Well, good morning, everyone, and thank you for coming along to this year's Investor Day. Hopefully, that video gave you an appreciation of the scale of the business that we have today, the diversity of the business we have today, the very different environments. I often speak to a lot of our graduates about the great career opportunities you have at Santos now, that you can be working in the North Slope of Alaska to the outback in the Cooper Basin, the Highlands of PNG. It's quite a diverse business. On offshore FPSOs, LNG plants, gas plants, oil facilities, et cetera, et cetera. So a very diverse organization, and with us growing our energy solutions business, you'll see some of the new business opportunities that we're creating across the company as well.
I have to laugh, though, at that last scene when you saw all of our operators walking in slow-mo, walking into the camera. It reminds me of a scene out of the movie Armageddon, before they go in the space shuttle to save the world. So a very heroic shot. But anyway, this kit, you've all read in detail our normal disclaimer, very detailed disclaimer, and it's important that you do understand that the forecasts and stuff we do, that we have in the pack today, of course, are qualified. So if I go to the next slide, please. This morning, we've got a busy morning,. two sessions. I'm gonna kick off in a minute with an intro and an overview of strategy and where the business is at.
Then Anthony is going to give us an update from a marketing and a markets perspective before we go through our three regions. In 2022, we re-established a regional operating model, where because of the diversity and the size of the company now, we've got regional operating centers, three regions. We've got Eastern Australia and PNG, which is all of our onshore business in Australia, run by Brett Darley, and Brett's going to talk to you about the operations across that region or those regions. And then Vince Santostefano, who's rejoined the company post his COVID break, is. Not that he had COVID, but he went back to WA during COVID. He's rejoined us, and he'll talk about Western Australia and Northern Australia and Timor-Leste. That's the other region, that offshore region.
And then, of course, Bruce isn't with us this morning. Bruce is back in Alaska, but we've got Mark Ireland over here, one of Bruce's deputies, who's over to talk to us about Alaska. And that's our three operating regions. And then Alan, Alan's going to talk to us about the energy solutions business and what he's doing with that business. Now, that's really maturing and starting to hit its strides now. And we'll go through that before Anthea will then finish up in the finances, before I'll coordinate a Q&A session at the end. So two sessions, a busy morning. And we want to leave a bit of time for Q&A at the end. I'm sure there's lots, lots to talk about.
So on that, we'll move forward, and I think we start with the acknowledgment to country. And it's very important that Santos acknowledges that we are meeting on the traditional lands of the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, and pay respect to elders past, present, and emerging. We'd also like to extend that respect to all of our First Nations people here today and to all the First Nations people across all the Santos operations, whether that be in Australia, Timor-Leste, Papua New Guinea, and Alaska. All righty, let me kick off with the first session. I wanted to start by revisiting strategy. So if we can go to the first strategy slide, please. So in 2022, we rolled out our new strategy.
So you'll recall back in 2016, our strategy was very much transform, build, and grow. And we've evolved into a much broader organization. Of course, we've got the transition to take care of as well, and that's gonna be very volatile, and there's gonna be a lot of winners and a lot, lot of losers during that transition. And we're seeing what that's doing to energy markets worldwide. So we spent a lot of time with the board and with an external advisors, developing a strategy, really aimed to take us through that next sort of 10-year period as an organization. And it's a three-horizon strategy, with backfill and sustain, really focusing on backfilling those existing assets, maximizing the value we can get from existing infrastructure. Infrastructure, we've already spent $ billions in installing.
Brownfield projects predominantly, really trying to leverage off that existing infrastructure position. Trying to evolve the business to a lower capital intensity business and shorter cycle CapEx focus, like we see in our onshore business. So we're moving away from these big multibillion-dollar, multi-year projects, with all the risks and exposures they normally bring, to more of a shorter cycle, more flexible type of business going forward, like we see in the Cooper Basin, like we see in Queensland, like we see even onshore, to a lesser extent, in PNG. Reducing emissions intensity across the portfolio. We've got quite an ambitious roadmap and plan to reduce our emissions across our portfolio and really get that emissions intensity of the portfolio down.
You'll see some of the plans in the LNG space in particular, where we think we're really well-positioned to have a world-class portfolio of LNG assets, but very importantly, low emissions intensity LNG assets, which we think will separate them from the pack. And continually improving that free cash flow generation from the portfolio. It's not accidental, and we'll share some of that with you today. The work that we've been doing over the last 6-7 years is continually focused on increasing that cash flow yield, that free cash flow yield out of the asset base and driving synergies through the acquisitions that we've made, but also just through operating excellence centers, where we can share resources across a broader portfolio of assets to drive down those operating costs.
And you'll see the journey in production costs, which has been a very, very positive journey, and it's continuing to maximize the margin, if you like, in every single barrel we produce across the company. The second horizon, which is that decarbonization horizon, that sort of centers on, focuses on, I should say, developing three decarbonization hubs across those midstream assets within our energy solutions business. And of course, that's leading with the Moomba CCS project, which should go online middle of next year. And but we are looking to develop Bayu-Undan in Darwin. You would have seen some developments in that space in the last few weeks, where we got the London Protocol approved by the Senate. And so that's now been approved by Parliament and Senate.
So we now have the London Protocol happening, which means we can transport CO2 across borders. Is that what that means? That, that leads to that legislation and ultimately the regulatory framework that will support the transport of CO2 across borders. And I, I kinda wanna talk a little bit about that today, because it's a bit like the journey we had with Moomba CCS. When we started off on that journey, it did not qualify for ACCUs. CCS didn't qualify for ACCUs, Moomba didn't qualify for ACCUs. There was no CCS regulatory frameworks in place in South Australia or Australia generally. A lot of people were questioning, "Well, why are you doing that?" Well, we were doing that because we saw a demand for carbon and for CCS building. We believed in that.
And so we had to then take a leap of faith and say, "We're gonna commit to a journey, and we're gonna work with governments to put those frameworks in place, so we can build these projects in the future, because we believe it's essential to our social license, to our license to operate, and of course, to unlocking value across the oil and gas assets." Four or five years forward, here we are, the CCS project's almost online, and with good news last week on injectivity tests. So developing those ups and in building new revenue streams over the longer term, not only from our carbon management services, but from the low carbon fuels business. And we got some. Alan will talk to you about some of the things we're doing in that space today.
And then with low carbon fuels, we see that as longer dated. We see that as longer dated. Market-led, really, it's the same customers that are buying LNG from us today, they're going to buy lower carbon, fuels in the future, whether they be, synthetic LNG, e-methane, or whether they be hydrogen. My view is more likely to be e-methane or synthetic methane in the longer term, than green hydrogen, liquefied and transported across the oceans, because of the advantage that you can use all of the existing infrastructure to do that. We'll talk a little bit about that today. So it's a backfill and sustain decarbonization, low carbon fuels, three horizon strategy.
That's all designed to deliver on our purpose as an organization, which is to provide reliable and affordable energy to help create a better world for everyone. So if we move to the next slide, our capital management framework, you've seen this 100 x. Nothing really new here. Over that longer term, we're targeting operating within a gearing range of between 15%-25%. And you know, we wanna do the work to maintain that credit rating. We've improved that credit rating over the years, very considerably from where we started back in 2016. 40% of our free cash flow from operations, we've promised to give back to shareholders, and we wanna live up to that promise going forward.
Of course, those shareholder returns will either be distributed through dividends or share buybacks, depending on what the board decides on an annual basis. Of course, that cash flow we're generating from our operations is then used to also invest in major projects. Now, it's important we stay disciplined and we face those opportunities. We're not wanting to build everything. It's value over volume. It's very important that we stay focused on value, and we're not just chasing barrels. Less worried about production numbers and more worried about the margin per barrel as an organization, and that's the culture we wanna create at Santos and drive that discipline. Prioritizing investments in supportive regulatory jurisdictions. That's become more important in the last few years.
You've seen the regulatory and the legislative challenges we have here in Australia on the Barossa project. Santos is very fortunate to have a portfolio of opportunities that allows us to pivot, allows us to. You know, if Australia becomes tough for a while, to look at other opportunities in other jurisdictions. We've got PNG, we've got Alaska opportunities, and the portfolio allows us to flex and to pivot if we have to do that. And so that is really, you know, it's now more prominent than ever in our decision-making, sovereign risk aspect of future growth opportunities. And as I said earlier, increasingly prioritizing shorter cycle CapEx projects, I'd say D&C-led projects, drilling completions-led projects, versus big major construction. And by focusing on backfilling existing infrastructure, that allows us to do that.
Of course, we have our energy solution stuff that we want to fund, but very importantly, we're not gonna fund stuff that loses money, right? We only wanna do projects that have returns, and if we can't create those projects, we don't do them. That'll be the biggest threat to that part of the strategy, will be the economics. Because if it doesn't work, we're not gonna invest in them. So for us, being disciplined means that. It means getting projects with the right hurdles and working with our Japanese and Korean and our Asian customers to find ways to make them work. But they've got to work, and they've got to satisfy our investment hurdles. We have maintained the same investment hurdles for our SES projects as we have for our oil and gas projects. We haven't set different, different hurdles.
The next slide, please. In terms of backfill and sustain, this gives you a feel for what that looks like over the next few years. So we're taking a five-year view here. Now, we have this out to 2045, and most of our projects, particularly in the big backfill projects, we're looking to backfill a lot of the infrastructure over the longer term. But we're taking a five-year view here, and you can see a little bit natural decline in the base assets there from sort of end of this year onwards, over the the sort of five-year period. And then we have some of our big projects coming in. We've got Barossa, we've got Pikka, Papua LNG is coming in just at the very end.
That's where you see the green just jumping up, the green bar jumping up, just at the end of this phase. But that should take us to somewhere between 100 - we want to operate our portfolio over the longer term, between 100-104 MMBoe. And I think in this time frame, we're looking to get up to about 110-115 MMBoe from that portfolio. So that's based on those major projects there. It's based on continuing to grow production in the Cooper Basin. So we've turned that corner in the Cooper now.
You'll see Brett, I'll show you some great stuff about the Cooper and how we're managing to inject new life into the Cooper Basin with some new plays, count some very new significant plays, very significant plays coming into play in the Cooper Basin, and how we're continuing to grow our indigenous gas in Queensland, and that's ramping up nicely. And a lot of that is down to the technology, the lower drilling costs, and the production cost environment across those assets. In terms of future opportunities, we've got a bucket load of opportunities, and so the discipline is in not rushing to do everything, right? We got a lot on our plate over the next five years. As you can see, we've got a few big projects here.
