk profile, reflecting developments of Jacobin and other Hummingbird type prospects moving forward Buenos Ayres. And then on the East Coast, looking at interdrilling. And on Buenos Ayres, we actually didn't touch on it, but the plan is to get to drilling in half 2 of 2024. And the reason that we're looking at that is it's 2-prong. One, on Buenos Ayres, we need to look up the prospects, which we'll have by the end of the year from a subsurface and drilling perspective. And then from an environmental care standpoint, we need to get the certificate for environmental clearance. In advance of that, we have to conduct an environmental impact assessment. We will conduct that over the course of this wet season. I think to the dry season next year because we need data for both, make the application. And then once that has come through, the intent is to drill in half 2 next year in Buenos Ayres. So you're looking at Jacobin, now, that'll be drilling. We should get results from Jacobin in early July. If Jacobin is successful, there are going to be follow-on drilling in Jacobin late 2023 into early 2024, drilling in Buenos Ayres in half 2 of 2024, with the potential for a well in the Galeota, very much an outlier, in late 2024 as well. So putting those all together, looking at the operating cash flow and the guidance, funding strategy is quite clear and that we need to work on. Julian is leading the charge in that regard.

Julian Kennedy

executive
#10

All right. So to recap, we taking you through a refreshed capital allocation policy, moving away from metrics such as NPV and IRR with more focus on cash-on-cash returns and payback periods. We have immediate catalysts in clear right now with the Jacobin well. Buenos Ayres is successful, but there is very encouraging for us based on what it takes to, it looks to be a very exciting block that we can get also very quickly with a company of our size, with our balance sheet. And then taking Galeota, which can be a transformative asset, coming up with the right option in terms of how do we exploit that and having the right funding solution that aims to minimizing dilutive impact to shareholders. In terms of engagements, in terms of it in negative coming in a few months, we have -- what we are in London at the moment, as you've seen. Our AGM is an in-person event, which will be on the 27th of June. Board and management will be there. We encourage you to please attend the AGM, if you so wish, where you can meet with us and we can discuss this presentation and perhaps through the results at that point in time. That will be followed up with Jacobin once we understand where we are there. The usual quarterly updates will be done in mid-late July. There will be other pieces of neutral between July and August as it relates to both Jacobin and Buenos Ayres. And then in September, we'll recap where we are. I gave you some pertinent information on Galeota, and that will include our retail investor events at that point in time, which is likely to be in-person. So that's where we are right now in terms of this presentation. I'd like to pause now, perhaps as we hand back over to the administrators. And then we look to take your questions.

Operator

operator
#11

Jeremy, Julian, James, thanks very much for your presentation. [Operator Instructions] As you can see, we received a number of questions throughout today's presentation. And if I could ask you to read out those questions and give responses if that's appropriate to do so. I'll pick up after you at the end.

Jeremy Bridglalsingh

executive
#12

Thanks. We just are reading some of these questions, some were presubmitted, some were fresh. I don't think we'll have the opportunity to answer all of them. But we'll give a go with some immediate responses now. And then those that we have none, so we'll provide written feedback as guided. So the first question that we've got here is the high angle well and horizontal as well as conventional in terms of [indiscernible] after you have announced the 9 wells Hummingbird program. We then need fresh funding for the Hummingbird program. I think we'll perhaps split that into 2. I'll answer the first question and then afterwards, Julian on the funding aspects of it. In short, yes, we have paused all of the drilling while we are drilling Jacobin. The Jacobin well, which we didn't actually discuss through the presentation before, has the potential in the success state to be a very high-value project for us because we pay back the Jacobin interest is 1 year. And projects like that put me argument on that we look project from a capital allocation perspective. So yes, we paused, we'd like to understand what is happening with the Jacobin well. Once we have results, we'll relook at the projects then there also. In terms of funding, Julian, do you want to have a go at that?

Julian Kennedy

executive
#13

Yes. On success, this has the potential of building cash quickly. As we said earlier, we are focused on things that can get to pay back very quickly. This well can pay back within a year of success. And looking to drill again towards the end of the year into early next. It's something that we think that we can execute on and then move on to drill in Buenos Ayres. We are looking at a number of funding solutions, which includes our relationship banks, both here and in Trinidad. And then more broadly, funding. We're looking at other solutions, which could include prepaying for offtake. It could include for anything with Galeota, it could include some vendor finance, all of which is aimed not to dilute existing share of the shareholder base, but equally, we're also very cognizant of not over-leveraging the company. We've got a relatively clean balance sheet. We don't want to get into a place where we're overleveraged.

Jeremy Bridglalsingh

executive
#14

Thanks, Julian. The next question is any preliminary assessments of Hummingbird potential in terms of additional commercial oil reserves? James touched on this and I'll hand over to James to explain it all.

