Well, let me welcome you to the 2023 Rockhopper AGM. It's always good to see you all here, and as you know, we do appreciate your continued support. I'm delighted to be here in a position to report on a year of really positive developments for Rockhopper on a range of fronts, as you can see on the slide here. Firstly, we completed the Navitas transaction, successfully allowing Harbour to exit and of course, welcoming Navitas to the project. Our licenses in both the North and South Falkland Basin have extended by the Falkland Islands Government or FIG for a further two years to November 2024. Navitas having strengthened its operating capability, has done an absolutely outstanding job on redefining the Sea Lion project.
Of course, we were successful in the Ombrina Mare arbitration with that positive outcome announced in August of last year, and we completed the capital raise in July as we talked about at the last AGM. What I'll do today is run through those developments one by one. Firstly, a reminder of the Navitas transaction. Having announced heads of terms what feels like a long time ago back in December 2021, the transaction actually completed in September 2022. It was a complicated deal to get over the line. Had a lot of moving parts, and it involved significant effort from all parties, Rockhopper, Navitas, Harbour, and of course FIG.
Although obviously many of you are familiar with the Rockhopper story, I think it's worth a reminder of the basic commercial and working interest arrangements we now have with Navitas. Importantly, we do now have a far cleaner acreage picture than we had with Premier. All of our North Falkland Basin acreage is now held 65% Navitas and 35% Rockhopper, with Navitas being the operator. That means we have a much more aligned partnership and of course, importantly with no risk of unitization. We benefit from two loans from Navitas. One is available from deal completion, which as I say, was September 2022, until the point of final investment decision or FID. The other from final investment decision to the earlier of 12 months post first oil or project completion.
Now, the first of those two loans covers our net working interest project costs. When I talk about project costs, I mean the costs associated with the first phase of Sea Lion, with some exceptions for things like license fees and Rockhopper-specific taxes. That loan is repaid from Rockhopper's net Sea Lion cash flows and attracts an interest rate of 8%. The second loan covers two-thirds of our net working interest project costs that are not covered from third-party project financing, and it has the same exceptions, again, repaid from net Sea Lion cash flows, but in this instance carries a 0% interest. All of that we think is very clean, quite easy to understand, and as I say, creates a far more aligned partnership than we previously had.
Now, having completed the transaction, Navitas obviously came onto the acreage in September 2022, and in March 2023, only about five months later, we updated the market on a significant piece of work carried out by them as the new operator. The first part of the update relates to the actual resource base itself, which was reviewed by Netherland, Sewell & Associates or NSAI. I want to emphasize here that we at Rockhopper were not an addressee of this work, but we are happy to endorse its outcomes and conclusions. You can see on this slide, Navitas now holds a 2C number of just over 700 million barrels in the basin. The published NSAI report doesn't actually split out in any detail what's in Sea Lion and what's in Isobel, which is a question I sometimes get asked.
I can tell you that the biggest single difference between these numbers and our own older, ERCE numbers is in what we would call phase II of Sea Lion, and actually NSAI holds numbers pretty similar to those that Premier Oil held internally. Yeah, obviously these numbers are important because they really emphasize the scale of the opportunity. We at Rockhopper have believed for years that once we can get something up and running, we will go on to produce in excess of 1 billion barrels of oil in the North Falkland Basin in the fullness of time. Now, having said all of that and talked about those big numbers, in order to unlock all of this potential, obviously the real key is to get something up and running.
I would say in that context, perhaps the best number to focus on from this slide in the resource table is the 269 million barrels 2C development pending number, which is in the middle of the top of the table. That's the equivalent to what Premier used to call phase I. The other number on here that's interesting or particularly interesting is the NPV number. We put in our press release an NPV calculation, and that is because if you go into the Navitas report on their website, you can find a net-to-Navitas number and a series of cash flows. It's not actually totally straightforward to then back that out into a gross project NPV, and so we've done it for you.
That number of $4.3 billion as at January 1st, 2023 is on this slide here, and it's based on a flat oil price of 77 Brent as per the NSAI analysis. It is post-royalty and pre-tax. Now, as it's a pre-financing number, you can't just multiply that by 35% and divide by the number of shares. But it is still a useful number to have in mind when you're trying to conceptualize the actual scale of the project and its associated value. Of course, I want to emphasize here that the number only relates to the 269 million barrel 2C number. Nothing for any of the rest of the resources. On the next slide, we'll take a look at what's happened to costs and the new base project profile.
Now, what's really impressive here when you compare it to the Premier numbers is you're looking at maintaining the headline numbers, so you still produce around or in fact a little bit more than 250 million barrels of oil. You still produce 80,000 barrels of oil a day. You're still using an FPSO. Despite operating in a rising cost environment, Navitas have managed to take the life of field cash break-even way down to under $30 a barrel and have reduced the pre-first oil CapEx by in the region of half a billion dollars. All of that is incredibly impressive. What that all means is that we have an eminently financiable project in Sea Lion, particularly at the sort of lower oil prices that lenders might tend to use when analyzing which developments to support.
In their May 2023 update, Navitas reiterated their enthusiasm for the project, confirming they're working towards having 18 wells online as part of phase I in 2026. Reconfirmed that they're seeking to target FID in 2024. Obviously, project financing is still materially impacted by what has been years of continued pressure and what I would describe as financial aggression from Argentina. While there are no guarantees Navitas will succeed, given their track record in financing and this really outstanding work on improving the project economics, I would say we're in the best shape we've been in for many, many years on the Falklands. As on the last slide, the size of the prize we're all focused on here is very, very significant for all stakeholders.