There is no rush to do them, but you can see a lot of optionality in the portfolio. We've got Dorado, we've got Narrabri. Well, we've always had Narrabri. It feels like we've always had Narrabri, right? But it's still there, and it's getting to be a better project every year, even though it's not progressing, right? We get one legislative challenge after another. But we're continuing to push on that without spending any significant capital, really only spending to maintain license, no more than that at this point in time, until we get the final approvals, which are really centered around the pipeline and the native title award that we did get, but has subsequently been challenged. Pikka Phase II and III, and you'll see a little bit about Pikka and the growth opportunities there. Pikka's going really well.
We're on the fifth well. We'll talk a little bit about that today and how that project is going, and Quokka Phases I and II. And you'll see a lot of interest picking up in the North Slope. You may have seen the farm down to Apache in the U.S. on the exploration assets here. So there's a lot more interest around some of those plays now on the North Slope. And of course, in longer term, stuff in Queensland and in PNG. And even in PNG, the economics are starting to look better in the longer term. Next slide, please. So that, that's the backfill and sustain.
In terms of decarbonization, I talked about the focus primarily being on Santos first, so really building CCS projects on the back of our own infrastructure to take care of our own emissions initially, right? And so that's Moomba. Moomba's, it'll be one of the largest in the world today. It won't be the largest, but one of the largest, but it will be the lowest cost by a country mile, the lowest cost CO2 sequestration project globally. Life cycle break even around the $24 mark, operating costs around $7-$8 per ton. So very low cost CCS project. It should take somewhere between 1.5-1.7 million tons. Basically, it takes all the reservoir emissions that come to Moomba today, that currently get vented.
They'll all be captured, and they'll be stored in the reservoirs at Moomba. The project is going well. It's about 75% complete, and that project will generate ACCUs. And it's the only one of its kind in Australia that currently qualifies to generate ACCUs, significant ACCUs, for up to 25 years. So it's a really solid project. We're very excited about that project coming online next year, and it'll be a bit of a game changer for us in pushing the energy solutions business forward.
We've got a number of MOUs signed up already, memorandums of understanding, with potential domestic and international suppliers of CO2, covering all of our projects, whether that be at Moomba, whether that be offshore at Bayu-Undan, and in the east, through our Devil Creek facilities, using the Reindeer Reservoir offshore Western Australia. So we've got two or two or three parties over in the west signed up, the number of parties signed up for offshore Darwin, and we've got, pretty advanced discussions about the next phase in the Cooper Basin and importing CO2 into the Cooper Basin as well. I talked about London Protocol legislation. We've been working hard on progressing regulatory and legislative frameworks everywhere that we operate. We need them to progress here in Australia. We need them to progress in Timor-Leste.
We've seen a lot of good, positive comments on CCS from Penny Wong and from our Timor-Leste counterparts, more recently. You saw the London Protocol. So, you know, I take my hat off to the government and the opposition for working together to get that through the Senate last week. That's what we need to do, is to get these projects up. Technically, they look excellent. The technical work and FEED for both the Western Australian Hub and for the Bayu-Undan Darwin project are almost completed. That FEED work's almost completed for Bayu-Undan now, technical work. It's really just the regulatory and the approval side that we need to progress there to get those projects up. And of course, direct air capture technology. There's a lot of different direct air capture technologies out there.
We've been trialing two or three. We've got one on trial at Moomba now. So I think the last time I spoke to you, I talked about it going out to a car park in Perth and being trialed in a car park in Perth, and it did, and it worked. And so we then moved to the next phase of the trials, which are field trials, and it's out in Moomba just now, and that, that's a very different environmental test for the technology. Now, we're targeting, we're targeting capture costs of less than AUD 100 per ton, right? They'd be world-leading direct air capture costs. And if we can get this technology to work this decade, that is a game changer. The Cooper Basin has 20 million, well, it has more than 1 billion tons of storage capacity.
We say 20 million tons per year for 50 years, but it's billion tons of storage capacity across the depleted reservoirs and aquifers in the Cooper Basin. Very significant storage capacity. You may have seen Oxy sign up in the last few weeks, some buyers of credits from their direct air capture projects in the U.S. at very significant costs. We see a huge opportunity here, not only to provide offsets, but to support us in our low carbon fuels business aspirations. So you can see the three hubs there, and you can see all the different routes to bringing CO2 back to those hubs. As I say, a lot of interest from third parties in us capturing their CO2. That's decarbonization
If we talk about low carbon fuels, if I can go to the next slide, please. I guess the one that I wanna talk about most is the one that we've got the most activity going on, and which is our E-methane. E-methane is a term that our Japanese partners like to use for what we would refer to as synthetic methane. So what is synthetic methane? It's basically making green hydrogen, capturing CO2, either from the atmosphere or from customers, and bringing that CO2, putting it together with the hydrogen to make methane. Now, there's a lot easier ways to get methane, I have to say, but this makes methane. And of course, you can never release more CO2 back into the atmosphere when it's consumed than you put in, right? So at worst, it's carbon neutral.
If any of that CO2 is captured in the end product, then it's carbon negative, right? So we see that as being advantageous to try to change the entire value chain out, all the technology, whether it be shipping technology, pipelines, and of course, combustion technologies at the other end. We see something that can use all the existing infrastructure as being an easier way to go than changing all the infrastructure. Given how successful we've been over the last 70 years in building the infrastructure for the gas networks, which is still incomplete, right? I just can't see us changing that out to a new energy system anytime soon. So we think that's a player, and the Japanese have got very ambitious targets. So they want 1% of city gas to be e-methane by 2030.
They've set that as a target, a government policy target, and we're working. We've got studies in place with Japanese partners right now, working to FEED into that by 2030. And for us, I think that's around a 50 terajoule per day equivalent project. So that's the sort of main one. As you can see, the little schematic there shows you how that works. We're bringing the CO2 back to Moomba. The great thing about Moomba is Moomba is the best location in all of Australia for solar efficiency. So that wouldn't surprise you. It's the middle of Australia, a lot of blue skies, a lot of good weather. What may surprise you, it's the second-best location in all of Australia for wind efficiency.
The second best, and it's, it's a sort of 24-hour wind cycle most days of the year, right? Again, if you fly over the Cooper Basin and look at the movement in the sand dunes, you'll see the effects of that wind. The third thing that may surprise you is there's lots of water there. Good quality water, which you need to make hydrogen. No shortage of water supply. And the other thing that may surprise you, probably not, it's got potential for geothermal. So there's a lot of things going for it in the Cooper Basin. And of course, the other thing, of course, it's got pipelines that then connect every state and territory, except Western Australia.
So if you can make it, if you can make it economic, you've got all the ingredients to bake the cake, and so we're pretty excited about what that can do. Much, much longer term, it's towards the end of this decade or maybe even next decade, but we are investing a little bit in that, and we're pushing that pretty hard with the Japanese partners. We do see the potential for that. And of course, with us being connected to LNG facilities, we see the opportunity for this in the much longer term to offer additional backfill potential much further down the line. Next, please. In terms of our business overview, in 2022. This is an important slide, 'cause in 2022, we set the organization up in two key divisions.
So we've got three regions that execute, and we've got two divisions that effectively are the functions behind the operations in the company. That's our Upstream Gas and Liquids division and our Santos Energy Solutions division. Of course, following the merger with Oil Search, I think my direct reports went to 15 or 16. And so that was very much about embedding everything down. Now, that's too many direct reports for anybody to have, of course, but it's short term. We've got a few planned retirements and stuff that will occur over the course of probably the next 12 months, and you'll see them come through the system. But it was really about bringing everybody together and getting that organization set up to deliver on this new portfolio. It's going well. It's going well.
The Upstream Gas and Liquids business consists of four world-class LNG projects. Two that are in development, Barossa and Papua, of course, but Gladstone and PNG LNG. What is really impressive about these, as we'll talk about in the next slide, is the location to markets. All four are very close to the markets, which is the biggest gas growth market globally over the next 20-30 years. Sorry, we then have our three natural pipeline gas and liquids businesses, which is Western Australia, East Coast of Australia, and of course, Alaska, which should come on stream early 2026.
And then our Santos Energy Solutions business, which effectively is made up of five midstream assets, namely Varanus Island, Devil Creek, Darwin LNG, and Bayu-Undan, Moomba, and Port Bonython. And so they get the revenue streams that come from some of those assets today, and we've done a lot of work over the last few years, separating some of those assets out. So structurally separating those assets from the upstream projects. So, for example, Varanus Island, Devil Creek, and Darwin LNG are now all separated from their upstream assets, structurally separated. And we've got work ongoing right now to structurally separate Moomba and Port Bonython from the upstream.
So that's really important to give us additional strategic flexibility in the future with those assets as we move forward in the future, in terms of how we set our business up for the longer term. And those businesses really are looking at three things. First of all, processing solutions to Santos, our joint venture partners and third parties, use through those midstream assets. That's what they do today, and really driving emissions down across that portfolio to provide low emissions intensity, gas and liquids processing solutions. In addition to that, developing those three CCS hubs around that infrastructure that I talked about already this morning. And then finally, working on, where appropriate, developing those low carbon fuel solutions for the future. Which will be a range from offsetting, fuels, so fuels with credits attached to them.
So that just might be gas today, that we attach carbon credits to them to give a customer a lower carbon solutions offset opportunity. Or it may actually be something like e-methane in the future. And of course, as a foundation to all of this is the Santos Foundation itself. So, a lot of you'll be familiar with the great work the Oil Search Foundation done. Well, we've now taken that on, and we're, we're kinda pumping that up, put it on steroids, if you like, and applying that right across our group. And that's that's looking a lot.
After a lot of those community and indigenous sort of community investments and projects to support those local communities everywhere we operate, from Alaska, PNG, Highlands, and to the regional and indigenous communities supporting our Australian operations all over Australia. Next slide, please. I talked about the LNG portfolio. A few really important points to make about this. Four world-class LNG assets with a capacity of around 7.7 million tonnes per annum. Our production's increasing over the next few years through these LNG assets. It's important to note that infrastructure footprint provides a great foundation for lower cost backfill opportunities in the future. And we have good equity stakes in all of these projects. We're developing a low emissions intensity LNG portfolio.
I believe that will be very important in the future. The lower the emissions intensity of your LNG is, the more valuable that LNG will be in the future, in my view. Some of the things that point to that: First of all, Bayu-Undan and Papua will have CCS projects attached to them. Now, with Barossa, Barossa is now effectively one of the lowest net emissions intensity LNG projects in the planet. I think it's in the best three projects worldwide, because we will be offsetting all reservoir emissions from day one until CCS comes online. So as much as that's a legislative requirement now, because of the Safeguard Mechanism, what it does from a net emissions intensity point of view, is make Barossa a very low emissions intensity LNG project, one of the lowest in the world.