James Menzies

executive
#15

Yes, certainly. I mean, we gave some numbers around Jacobin, which was 5.7 million barrels is the mean in-place figure for that prospect. And the other Hummingbird prospects are of very similar size. So that was 5.7. It was 10 million barrels in place in the outside case. That would imply somewhere between 1 million to 2 million barrels recoverable, in that range, and there's 8 of them. So that's the sort of scale we're talking about. And as I mentioned, you may not get excited about it if you compare it to other E&P companies' size prospects, but to this company, it's extremely material. So a big impact from those prospects.

Jeremy Bridglalsingh

executive
#16

Thanks, James. The next question, Bruce [indiscernible] was always a great advocate of meeting and talking with shareholders face-to-face. Post-COVID, there's been plenty of opportunity to reengage in this manner, so why does the present Board appear so reluctant? Well actually, on the 27th of this month, our AGM is in-person. It will be held here in London. We encourage everyone who is interested to meet with the Board and management, please turn up. And that would be the first resumption of in-person meetings, but we certainly intend to do so on a more regular basis, and in September when we set on. There is another question. What is the status of the horizontal well? I think we've touched on drilling and what does that mean in terms of the Jacobin well capital allocation and why we paused. But the horizontal well, to provide an update, we told the market back in November, I think of last year that we have paused because there was a tool we needed. It was a gravel pack extension tool. That tool was then manufactured on behalf of us and is sitting in the supplier's warehouse in Trinidad waiting to be deployed. Again, the Jacobin well is a precursor to that. But also you've seen on the ground in Trinidad, with the supply chain moving away to guidance or that we need to find a way to strengthen the supply chain. Again, in Trinidad, and this is something that all operators are facing and therefore, why we're going to group together as a group of operators to sort of restrengthen the supply chain in Trinidad. Another question: Are there any changes post the rig accident fire? So this refers to the Bravo fire that happened earlier on this year. First of all, we are very fortunate that the fire was contained as it is. And that is a reflection of the great work that was done on the platform by the operators there. Subsequent to that, we struck in production at that point in time across the entire field. We brought up from the other platforms, Alpha and Delta within '24, and the Bravo platform, we are looking at that -- we're thinking now, we're probably going to be shutting for some time, but it works with the ministry and having had those close relationships with the ministry, which were very current from the ABM side one product we were able to demonstrate sound engineering HSE and operational process and the ministerial orders to resume operations within 7 days. That is a good outcome, a reflection of strong relationships, attractive relationships between the Ministry of Energy and Trinity. But post that, we have had -- with Martin rejoining us soon thereafter, we've had a review of the way in which we operate the Trinity's field, and there have been a number of recommendations to do so in a stable manner that also put as production. And we are looking at actually upgrading the HSE aspects as it relates to fire fighting, but more so the operational philosophy on Trinidad to reduce exposure and risk to life and environment. Final question I'd like to point to is a great highly detailed geology that is in there. The OPD results from Jacobin well, early July, will this include the virgin pressure wells on the way down? Perhaps James...

James Menzies

executive
#17

Thank. Yes. I guess the question is about flow test from Jacobin. I think Jeremy put the timing of Jacobin results on this time line there, it's probably going to be after the AGM in early to mid-July, but you've got last that your time lines are drilling well. So obviously, we want to see the results as much as anybody, but we have to just conduct the operations. In terms of the -- what we'll see on the way down -- and there's an interesting point here. I think we're going to go through the Lower Forest, the prolific Lower Forest on the way down to the deeper section. That is not virgin pressure that's the exhausted kind of shallow unit that everybody has been producing from in this area. However, just to emphasize the point, in Buenos Ayres, it is all virgin. So we'll be drilling that prolific unit in Palo Seco in Buenos Ayres block where no one's drilled ever before. So we'll be getting virgin pressures over there as well, of course, in the deeper section will also be virgin pressure. So we would expect better looking flow rates, frankly, all other things being equal from the Buenos Ayres well when we would necessarily from the Palo Seco well, but the deeper, Lower Cruse should be virgin pressure, then yes, if it works, this should be flowing very nicely.

Operator

operator
#18

Jeremy, Julian, James, I think you've addressed those questions you can from investors. And of course, the company will review all questions submitted today, and we'll publish those responses on the Investor company platform. But just before redirecting investors with their feedback that is particularly important to the company, Jeremy, can I just ask you for a few closing comments.

Jeremy Bridglalsingh

executive
#19

I think I just want to take the opportunity to remind everybody involved in near-term catalysts that we have Jacobin and the exciting Buenos Ayres block as I explained, also adequately by James. Aside from that, the increased management capability we are looking to bring Galeota on. We have a much clearer, focused strategy. We're going to deliver on the strategic options, maximize the value of our portfolio. And thank you again for your time this morning and your continued interest in Trinity.

Operator

operator
#20

Jeremy, Julian, James. Thanks once again for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you'll now be automatically redirected to provide your feedback in order for the management team can better understand your views and expectations. This learning take a few moments to complete but I'm sure be greatly valued by the company. On behalf of the management team of Trinity Exploration & Production plc, we'd like to thank you for attending today's presentation, and good morning to you all.

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