To wrap up on Sea Lion and on these slides, I'll just mention that while this is the new base case, there is still a lot of work ongoing. Of course, because the plan is to redeploy an existing vessel, in many ways it's likely to be the capabilities of that vessel which determine the exact nature of the development. We might find the final development looks a bit different to these numbers, and obviously we'll update the market as and when appropriate as things develop. What you can plainly see here is just what a great job Navitas has already done on the Sea Lion project. Of course, another good piece of news we were able to report last year was the outcome of the Ombrina Mare arbitration, and that came in late August.
We had a unanimous decision in our favor and were awarded approximately EUR 190 million in compensation for Italy's actions plus interest. We wrote to Italy in September 2022 requesting payment of EUR 247 million, a letter to which we have still received no response. In October 2022, Italy formally applied to ICSID to have the award annulled. Now, at that point in time, under the ICSID rules, an automatic temporary stay of enforcement was put in place, which means that we're not currently able to freeze or seize assets in court processes. Earlier this year, the new panel instructed Rockhopper and Italy to work together to find a way to deal with the perceived risk posed by Rockhopper seizing assets, only to subsequently find that Italy wins this annulment application.
Italy has basically refused to comply with that request, while we at Rockhopper have made a proposal to the panel which does explicitly deal with it. We're now waiting for a decision from the panel on this issue, and of course, we'll update the market in the normal way as and when appropriate. I would say there is no formal timetable or deadline by which the panel needs to make this decision, but obviously, we're hoping it will be fairly soon. Now, I'm not able to discuss the grounds on which Italy is seeking to annul because under ICSID rules, the proceedings are confidential between the parties. I've put on this slide some overall background which is available on the ICSID website itself. You can see listed here that the grounds on which it's possible to seek annulment are relatively narrow.
I've also included some statistics on how successful previous annulment claims have been in the past. Now, obviously each case is different, but what you can see from the publicly available data is that annulment is a fairly high legal hurdle to cross. I would reiterate that we do remain confident in our legal case. Now, at the AGM last year, of course, we were in the middle of a capital raise, which is detailed on the slide here. I have to say we were delighted with the support we received both from existing and some new shareholders. As you know, we did the capital raise via the method of a placing and an open offer to make sure that all shareholders had a chance to participate on the same terms.
We ended up raising just over $10 million gross of expenses. We issued about 120 million new shares at GBP 0.07 Per share, and about 60 million or so warrants at GBP 0.09 Per share. For those that are interested, the split was about 70% in the placing and 30% in the open offer. To date, we've had approximately 4.5 million warrants exercised, and so we've got another 55 or 56 million warrants outstanding. We're obviously hoping that the vast majority, or perhaps even all of those warrants, get exercised by the end of this calendar year when they expire.
We're seeing a reasonable amount of added expenditure as a result of all of these positive developments that we've experienced, including, of course, extending the licenses, possibly most notably all the legal work associated with us having won the arbitration. All in all, on the cash front, we plainly don't have a bottomless pit of money, but we're not under anything like the sort of pressure we were last year, and of course, we do now have a highly valuable exit award in our hands, plus all of those outstanding warrants that I just spoke about. I just want to say a few words on board succession at the risk of embarrassing Keith and John.
Now, both Keith and John have been on our board for nine years, and they've decided, in accordance with what is widely accepted corporate governance, best practice for non-execs, to step down between now and the next AGM. We are in discussion with a number of possible, high quality and experienced replacements, and as for all of our other developments, we'll update the market in due course. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank Keith and John, not only on behalf of everyone at Rockhopper, but actually personally for all of their work, effort, time, and guidance over the past nine years, which, as we all know, have included some of our most challenging and difficult periods as a company. I'd like to wish them all the best in what they decide to do in the future and thank them again for their contribution.
To sum up, we are in a significantly better place today than we were this time last year, and arguably we're in the best place that we've been in for several years. We brought Navitas onto the licenses and have developed a really good working relationship with them. We've secured our license extensions from FIG. Navitas has done an exceptional job at optimizing the project. The new base case sees us producing more oil at the same or higher rates than Premier at materially lower costs, made even more impressive when you consider it's being done against a background of industry cost inflation. As I mentioned earlier, lots of work still ongoing, and as the plan is to redeploy an existing vessel, there is a chance this will change as things get firmed up over time, but we're in a very, very good place.
Worth reiterating that at an oil price of $77 Brent flat, just the first 269 million barrels have a gross project NPV10 of in excess of $4 billion as at January 2023. Of course, that number gets far bigger once you reach first oil with all of the rest of the resource still to come on top. In addition to all of that exciting Sea Lion progress, we have a successful arbitration award, which when you add in interest, is currently valued at in excess of EUR 250 million. I've got to say that after some very difficult years, it is refreshing to be in a position to update shareholders on such positive progress across the past 12 months since the last AGM.
Navitas continues to work the project and the financing and is aiming for FID next year. At the same time, we continue to contest Italy's annulment attempt, and we're hopeful for a final resolution of that during 2024. As I often say, there are no guarantees, but if we can keep this momentum up, then the next 18 months or so look like they might be very exciting indeed. With that, I'll wrap up. Thank you.