Another thing, though, that gives all of our projects an advantage, is the Scope 3 emissions from shipping, which results in the emissions being 2.5 x, it's an awkward way of saying it, 2.5 x lower than our U.S. LNG peers. And so that's not the fuel for the ships, that's part of it. It's boil off. So when you take. You can see on the map, an average of eight days to get to your customers versus 20-odd days for your customers. That's a lot of boil off gas that goes into the atmosphere, and that's allowing us to then have a low Scope 3 shipping emissions advantage over our peers. And that's very significant over the life of a project, over a 15-20-year period. That's very significant in terms of emissions reduction.
So when you look at all of those things together, that helps us work towards what we think will be a very low emissions intensity portfolio by the end of this decade, LNG portfolio, by the end of this decade. And we have good long-term contracts with good terms that provide a lot of flexibility for us to manage spot exposure. And we've said previously, we're targeting around 25% spot exposure, but we have the ability to call back and recontract volumes when the conditions are right to do that, when the conditions are right to do that. And it's quite flexible terms we have in those contracts. Next, please. Our upstream gas and liquids business.
Well, I'm not really gonna spend a lot of time on this, 'cause you know this business pretty well, but on the East Coast, we have our Cooper Basin and our Queensland and New South Wales operation. Well, Queensland is predominantly CSG and GLNG, and there's not a lot of domestic gas out of those fields. A little bit, but not a lot. Cooper Basin, of course, comprises mainly of supplying the Horizon contract, which goes to GLNG and some into the domestic market. It's on a very exciting decarbonization journey. So steadily over the last couple of years, and, you know, Brett will talk a bit about electrification in the Cooper Basin. We've been doing a lot of work in that space for two reasons. One is we need to decarbonize.
Two is, though, by decarbonizing those upstream assets, all those satellites around the Cooper Basin, of which there are many. If you've never done it, by the way, I'd encourage you to get a map of the Cooper Basin and put it over Europe, and I'll give you a feel of the scale of the Cooper Basin. It's quite incredible how big the Cooper Basin is, and it helps you then appreciate the challenge, and I would say the enormity of the challenge, I should say, of keeping those production costs where we keep them year- on- year, given the geographic expanse of that. I don't think anybody would ever design it like that, if you got to design it from day one now. But that decarbonization journey is a very exciting journey.
Electrification, that allows us then to bring the CO2 back from those upstream assets, back to Moomba, which, of course, we've now got the kit to capture and store and generate ACCUs for. And so it changed the economics of electrification because we have the benefit of the ACCUs at the other end. And so that helped encourage the electrification of those upstream assets. And we've got some new plays. The guys laugh when I say it with my Scottish accent, but the Patchawarra play is really quite exciting, 'cause we've never really developed Patchawarra, say it again, over the years in the Cooper Basin, because we couldn't get the economics to work.
But because we've been driving drilling costs down year- on- year, and Brett will take you through that journey, we're now unlocking that, and that is a very, very, big potential opportunity. I think we're talking about something like more than a TCF of gas in place, across the plays that we're unlocking, and because of the work that Brett and the team are doing, in the Cooper Basin right now. And then the Granite Wash. Granite Wash gives us an opportunity to do something we've not been able to do ever in the Cooper Basin, and that's to drill horizontal gas wells that actually work.
What I mean by that is that by driving up strong tail production and reducing the rate of decline across those wells, the more of those sort of wells that we can put into the field, then the less wells we need to drill to maintain whatever our plateau production is in the Cooper Basin year- on- year, which means that sustaining CapEx drops significantly to maintain production in the future. And that's. We've seen other operators do that in the Marcellus and other parts of the world, and drive those annual costs down. And Brett will share some of the really exciting developments in that space this year. Needless to say, it works, or I wouldn't be introducing it, right?
And in Western Australia, of course, the challenge there has been that, you know, Reindeer has been ending now for about a 1.5 year . It's still going. I think it's still producing around 50 TJ per day right now. I think we told you last year, we finished in the first half of 2023. Not sure how long that's going to keep going for, but it's going. The guys are doing a great job of cycling wells and continuing to manage the water flood there. We've seen Spar Halyard cut water, of course, we reported that last year. We've seen decline at Spar Halyard . We've got some decommissioning coming up.
So Vince, who's now running the operations over there, really focused on ensuring that WA is a cash flow positive asset for the next few years, while it funds its decommissioning, provides a little bit back to the corporate center, stays cash flow positive, and then we bring on some. I think we're gonna drill an infill well next year, but then bring on some bigger production a few years down the line once we're through some of the other big growth opportunities. And of course, Barossa, we'll talk about in a bit more detail in a moment. But Barossa is a great project. It's a low-cost LNG project. Doesn't feel like that right now with some of the challenges we're having on it. We'll be frank with it.
There's limited what we can say, obviously, because some matters are before the court, and we just have to work through that process. But that, that's the Australian part of the gas and liquids. I think next slide's really on Alaska. Project's 29% complete. We're on the 5th well, world-class resource. This project will deliver very significant free cash flow when it comes online in 2026. I think we said at FID, it was an IRR of around 19% or 19%, on a $60 oil price. Well, that's only got better. That's only got better. Mark will share some really good performance information with you. We see the drilling is going really well. We're on the 5th well. We've got a very experienced team.
Some of you were on, hopefully some of you in the room were on the investor trip this year, and got the opportunity to go over and meet the team and see what they're doing, the great work they're doing. All the work programs that they had planned for this winter have got off to a good start. So a very good team, stable regulatory environment, strong regulatory and government support at state level. Very strong. And even at federal level, even the senators, very strong support for the project. Community projects are essentially complete, and I have to say, the community relationships we have on the ground are absolutely first-class, with our indigenous communities particularly. And this will be a low emissions intensity project. This will be net, net zero Scope 1 and 2 from first production.
And the plans for that are going well as well. You can see here how it shows you it has a very significant growth potential. Our focus is on demonstrating that it works for Phase I before we commit to any of that growth, but it's very significant growth. And you can see when you look at Pikka, and Phase I, and, you know, that's 80,000 barrels a day, I think, is nameplate, that we're producing at Pikka, Phase I. Well, you can see from that scale just how significant that could be and how quickly that could be. That could be a game changer for us if, and I say if, we're successful in achieving Phase I. But all the indications are looking really positive. The well logs look good.
We just need some well test results in the next few months, and hopefully that will give us all the assurance we need for that. But the project is going well. Next slide, please. Australian Regulatory Environment Update. I think it's important just to take a moment to make a comment on this, the environment. The industry needs a regulatory regime that we can rely on, that provides reasonable, upfront certainty on the rules required to obtain approvals. We've got to be able to rely on those approvals, given when we make these investment decisions and when we commence activities. We can't be contracting rigs and vessels and then finding we're getting held up in court like we are today. That is going to drive investment away from Australia. Nothing will drive investment away from Australia faster than this, this environment.
We're working with other industry participants because this is affecting all of us. I think only five EPs have been approved by the regulator in the last 14 months or so, and one of them has subsequently been turned around again, following a legal challenge. So that uncertainty is killing us right now in Australia. We are working. I'm not going to talk about the pipeline case because I can't. It's in front of the court, and we will defend our case vigorously, as we've said publicly. We have a valid EP, and you know, we'll defend that. But we'll see how that plays out. The drilling, I guess all I can say on that really is that we're waiting for that approval to come through.
If and when that comes through, we'll get back to drilling. And then, provided we're drilling around the end of this year, provided we run the pipeline to plan, then guidance remains. And the reason for that is that I have never seen a project that was executed so well in terms of cost and schedule as the Barossa project. Now, it makes me think maybe the guys were padding the budgets a little bit when they took it through FID, if I'm being frank. But all we've done for the last year is eat up contingency on this project, and it's nearly all gone. And so if we don't get going again by the end of this year, we will have to review guidance. And I think I've communicated that to all of you previously.
That's where we'll be early in the new year if we don't get going. The way to think about the drilling is that the drilling was never really on critical path. It is on critical path now. So if we start drilling by the end of this year, we will be able to start up mid-2025 at capacity, LNG capacity. For every sort of four months or so, we slip on that drilling, it'd be one of our wells that would be late. And so you'd be 75%, 50% capacity starting up if it was delayed much longer, say, six months or so. So that's the way to think of that. But we're very focused, we're very committed to getting Barossa online as a world-class project.
Our partners are committed, and we're still optimistic we'll navigate a way through this in the months ahead. That's all I really want to say on the regulatory stuff at this point of view. We're working with government, we're working with industry stakeholders, to try and get these things fixed. But my call to government is they need to be fixed. If they're not fixed, investment in Australia is going to dry up for offshore, and indeed, it'd be very difficult for us to FID any other offshore projects, here in Australia, until we get a more certain regulatory regime than we have today. If I may then move to Energy Solutions. Our Energy Solutions business that we talked about is a separate division. It consists of those five midstream assets.
Alan will take you through this in more detail, but effectively, I just wanted to run through quickly how we've structured this. We've got the midstream infrastructure, those five assets. We've got our carbon capture and storage hubs we're developing at Moomba, Bayu-Undan, and Reindeer CCS. Our Carbon Solutions dev group that sits within Energy Solutions. Carbon Solutions is a group that's based on nature-based projects, investing and developing nature-based projects. Santos has an incredible access to land. We have thousands, excuse me, thousands of landholder agreements in Australia. We've got landholder agreements in PNG. We've got land access arrangements in Alaska and relationships. And through all of that, that gives us the opportunity to work with local stakeholders to develop nature-based projects that generate high-quality offsets and credits, credit units.
And so that part of the business is going very well already, and we expect to start seeing yield from that business this year and generating very significant credits. Our low carbon fuels is what we talked about. That's the guys in the white coats that are looking at this stuff well into the future, looking at direct air capture and how that can help support the development of e-methane or synthetic methane. And of course, that all of those are sort of lining up to help us to achieve our asset decarbonization targets, our Scope 1 and Scope 2 targets that we've set for 2040, and those 2030 interim targets that we've set as well, and on track to deliver on. Next, please. These are the midstream assets. You know about this.
I'm not really going to say too much around those other than all of them are on their own decarbonization journey as well as part of our overall plan. And if I go to the Carbon Solutions, which is the next slide, I talked about the vast land access opportunities that we have across our business. We've already got projects going. So for example, in Queensland, we've got a human-induced regeneration project registered this year with the regulator. In PNG, we've got a project that's planned to deliver us more than 8 million tons of credits over the next few years, over the next decade or so, from a project that's almost up and running, and in fact, one is up and running in PNG.
And in Alaska, we should start to get prep credits from one of our projects this year, as well, by the end of this year. So you can start to see that these projects are building momentum, and we think there's significant potential. What's really quite exciting about this, these are developing projects in partnership with the local communities that are sustainable, that are profitable, and they create jobs for local communities, significant jobs for these local communities, some of which are indigenous partnerships as well. So we're very excited about what that. And it really comes down to your view on the price of carbon, your view on the price of carbon longer term.
If we can generate millions of tons of credits from these projects each year, that gives our marketing trading guys the opportunity to set up new revenue, revenue streams for Energy Solutions. So if I think then, so how is the company performing? It's very important from a reliability point of view, that we're safe, we're reliable, and our base business keeps performing. So you know, what I'm really pleased about, if you look at our lost time injury rates and our moderate harm. Now, lost time injuries are a very well-known metric, and you can see we're performing better than benchmarks there. And I'm glad to see that after the aberration of 2021, the post-COVID impact that we saw industry-wide, where incidents went up, and I think that was COVID fatigue, was really kicking in.
A lot of slips, trips, and falls. We saw globally, fatality rates go through the roof in the last two years, and that's a really sad indication, I think, of where the industry has sort of got to post-COVID. Fortunately, touch wood, we've avoided that so far. I have to say, I started touching on my organization earlier on. This is the strongest operational leadership group I've had in all my time at Santos. If I just think of the three regions, with Bruce Dingemans in Alaska, Brett Darley in Eastern Australia and PNG, and Vince Santostefano in the west, looking after Northern. We have never had stronger operational leadership than that. That is the strongest the company's ever had.
What's really exciting, as much as I said, I'm at 14, 15 direct reports today. There will be some consolidation as people retire and stuff over the next few years, and I'll get that down to a more manageable level. But what is actually really exciting about that is the talent we've got just below the leadership level, pushing through. The young talent we've got. We've never had as rich a talent pool as we have in the organization today. So I'm really quite excited about that. That's important when it comes to managing things like integrity and safety, asset integrity and safety. So you can see that playing through in the safety performance, getting back on track pretty quickly after COVID. Harm is an indicator of the incidents that matter.
Not that getting a Band-Aid on a cut on your finger doesn't matter, but that, that can often. That's a TRIR, right? But the harm is when someone's injured to the point where it causes them harm for a period of three months or more, right? Permanent or permanent or temporary harm for three months or more. So that could be breaking a leg or breaking a bone or something like that. They're more serious incidents. Of course, there's the more extreme incidents as well. So it's really important that we're on top of that, and you can see by focusing on that, we've really driven that down. With that same uptick in 2021, but I'm pleased to see that that's going the right way.
In terms of process safety, so this is like what we call LOCIs, loss of containment incidents. Gas, oil, getting out of the pipe or out of the vessel. You can see there, we've been pretty flat for the last few years. Better than benchmark, but flat. So we want to see that going to the next level. To put that in context, though, as much as it's flat, we've taken on a lot of new equipment and new assets in the last couple of years, and Brett will tell you a great story about reliability in PNG, and how we have taken the reliability of those assets from the 70% into the 90s, and what that's meant for production outcomes in PNG. And that's about using good asset integrity processes and standards to drive that reliability of those assets up.
It's important we stay on this, though. We want that to be even lower. You know, every loss of containment is potentially a serious, serious event. And of course, environmental performance. This is what I'm pleased about. So this is when we benchmark against our peers worldwide on spills. This is environmental spills of a barrel or greater, which is the kinda standard global industry benchmark. You can see we're top class here compared to our peers. Cultural heritage management. I want to share this one with you. So for all of our operations onshore, we conduct cultural heritage assessments. We walk out in the land with our cultural heritage officers. We're close to 100 of those on our books, and we inspect for any cultural heritage. And quite exciting, we often make finds.
So we've made a lot of finds here in Australia. You can see the light blue bar is the finds. So we made a lot of finds to help our Indigenous partners identify new cultural heritage sites that they hadn't previously mapped. And some of those are quite rare finds as well. So that's a very valuable part of our business, 'cause that allows us then, when we go to drill a well, for example, not to put the rig in the wrong place. And I'm pleased to say that, you know, you can look at the hundreds of assessments and hundreds of programs we execute there out in the Cooper Basin particularly, but in Queensland as well, we have not any serious breaches there in decades.
So, so really working well as an organization doing that. And you can see how we're driving that Indigenous and local spend across our community as well, and that's very important to us. We want to be a more local company, get away from FIFO as much as we can, right? Be part of those communities. It's important the community support us, and the more jobs, the more investment that we can direct in the direction of those local communities, the more community support we will have. And if you, if you struggle to sleep, I encourage you to read our sustainability report and our LSIP report, and that will help you see the trends and the activities that we're doing in these spaces. Now, I believe from a social license to operate point of view, that's gonna be really valuable for us over the longer term.
In terms of financial performance, I think on the balance sheet, you can see the interesting journey since 2016. So we've, we've come a long way, and really, you can see how we've flexed back up to do acquisitions from time to time or, or to invest in growth. So that's what those bumps represent, but it's been a pretty positive journey over that timeframe. The one I'm really pleased about is the next one, the upstream unit production cost. No, no, not the next chart. I meant the next chart on that slide. Sorry. The production cost chart. You can see here with the production costs, how we've managed to drive them down over the years. And that's a really important point, 'cause that's the scale benefits of the mergers and the acquisitions that we've made, right?
So what we're able to do there is everybody talks about synergies. Right? Very few companies ever deliver them, truly deliver them. We've held our management to account to the synergy promises they made before every acquisition. And then what we do is we keep measuring it. And so by putting that onshore center of excellence in Brisbane, where all the drilling completion and connection activities are run out of Brisbane. The Cooper Basin remote site operations are now being run out of the operating center in Brisbane. Queensland operations being supported out of the operating center in Brisbane. That drives synergies and drives unit production costs down. And by continuing to do that, you can see we've bucked the trend. And Anthea has got a great chart on this later on, showing how that compares to peers over the same time period.
And very importantly, that's all part of the operating model, which is designed to drive that cash flow yield from our portfolio up. Now, I know I've really blown my time limit here, but I'm enjoying myself. Really drive that cash flow yield up. And you can see on the next chart how that has worked over time. Ignore 2022. It's a bit of an aberration because of the very high commodity prices, but you can just see at more average prices, what that trend line looks like, and it's a pretty positive trend line. And I think that's got a. Well, actually, if I go to the next slide, the next slide shows it better, I think. This is my favorite slide. So this is, our whole operating model is designed to deliver this. This is what we want to deliver.
Now, I have to acknowledge, it ain't coming through in the share price, right? Very frustrating. But from 2016 onwards, we've been focused on driving or torquing up that cash flow yield from the portfolio, right? And you can see that would be, what that journey is like. And I think, you know, ultimately, if you look forward, if we go back to, I think back in 2017, 2018, it was about $250 million, or $230 million for every $10 above our operating free cash flow breakeven. That was the sort of cash flow yield of the business. 2021, that went to $330. 2022, that was $450. And that's not to do with the oil price, that's just to do with our breakeven, right?
And then if you look at the forecast going forward, 2025, with Barossa coming on, that goes to 550. It goes to over 600 in 2026 onwards, 2028. So it's about continuing this journey, and that's where asset portfolio management and optimization is critical. Is critical. Because we want to be focusing on the investments in the assets that keep torquing that up and generating as much cash flow out of these assets as we can. And that's why it's important to maintain strong discipline around production costs, so that every $1 or $2 we can squeeze out of every barrel enhances these numbers. And that's very much the operating philosophy or the operating model philosophy that we're driving through the business. You can see we're targeting ROACE is around 15%-20% by 2028.
Now, that's all based on, I think, the $75 oil price. So just using the forward curve as a proxy for oil price, during that period. So, you can see very, very strong cash flow generation. If I go to the next slide, what has that meant? Well, even just in the last year and a bit since the Oil Search merger, we've generated $5.2 billion out of the operating cash flow from the business. Now, you think back to where the company was in 2015, 2016, I think 54 million BOEs was a production back then, dropping into the 40s. Hadn't generated any free cash flow for nine years, genuine free cash flow for nine years. So in the last, since first of January 2022, $5.2 billion.
$2 billion returned to shareholders. Reduction in net debt of $1.4 billion. At the same time, we've been able to invest in things like CCS to develop that license to operate, that low carbon intensity business of the future. 75% complete. In fact, I heard yesterday, it's 77% complete. Just throw that out there. Just heard yesterday, 2% more in the last few weeks. If I look forward over a five-year outlook, we're talking about a 6% compound annual growth rate in production. That's at $75 oil, that should generate around $14 billion in free cash flow from operations, of which 40% should go back to those who need it most, to our shareholders, or want it most, I should say, want it mos..
third say, and I do say, we've got a diversified and very cash-generative portfolio. We've built a portfolio that prints cash now. It's a very different business.
And this next part of growth is really critical to execute well and get it on stream because it takes us to the next level, and it takes us to the next level for a sustainable period of time into the future. That's very important. Allows us then to move to a lower CapEx intensity business, a much lower CapEx intensity business. I saw a WoodMac chart that has us one of the highest capital-intensive businesses in 2024, 2025, and one of the lowest globally by 2028, 2030. And that's a real flip because the big projects are sort of behind us by 2028, the big mega projects. And that gives us a geographic and product differentiated asset base. It gives us a, as I said, 6% production compound annual growth rate.
With that disciplined cost management model, we should be able to get extra dollar, extra margin out of all of those barrels. Very significant cash flow from operations during that five-year period, and with a strong balance sheet in that 15%-25% range. And you saw on the chart the difference when we talk about our gearing. I've got to make this point, because I know I say it all the time, and I know only one or two of you with it, right? But we look at gearing, we look at FRS gearing, and we look at our gearing excluding operating leases. And that's very important, because all of our drilling rigs that are in short-term leases now are in there, right? And you can see how that's 4% or 5%, and then the difference in the next couple of years.
So if you think of your gearing without those leases, it's 4 or 5% lower, right, than what we have to report through our, to meet our accounting standards. It's a good way to think about the strength of the balance sheet. Well, we've got net zero Scope 1 and 2 projects pro targets for 2040, but importantly, we've got significant targets for 2030, including a 40% reduction, which is not on this slide, of emissions intensity by 2030 across our portfolio. When you think of that in terms of four world-class LNG assets, close proximity to market, Scope 3 shipping CO2 advantages, and CCS projects to make them low emissions intensity, we see that as a really valuable business, that LNG business.
And then, of course, developing new earning streams from our third-party carbon management services, which we think will be a combination of CCS services, carbon capture to use for, for clean fuels or low carbon fuels, and, of course, the carbon solution stuff I talked about, those nature-based projects, which help us generate units that we can sell and/or use for ourselves. And so in 2024, my last slide, really just wrapping up. Key priorities for our business in 2024 is deliver safe and reliable production within our base business. We must never forget the value of the base business. You've got to be able to reliably produce. We had outages at Varanus Island last year, which cost us 3-4 months of production from some of our wells there. That's expensive when that happens.
It's not good when that happens. Now, sometimes unexpected outages occur, and so it's about how quickly we can return from those. But the best, the best way is to prevent them, and so having really strong operational and asset integrity management is important. Progressing our major projects. Barossa's the sticking point with that one right now, that has you all concerned. But we've got to work hard to progress that, but also Pikka and Papua. Papua, we expect to take LNG, probably, second half of 2024. Backfill and gas production on the East Coast, so continuing to turn around.
It's really good to see that after the CapEx cuts in 2021 in the Cooper Basin, and I always hate when people cut CapEx in the Cooper Basin because it drops like a stone, and then you've got to build a few years turning that around. And we're now growing it again. It's now growing. Brett will share that with you. And of course, in the West Coast. I shouldn't forget GLNG is growing as well, right? Indigenous production is growing year- on- year there, too. Some great drilling breakthroughs there. And of course, in the West Coast, we've got Spar Halyard infill well we want to drill in 2024 and give that a little sugar hit until we bring bigger projects on a few years down the line. Delivering Moomba CCS, that's very important. That's a bit of a game changer for the company.
We know, I think some of you might have been on the financing and bankers trip out to see the assets last week, I think it was. And that we got very, very positive feedback from that. One of the great advantages of CCS and our CCS business is not just new revenue streams, but it's access to capital in the future. We believe that's gonna be critical in earning us access to capital. Progressing Bayu-Undan and Reindeer CCS, and by making those MOUs into binding offtake agreements that will support FID decisions on those projects in the future. And then progressing those low carbon fuel studies and e-methane projects.
Finally, finally, continuing to assess structural alternatives across our portfolio, and looking at how we can optimize our portfolio and strategic opportunities. Now, I know I've spoken to a lot of you in the last few weeks about some of those alternatives, what they look like. I'm not going to say what they might look like, because there's all different, there's variations, but we are looking at those. We do have a bunch of internal and external advisors who work with us on that. We've appointed them. We did that earlier this year to look at that. And if I can call out James, and, you know, I really appreciate James and the team coming forward with their proposal more recently. That's one we looked at. So, you know, that, that, that was not.
You know, I would never dismiss that as a good opportunity. It's one we had looked at earlier this year, and we're continuing to evaluate. It's why we're doing the work we're doing to structurally separate certain assets out, to give us that optionality for the future, and we will announce as we achieve some of those things. But we will continue to do that, working with our advisors, looking at structural options. The share price is very frustrating. You know, I think I've spoke to any of my peers in this part of the world. We are all very frustrated with how undervalued we are for the business that I've just taken you through.
You look at the cash flow generation from this business, you look at the opportunities in front of us, and you look at the track record of discipline. It's cheap. I encourage you to buy more, by the way. I encourage you all to buy more. It's cheap, right? But we have to look at every alternative, because if the market's not gonna value it, we've got to find a way to value it and get value from it. And we will do that. And we'll continue to talk with you and update you as we progress any opportunities along those lines. So that's my section. I'm gonna wrap up there. I think I blew my time by about double, so I'm gonna ask everybody else to stick to your times, right? And so, maybe I'll invite. I think it's Brett. Brett?
It's not, it's not Brett. It's Anthony, sorry. Anthony, if Anthony wants to come up and take us through the marketing. Anthony. You're involved. No, you do it, mate. You do it. Come up. We're all excited to see you, so thank you. Thanks very much. Thank you. I'll be back up at the end.
Good morning! I'll try and keep it quick. Thanks for, thanks for coming. Believe it or not, it's actually a good time to have oil and gas projects, and I know a lot of people in this room probably think that. But, the geopolitical tensions over the last two years have brought the world's attention back to energy security through basically reliable and affordable fuels. Asian customers are very focused on energy security from reliable suppliers and trading partners such as ourselves. The U.S. Energy Information Administration, EIA, lots of acronyms in this, in their 2023 International Energy Outlook actually showed that oil and gas would grow out to 2050, particularly from the Asian customers.
Total annual demand for natural gas in the EIA scenario reached 197 TCF by 2050, which was up from 145 TCF in their 2021 report. So it's growing. The graph up on the board, on the other hand, by the International Energy Agency, this is their announced pledges scenario, so a 1.7 degree Celsius scenario, shows that there's a small decline in oil and gas by 2050. However, gas still contributes. Oil and gas still contributes approximately 20% of the total primary energy demand in 2050, and you can see from the bottom dark blue area that gas remains relatively flat over the next 2-3 decades. Coal is what switches out, as you can see from that graph.
Oil and gas demand remains a very key component of the energy mix in the Asia-Pacific region out to 2050. Demand for energy in the region is driven by forecast growth in population and GDP, as non-OECD countries strive to grow their economies and improve their standards of living. It's all about cost of living, and, and that's what oil and gas can provide, a low cost of living standard for Asian customers. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the IPCC, in their AR6 report, published over 3,000 scenarios representing potential future climate states. We've shown a subset of those scenarios on the right-hand graph, particularly for Asian customers such as Japan, Korea, China and India. And you can see from that, the median of those scenarios shows gas grows out to 2050. Moving to the next slide.
The long-term view for LNG is supportive of our world-class portfolio. We see strong Asia-Pacific demand growth to 2040, with limited Pacific Basin supply coming online. Santos has proximal advantage to Asia to supply into a growing market and a competitive cost via our secure trade routes that Kevin touched upon. We've got strong appetite for long-term contact, contracts from our traditional buyers. Demand is diversifying as nations such as India, Vietnam and Thailand in particular, all plan gas-led economic and energy transition as coal switches out of their energy system. We have increased European LNG demand, which has diverted supply from the U.S. and the Middle East, further tightening APAC supplies. 70% of the U.S. volume is delivered to Europe in 2022, versus 35%-40%, which happened in the two years previously, 2019-2021.
So a massive shift in that geopolitical tension that's occurred. Supply growth is limited in the short term. Historical underinvestment and project delays have limited supply, with no new supply expected to reach the market until 2026 and beyond. Lack of investment and COVID construction delays have led to these supply growths, and it's maintained today's tight balanced market. Existing and low-cost backfill and brownfield LNG projects position Santos well in a tightly balanced market. Any cost inflation or delays in these competing greenfield projects that are coming up across the globe will strengthen Santos' position even further. With limited new supply not expected to reach the market until 2026 or later, the balance is supportive for strong prices and demand in the short to medium term. Next slide, please. Slide 27 touches on domestic gas supply.
Energy security for domestic markets, both in the east and west, is a high priority, with no new supply coming to the market quickly. On the domestic gas markets, these graphs show that both the west and the east coast markets need new supply this decade. The fundamentals of the market are supportive of Narrabri and our WA backfill projects we have in our portfolio, with strong prices and long-term demand still expected. The latest outlooks from AEMO show that further investment is required to increase gas supply. Australian domestic gas plays a critical role in the transition of the energy grid. Natural gas demand by industrial users will remain strong as an affordable and reliable source. The majority of Santos' contracts are with C&I, commercial and industrial customers, not power, and these C&I customers rely on gas, not renewables, to run their business.
Domestic gas demand is forecast to remain strong, with new gas supplies required to meet this demand. In the West Coast, the WA gas market has changed significantly, with supply deficits through to 2026. The potential for incremental gas power generation demand if coal supply issues persist, so in other words, there's pressures in, in the energy grid in WA. And as a result, gas prices have reached record highs of approximately AUD 9 recently per gigajoule. In the East Coast, we have great uncertainty without new supply. Shortfalls are forecast to begin later this decade, with decline across mature fields and limited new supply coming online. The market is currently tight but balanced, with prices higher than its pre-COVID levels, and prices are currently in the market settling around the government price cap level of approximately AUD 12 a gigajoule.
Santos is well positioned to provide both supply and in both markets to East and West. We've got Narrabri in the East, and we've got our WA backfill and our potential Bedout Basin gas project, in the future to supply these markets. Next slide, please. In terms of oil demand, the graph on the right is showing oil demand through this decade, and it holds consistent through to 2050. Investment in new supply is required to meet demand as base crude declines. This underpins the strong pricing conditions, which are shown on the graph on the left, and you can see this is from S&P, but oil prices are range-bound between $80-$100 for the remainder of this decade. Santos' low-cost and low-emission growth projects, such as our Alaskan oil development and Dorado, are well positioned to take advantage of this oil schematic. Next slide.
The Australian carbon market's interesting. The graph on this page is data from RepuTex and shows the annual ACCU cancellation demand for facilities that are covered by the Safeguard Mechanism, along with the issuance of total ACCUs in the market. Based on the RepuTex central case scenario modeling, shown on the graph, accounting only for insurances for registered projects, you can see the market is expected to remain in surplus for the next few years, with ample supply to cover demand until compliance liabilities under the Safeguard Mechanism increase later this decade. The market, however, is expected to be short from 2027, as can be seen from the blue dashed line.
As supply from existing ACCU methods slows, that is mainly from landfill gas and avoided deforestation, and ACCU compliance cancellations begin to grow as we reach the second half of this decade, despite new sources of supply scaling up. As a result, we see the demand for ACCUs for compliance purposes really increasing later this decade. The market will potentially be short of new insurances from projects, ignoring any surplus credits that the government may release from their bank of credits that they do hold. Next slide. Slide 30. So in summary, the fundamentals of the market are supportive of our strategy, and the demand for products we produce will continue for decades. We view gas as critical to the energy transition, and our products are essential to support energy, social, and economic security.
Asia Pacific energy market demand remains strong for this decade, and the domestic markets we supply will require new sources of gas. Santos is a low-cost and lower-carbon LNG portfolio. Asia Pacific is a net importer of LNG, with demand continually outpacing supply until 2040. We're focused on backfilling our existing infrastructure, that's DLNG, GLNG, and expanding our LNG production in PNG with Papua LNG to supply these Asian demand centers. Customers want our products, and market contracts currently are supportive of 10+ years with the change in the energy security thematic that's occurred. There's also growing interest from customers in abated fuels and decarbonization opportunities, which Kevin touched on and Alan Stuart-Grant will go through. We are currently marketing some of our PNG LNG volumes, and we're also in the market for our Papua LNG volumes to support FID in 2024.
There is extremely strong demand from all Asian customers who like the rich gas qualities of our LNG in those projects. Rich gas means less spiking of LPG and a lower cost to customer. We are building capability in our LNG and carbon trading through setting up a Singapore trading hub, which complements our already existing Tokyo office, and we have extremely strong access into the region. In domestic gas, the latest AEMO outlooks that I showed you show that investment's required now to meet the gap between supply. If something doesn't happen, we could be short later this decade in both East and West Coast markets. We have committed much of our needed supply from our Narrabri project to the domestic market in the East Coast.
And in the West Coast, we will continue to look at investment opportunities to backfill our portfolio with WA existing assets in our Bedout Basin potential future gas projects. For liquids, our oil demand continues to grow this decade and remains strong through to 2050, and we are developing world-class assets in our Alaskan oil project and Dorado project that can supply these oil markets. Finally, as can be seen from the graph, as we move forward, post our growth phase to 2028, you can see that Santos will have a well-diversified portfolio with approximately 60% LNG, 25% liquids, and 15% domestic gas. We'll be spread nicely across our three operating countries of Australia, Papua New Guinea, and Alaska, which all are advantaged by close proximity to the strong growth required by the Asian demand.
On that note, I think I've gone through everything I can as quickly as I could, and I will hand over to Brett to go through the East Coast. Happy to catch up later.
Yeah, good morning, everyone. I'm Brett Darley. I lead the Eastern Australia and PNG region, as Kevin said. What's my role? My role is to ensure that we've got a really strong backfill and sustain pipeline as part of the strategy. My role is also to make sure we've got a decarb pathway that's consistent with our strategy and commitments, and to generate low emissions products like LNG. And it's also to continue unlocking value from the portfolio. And it's not rocket science. We lower our development costs, we create more resource. We lower our operating costs, we create more margin and more cash. And I'll show you some examples across each of the assets where we're continuing to do that. And again, I'd just like to reflect on what Kevin said in his opening. A very good safety year.
Probably our best safety year ever. Our best daily reliability year, our lowest maintenance backlog year, and our lowest operating cost year. So those things generally come together. You will never see a bad safety year and a good operating performance. They come together, and I think you're seeing real performance come from the base and allowing us to generate value in our growth projects, provide the cash for us to grow. So briefly on each asset. PNG, world-class asset, low CO2. We have a very strong backfill, and I'll show you that in a minute. From our current fields, Angore and our associated fields, but also with Papua LNG and PNG. GLNG, a really well-performing asset now, a reliable asset. Daily production, very constant, and we continue to drive costs down.
That part of the business is bleeding into the Cooper and into PNG. We're using that factory style, absolute focus on getting costs down, and not through just discipline, but through innovation, and I'll show that as well. The region with all of that centered in Brisbane now, you can see that just permeating through the building, and I'll show you some of the results from that. In the Cooper, we continue to unlock value. I think 39 years ago, so in 1984, I first went out to the Cooper Basin, and I've been involved in it ever since. Ultimately, every year, I see us being able to unlock value, and I'll show you some really exciting stuff, where we continue to really sweat that mature asset.
It always surprises me just how much value is in the Cooper. We talked about Moomba CCS, and I'll do a very quick update on that. Kevin mentioned that, 75% complete, and Narrabri, a 100% domestic gas option into a supply-constrained market. So quickly, just to the next one, Moomba CCS. So you can see, 77% complete. Very recent reinjection or injection trial that went on for one of our injection wells as per plan only last week, so very confident about that. We're around the AUD 220 million mark as far as the project spend goes, but still a very low cost of injection, so AUD 24 per ton. So again, lowest worldwide as far as a CCS project goes. We will get our certification later in 2024.
It's a new process, so it will take us a little while to get that certification. We have a huge capacity out here. This is Phase I. There's Phase II, Phase III, if we want to do it. And at the moment, we have 100 million tons of CO2 storage booking in the equivalent 2P and 2C for CCS storage, reserves. And not only that, we are growing that in, and we're growing that, in the near term as well. So let's go to Papua. Quickly on Papua, it's scheduled for FID in 2024, with first production in 2028 scheduled. 6 million tons, of which we are using 2 million tons from the existing PNG LNG facility. So we're using our infrastructure position to get value, on, out of Papua as well.
It leverages our position and delivers a lot of value to us, not just through the additional gas that's coming through the Papua, or the additional gas that we produce, our equity share of the Papua production, but also through tolling. So we will get an access fee, OpEx sharing, and ongoing processing toll revenue that compensates PNG LNG for the capacity it gives up to Papua. Now, for us, it creates a higher margin business for us, so we're getting value over volume in this instance. It's a really high productivity, carbonate reservoir, and we've designed it, and it's being designed by the operator to have CCS injection from day one. So with that, it's going to have very, very low carbon metrics and again, be a supplier of really low emission LNG into the Southeast Asian market.
We are doing something different, or the operator in Exxon is looking at E trains, so the expansion trains will be electric trains and then ultimately opens up for renewable penetration later. So it's future-proofing those trains for the LNG, energy consumption. Let's go to PNG. So really large, enormous reserve base there. About 33% of it is operated. If you look again at this out past 2040, very, very good pathway or backfill here, that we already have. I mean, this is already projects that are being talked about, if not, ready to be FIDed. Also, we have the optionality. In this portfolio, there are some really large-scale, volumes out there, exploration volumes, including Wildebeest, that we have the option on in the future. So ultimately, those things would be game changers.
Again, it wouldn't just be backfill in that case. These sorts of success at Wildebeest would be expansion in PNG on top of this. And then what Kevin alluded to, reliability in the last two years. So we talked about the synergies that we've delivered through the merger of the companies. Those are. This is over and above those synergies. We continue to deliver those synergies. They're baked into our budgets. We can't hide from them. Kevin makes sure that we actually have to deliver on the promises of the synergies. We are doing that and more. So in the last couple of years, or the last two years, you can see that is reliability that is actually linked to gas production that we're putting into PNG LNG.
That's about 1.6 million barrels Santos' share in the last two years of additional production that we've extracted from these facilities. We have about four aging machines up there in the Cooper Basin. We have 120 of the same or very similar aging machines, and our ability to send our folks who've been working on that up to the Cooper, sorry, up to PNG, the PNG folks down to the Cooper to learn how to run these machines more efficiently, have maintenance strategies in place, that is real value that's been unlocked through the fact that we are able to leverage our expertise again into into PNG. Fantastic story there. GLNG, record field performance. You can see our, this year is our record indigenous performance or indigenous gas production, and we're forecast to grow that year- on- year.
From that perspective, we've less reliance on third-party gas and more margin for us. Large reserve base here that we're progressively developing through our current four fields, and I'll run through the fields. Fairview, you know, which is the jewel in the crown, has been going down over the last couple of years. We've reversed that trend, and in fact, we've added 20 TJs a day to our production this year. So we're doing that through horizontal drilling, accessing parts of the field we haven't been able to access previously, because we're able to drill under infrastructure and drill under mount, basically under hills that we weren't able to access before. So that's opening up new resource and also reducing unit cost, and I'll show you that in a minute when we talk about the drilling performance. And you can see GLNG production out there.
We have a future for GLNG, and on top of that, the joint ventures are now aligned at looking outside the four fields as well. We have an acreage team currently looking to see. That's actually jointly run with the GLNG joint venture partners, which is really positive. Scotia, outperforming expectations again. I think I drilled Scotia 4 in 1997, and I think we got a couple of hundred wells out there. This field is a fantastic field. It was the only CSG field in Australia with, with a natural gas cap, and it's still outperforming expectations. So this is the highest rates we've ever seen at Scotia, and we are now facility constrained. So next year we're going to put some more compression in, and we're going to get that up again.
Roma remains flat, and we're continuing to optimize Roma as we go forward. Next one, thanks. So look, just on the drilling performance, and again, you just see this coming from GLNG, and you'll see what's happening in Cooper, and we're pushing that into PNG. But from a performance point of view, this is what we've done over the last few years. We're now pushing laterals out to 4,000 m, or that'll be the plan for the one in 2024. And we're doing two laterals a well, so you're actually 8 km of CSG reservoir exposure in these wells. But we just finished this one, so 2,600 m. Great result, and you can see what that means for our productivity.
So, say, for Arcadia, our 4-km step out that we want to do, we're looking to see a result of around 5.1 million a day from that, and we will be drilling that next year. From a cost point of view, our unit development cost is about. We get an uplift about 2.5 x on compared to a vertical well. So again, we're able to access less disturbance and also a better productivity outcome. And you can see we've been really busy making sure that we can deliver on that pathway going up, our increasing production at GLNG, through our well count. So this has been our busiest year ever. 450 wells to be drilled and connected in 2023, which is absolutely massive.
There's a lot of moving parts to get that done, and the cost focus on this, delivering it as per cost, reliably, safely, it's actually incredible performance. So let's go to the next one. So Cooper. So what are we doing in the Cooper? A lot of our reserves remain around the central fields, which is great from an infrastructure point of view, close to Moomba. So we have about 40% of our total gas production coming out of central fields. We drilled about 50% of our wells this year in central fields. So it's a place that's been drilled previously, obviously, targeting the Toolachee, which is the more conventional, or the shallower reservoir. We're targeting the Patchawarra, the deeper, the harder, the one that's actually harder to make economic in 2023. So this is recent.
We've a large campaign in Moomba Central, and we've been able to do that successfully, and I'll talk about that, what that means for further Patchawarra resource plays. But fantastic effort, and that really comes down to just getting the cost down. If you can get the cost down, you generate more resources for our producing, for our economic fields. If you get the cost down, you generate more cash. Granite Wash. So this is a play we've had for a while. This is the first time we've actually drilled a long horizontal and stimulated it, and in fact, this is very hot off the press. Only in the last few months, that well was drilled successfully with very little issue, and it was producing at 9 million a day. So great result coming from the Granite Wash.
So it's deeper again, very, very hot in the basin, and a lot of the limitations are the temperature limitations of our drilling tools. What we're able to do in this campaign, which prove the tech well, prove that the tools aren't just going to work in this green area, which is what we'd had been targeting. We've actually opened up this entire yellow area, so there's just a thermal gradient there, but that whole yellow area is now accessible with this technology. So this is fantastic. So potential to double or triple that opportunity size and, we're going to be drilling there again next year. And then on the really short cycles part of it, oil still plays an important part. If you look at the economics here, we drilled 15 wells at the end of 2022, start of 2023, and they're basically nearly.
We're close to doubling expectation as far as oil production goes. And if you look at those development costs, $21 a barrel, we have another $15. We continue to fill the hopper with really short cycle oil programs that if we've got the money, I can go to Kevin, and we can turn that off and on to generate cash in the short term. Keep going. So the results this year, 50% of our drilling in the central fields, being able to get the well cost down and just look at this. This is, it's not again, it's not very complicated. You get the well cost down, resource becomes economic.
That is a massive thing to do in the Cooper Basin, where you've already spent 30, 40 years of actually grinding costs out of the business to be able to get that step change, and it really was a commitment to factory-style drilling. Absolutely going out there, connecting wells while we're still on the pad, pad drilling, and a focus on days to sale as well. So really get these things drilled. The capital we deploy, get it producing as soon as possible, and it's opened up that play. So a couple of things that come out of that. We added 80 million this year from the Patchawarra play in Central Fields, and that's good. It's around our central area, and I'll show you. We're putting in infrastructure and modernizing it.
So a lot of our reserves are close to infrastructure, which you'll see the first waves of our modernization. And then we can unlock other volumes. So where else in the basin have we got Patchawarra that was either we haven't looked at because of the economics? And it's in southwest Queensland. And these plays are really low risk. So when we go and drill these resource plays, virtually our success rate is 100%. We take away the reservoir risk, it just becomes a cost equation. Get your costs down, the well will come in, we'll produce, and we'll get money. And then ultimately, here in southwest Queensland, this is a substantial number if we can add southwest Queensland Patchawarra to our resource volumes, a significant number there.
And then Kevin pointed to the fact that these wells, as we start to drill more and more of these wells in our inventory, our decline rates will be slower. So they are stronger for longer, these wells. They're more like an unconventional well, so the more of these we have in our portfolio, the less sort of decline we'll have going forward, or the slower decline. And then on decarb, what are we doing? So low CO2 assets, PNG and our Queensland CSG assets are low CO2 assets. And for Moomba, we've got Moomba CCS. So from mid-next year, when it comes on, we will inject all of our reservoir emissions into the ground. So we'll have zero reservoir emissions.
And then ultimately, we have a sink for, and I'll talk a little bit about the power lines you see there, bringing our field emissions back to Moomba as well, where again, we're centralizing our emissions. And you can see here, we've just finished our Phase I of electrification in the Cooper. So it's about 80 km of poles and wires leaving the Moomba facility. We've got about 30 MW of power that's at Moomba, centralized power that we can send to our central fields, where we've got six large machines that we are converting to electric power. And not only are we saving sales gas that we can sell, we're reducing emissions by centralizing power and having more efficient machines in a centralized location.
What was the last one I was going to talk about?
Yeah, we're generating ACCUs.
Thank you, Kevin. So basically, we are generating ACCUs here, which is great for Moomba. And then ultimately, you know, the renewable part of it, if we can bring all of our electricity consumption back to a single point, then we can do whatever we want. Penetration with renewables at a central location is certainly something in the future. Queensland, we're already well down the path of electrifying the upstream. So we currently take about 110 MW of our 160 MW off the grid. So that is more sales gas that goes out the door that we can sell as LNG. And we're continuing to do that. So by next year, it'll probably be around 75%, and that ultimately is the Queensland grid greens.
Then from an emissions point of view, or at least from a Scope 2, our Scope 2 comes down. But very much on the pathway there, I won't talk. There's a couple of small projects we're doing with solar and and even Narrabri is a low CO2 project. So Narrabri, we'd look at a couple of options, but again, we're not starting from a high base. PNG, CCS at Papua, and also, there's a few emission reduction activities and initiatives that Exxon's looking at for the PNG facility. Also, leveraging off what we've done in the last couple of years in CSG, well, in fact, across all of our assets in operations efficiency, so reducing flaring, getting out some of our fuel gas back through the system, using waste heat recovery, a few other options like that.
We've been able to use the things that we've done in our other assets in PNG very quickly, and we've deployed them in the last year. So 32,000 tons per year of emission reductions, ops efficiency projects delivered in 2023 into PNG. So using our experience to help them quickly get up the curve. So look, from a closing point of view, really, I just want to make sure we've got the. If we look at here, T ier 1 asset in PNG, material backfill opportunities to sustain production, and I'd like to the growth opportunities there as options with our exploration are certainly something that's worth talking about. Papua LNG, very high margin expansion for us, given that we're using infrastructure as well as getting gas production through those facilities. GLNG, every year.
Unlocking more and more value from GLNG, getting more resources and getting costs down. We're continuing that journey. Cooper continues to be able to unlock opportunities there, and a lot of that driven through cost. Get our costs down, do things smarter, and we can unlock value there. Narrabri, again, 100% domestic gas option into a supply-constrained market. A really good portfolio of assets. Really clear strategy as far as keep these facilities full in the areas that we currently operate. Make sure we've got a decarbonization pathway that not only meets our commitments, but adds value to the products we sell, and continue to unlock value.
From a regional perspective, we're doing that, and I think we're well set up to continue delivering on that, not only this year, but in the years to come. That's all I had to say. Break or Vince?
Please take your.
Did you want this?
No.
Yeah.
Okay. Look, I'll begin by saying what a great base business we have in WA and Northern Australia in both oil and gas. It's a very different business to what Brett runs. But a thought as he was speaking is that we, we have a lot of exchange between the groups. It is a very different business. Offshore is very different, much more lumpy, not as fast loop, but there's a lot to learn, and we do exchange, and I think that's a very powerful thing in the way the Santos business is structured at the moment. When I was here before, up till 2020, before my COVID break, there was a lot in the onshore business that was really good and transferable to offshore, if you only could think about it, and vice versa.
There was a lot in the offshore that I was personally able to translate into the onshore. So the different ways of thinking are very compatible, actually, when you think about it. So it's a great part of the way Santos operates these days. So look, we've got an exciting growth profile with sanctioned projects like Barossa, as Kevin has mentioned, and new developments that are in their select phase at the moment, like Dorado. Now, the left-hand picture here, which you've seen already, is Varanus Island, and that has a capacity of about 400 TJs a day, and we're actively adding to our production in line with our backfill and sustain approach. Spartan came on this year and goes directly to the WA Domgas market.
It can supply about 80 TJs a day and is very advantaged, being close to existing infrastructure and compatible with the processing plant that we have at Varanus. Spartan is the first new offshore WA gas development in 10 years. I'd like to say that again, but that shows our commitment to the, to the market. So turning to the center picture, Barossa supplying gas to DLNG is a high-value project, and I'll talk through Barossa project progress shortly. But suffice to say here, this project is a key part of our LNG portfolio. The right-hand picture shows drilling at Dorado, and Dorado is a Phase II development with a liquids phase I and a gas phase II. This project is targeted to be FID-ready at the end of next year.
It's currently in select phase as we optimize the project for value by examining various facility sizes and phasing scenarios. That's very important work. Timing of new developments such as Dorado are, of course, contingent on regulatory approvals. Also of note is our current liquids production of circa 11,000 barrels a day, Santos share. This year, the infill well, Pyrenees-4, was brought online, and we are actively looking at life extension options for the Ningaloo Vision FPSO for on our Van Gogh, Coniston, and Novara fields. Next slide. What a chart! This chart shows the long-term outlook for our gas and oil production in the WA and Northern Australia business. As depicted, there'll be significant growth with the startup of Barossa and future developments in the Bedout Basin from Dorado and Pavo.
We will be further supplementing this production with exploration wells in the Bedout to find additional gas resources for the Phase II gas export. It's a great picture. Next slide. There are three specific topics I'll cover here. First, Halyard. We are the leading supplier into the WA domgas market, and we have ongoing work to maintain a strong position. Similar to Spartan, Spar Halyard is a high-value project. It's an infill well aimed at maximizing recovery from an existing field through the installed infrastructure. Halyard has both low incremental OpEx and a low breakeven price. It's key to our backfill and sustain strategy. It's highly cash flow accretive with a fast payback and will add 8 million barrels of oil equivalent.
Supplying the Domgas market, the Walyering gas purchase started in September this year for 20 TJs a day, and this strip of gas helps diversify our supply in addition to DC and Varanus Island production. With Devil Creek nearing end of field life, this adds to our reliability in the event of unplanned supply disruptions. Kevin mentioned some of that with Varanus, and we're actively working on improving Varanus reliability as well. On decom, we aim to safely and efficiently deliver our decommissioning activities in line with regulations. We're taking a phased approach in liaison with the regulators. We're staging work to optimize execution efficiency and to ensure we take advantage of rigs and equipment that are in country. For example, Mutineer Exeter is being managed in three stages: floating assets, that's been completed, wells, scheduled, and subsea equipment is in planning and sourcing.
The floating equipment removal was a large-scale campaign involving the FPSO disconnect, the riser turret buoy removal, and safe stowage of the risers. All this work was executed safely and with extensive diving and other high-risk activities. We will remove the Campbell platform next year and continue with preparations for additional removal scopes of the Harriet JV assets. So in summary here, we're unlocking value in WA through capital discipline, phasing our decommissioning spend to ensure we can deliver strong cash flows into the future. Next slide. Just a few words about Barossa. So leaving aside the regulatory issues for a moment, Barossa remains a world-class project. We're working with top-tier contractors, Allseas, Technip, BW Offshore, and Subsea 7. We're overall 64% complete with the FPSO now in Singapore, readying to commence topsides integration. The topsides fabrication in Singapore is on track.
The turret and mooring system are progressing to plan. Load out of risers and the umbilical in Europe is completed. All subsea equipment and flow lines are ready for collection and have been delivered to meet the project schedule. All our overseas construction scopes are on track. We're somewhat delayed in our secondary approvals, as mentioned by Kevin. But assuming that drilling recommences before the end of this year and the export pipeline also commences installation this year, the Barossa project remains on target to commence production in the first half of 2025, as Kevin has already mentioned. So despite the local challenges, we're continuing to progress what is a great project and key to our business. Next slide. So a couple of things I've not spoken to as yet, but which I'll cover now.
We're actively implementing new operating and maintenance strategies and new technologies to improve our cost performance and unlock value across the business. We've transitioned the Devil Creek plant to remote operations, saving AUD millions in OpEx. We're planning the same for Varanus Island, again, saving AUD millions in OpEx. We're using advanced downhole technologies to make our well decommissioning more cost-efficient, saving up to 10 days per well, compared to previous approaches, again, saving many AUD millions per deployment. We're using remote surveillance technologies to inspect our offshore pipelines, saving OpEx and making our operations inherently safer. We're also moving to campaign-based maintenance strategies, which reduce our spend for the same activity set. I think this is very important. It's not about cost cutting. It's about being smarter with the money that we have and spending wisely. And as I mentioned, we learn from our Fast Loop brothers onshore.
We will be utilizing our existing sites for CCS opportunities, and this will be discussed more fully by Alan shortly. In summary, we are a leading Domgas supplier in WA, and we have plans to maintain our position. The Dorado Bedout Basin will be a major contributor to our WA business in the future years, and Barossa remains a world-class, long-life LNG project. Now we can have a coffee break. Please join us for coffee.
What a sight for my eyes to see you this way! Could it stop the sunrise hearing you wake? You're not seen, you're not heard, but I stand by my word. Came 1,000 miles just to catch you while you smile.
Whenever I get to feel this way, hard to find new words to say. I think about the bad old days we used to know. Nights of winter turned me cold, fears of dying, getting old. We ran the race, and the race was bound. By running slowly, could this soon will cease to sound? Slowly upstairs, faster down, then to revisit stony ground. We used to know.
Hello, everyone. A lot of great conversation going on in the room, but I think we'd like to try to get started so we can get through the second session and onto our lunch break. Okay. Again, my name is Mark Ireland. I'm here representing the Alaska business, and on behalf of Bruce Dingemans , our leader, as well as my peers, I'm excited to be here and talk to you about the opportunities that we see in Alaska, going forward. Particularly, I want to share the success of Pikka Phase I. That's our initial cornerstone project that we have laser focus on to deliver those barrels that we've talked about in 2026. But I also want to talk about the future projects that Kevin gave a glimpse of on his introductory slide.
We've got a series of phases of development, similar to Phase I, that we can bring on within the cash flow that we'll generate from Phase I, while at the same time, returning that 40% to investors that Kevin mentioned as well. So, really exciting opportunities. We've got a lot of flexibility and optionality in the program that we'll take advantage of as we go forward. So if I could go to the first slide. This is a summary. There's a lot of detailed information on here. The left-hand slide is something we've talked about previously. I won't go into too much detail there, except to mention it has 29% completion for Pikka Phase I as of the end of last month. So as we stand here today, call that 30% complete.
Tremendous milestone for us here, just a bit over a year after FID, and we see continued success in this area is critical, as Kevin mentioned, to building our foundation for these future phases as well. But important to point out, as far as contracts go, that's a gross number shown, $2 billion. So $1 billion net in contract commitments have already been let. That's out of $1.3 billion necessary to get us to capacity, nameplate capacity for the field. So as you can tell, well on the way there, 60% of those contracts are EPC-type contracts that have locked in great pricing that we're able to achieve due to the timing just after coming out of COVID. And it's eliminated some of those inflation risks that are out there as well.
Other costs for the project are also well established, such as drilling day rates and that sort of thing. Also, the drilling schedule. So I talked about the facility overall project being 30%. Getting into more details about drilling completion, Kevin mentioned as well that we're on our fifth well now. I'll go into some more detail on a slide coming up about the progress and the learnings we've had in our drilling program. Also, the results have been excellent. So we're headed towards maintaining all our commitments for Phase I in terms of cost, schedule, reservoir performance. It's early days, but very encouraged that that's where we're headed, that so far, things are looking really great. And we'll continue to build on that success and enthusiasm.
One of the next steps in construction is gonna be this upcoming winter season. It's gonna be very busy. We're preparing for that now and have all our plans in place. We've mobilized many people to the slope. We'll have over 1,000 people working on the slope this winter. You can see some of the other steps, the pipeline orders in place. Importantly as well, besides the project delivery, is our commitments in terms of net zero. So we will be net zero for our working interest share at startup of Phase I, and that's the commitment we'll continue to deliver on as we go through these additional phases.
You can see we've got agreements in place with Alaska Native Landowner to secure nature-based offsets, as well as a consortium working on direct air capture, that we hope to take some of the learnings, some of the technology that's being tested here by Santos in Australia, and take that to Alaska as well. So on the next slide, I'll point out some of the continuous improvements we've been able to do. And so learning is a key part for our organization. We wanna make sure that as we go each step of the way with drilling, that we see these improvements in performance, and that will help leverage our long-term delivery of this project. So we don't want to just hit target, we wanna do better than target. We challenge ourselves to do that each and every day.
What's displayed on the right-hand side of this plot is drilling depth versus days, and days is also a proxy for cost. So you can think about this as depth versus cost as well. The curves in light blue to the right are all the individual well results for the first four wells. You can see that we're improving performance. The green curve is meant to be our best technical case that we're always pushing ourselves to achieve, and the solid curve shows the current well that's in progress, building on all of these learnings, getting us even farther down the road towards improved drilling and completion performance. This just shows drilling. We're taking the same lessons from completions as well.
We've only got one well completed so far, but we've got another one in process as we speak here today. So we're expecting to see further gains. Some of the things, just, for any technically-based folks in the audience, we've adjusted our drilling mud properties, our drilling practices. These are improving hole stability, which is one of the challenges we faced and overcome. Also, our targeting of the landing zone within the reservoir, we've adjusted that to give us better performance. And I mentioned the frac operations. We continue to optimize the frac operations themselves to deliver better performance in that area. And that's where the rubber meets the road. What is the well rate going to be to deliver the reserves that we've premised?
And as I said, all indications from the geology and from the well performance to date gives us good confidence that we're going to deliver the promises that we set out at FID. So if we could go to the next slide. I'm gonna get into now the, what are we gonna do with the cash flow coming out of Phase I. So it's gonna be very robust. This is gonna be the cornerstone project for the Alaska business. And from that robust cash flow, we'll be able to fund the 40% returns, that Kevin mentioned, to shareholders, but we'll also be able to generate and pay for these future opportunities. So, you can see on the production plot on the bottom left, that these are staggered out in time.
So one of the concepts we're utilizing here is to take the same team, the same designs, roll those over from one phase to the next, and take those lessons learned at that macro level and apply them, and get further improvements in things like cash flow for the subsequent investments. On the right-hand side, you can see that, where our resources, both discovered resources, in the Pikka unit, as well as reserves, 2P reserves for Pikka. These are all our net numbers. I like to speak sometimes in terms of gross. If you take our 2C and 2P numbers on a gross basis for Pikka, we're gonna be somewhere around a billion barrels of total production out of that unit on a gross basis, and those are all already discovered.
We have additional prospects that we'll touch on that are meant to be Pikka Phase III, that's embedded in those prospective resources. Then when we move to the east, to Quokka. You can see that we've got 117 million net. That's four hundred and 50 million barrels gross discovered to date. We've got further appraisal drilling, and it's important to note this appraisal drilling that you see in our core area here is not new field, wildcat exploration wells. This is extensions of discovered trends that we're chasing. So relatively low risk and high opportunity to develop that. We think long-term, with continued success with our appraisal program, Quokka has the same type potential that Pikka has.
Then as we look to the south, a little bit longer dated but still very important, you can see the Horseshoe Unit. We have other leaseholdings that are not in units at the current time that we have plans for as well. But Horseshoe is another unit that, with continued appraisal success, could reach that same billion-barrel type production long term. So that's the kind of scale I want you to be thinking about, that these are multi. It's a multi-billion barrel gross opportunity for long-term development in a very flexible, optional basis going forward. Next slide, please. So how do we do even better with future phases than we've done already? That's a tall order, I know, but we've got a plan for that. So first is key to that is our scalable, modular, standardized kit for our surface facilities.
That gives us the chance to design those once, build them a number of times, and learn as we go to drive those costs down. We also have established infrastructure with Phase I, the roads and pipelines, the seawater treatment plant, and just the pad space where our facilities sit and so on. And off to the right, you can see a mock-up of our production facility pad, where Phase I is being installed currently. And the basic concept that we'll be evaluating for Phase II is to duplicate those facilities as a mirror image on the other side of the pad. And so you can imagine the cost savings without having to build the road infrastructure, the pads, and so on, that we'll be able to achieve there. So what are we doing to advance these other projects?
We're, as I said, laser-focused on Phase I. That's the vast majority of our time and energy and capital investment. But while we're laying these cornerstones for Phase I, we're preparing the stones for these future levels of production, these future phases, in a low-cost, measured approach. We've just entered Concept Select for Phase II, so as we go through next year, we'll be looking at exactly what is the scope of Phase II meant to be. Could be somewhat different than what we're representing here, but, facility expansion, drill sites, it's a similar scope to what we're looking at now, but it'll be at lower cost and, and higher value. Part of that is the expansion plans, as I mentioned, and also high-grading the well stock. We do have a number of opportunities, as you can see.
We wanna make sure we do the best project next in the best possible manner with flawless execution. And getting outside of Pikka, we have a well planned in Quokka, an appraisal well south of our Mitquq discovery well from 2020. We'll be drilling that in the winter season, since that's not off gravel. That'll be late 2024, early 2025, roughly just over a year from now, that we'll go forward with it. Next slide. Just wanna wrap up here. Alaska, it's a world-class, Tier 1 jurisdiction. I mentioned the scope and scale that we're dealing with just in the area of our core Nanushuk development that I showed you on the map. Our resources, we've got 2P reserves of 165 million barrels. That's only Phase I.
Another 438 in 2C, and those numbers I expect to grow continuously. Since Santos entered the project through the Oil Search acquisition five years ago, Oil Search's acquisition was based on 500 million barrels of 2C resources. Since then, we've effectively tripled that number through drilling of four wells, additional studies, and progress in terms of promoting on a gross basis, 400 million barrels of those to 2P. So my expectation is we'll see similar kind of growth again over the next five years. That's our plan. Those, you know, opportunities are very flexible. We talked about the free cash flow, how we'll be able to fund all these through free cash flow from Phase I and also return the 40% to shareholders that's so important.
We'll be leveraging the infrastructure in place that we've already built and continue to build for Phase I. We've got a lot of experience, so I can say safely that the team Bruce has put together is the strongest team I've worked with in Alaska or worldwide, but also it's the broader Santos team, the support we get from corporate, from the other regions that have already spoken, to be able to get their ideas and thoughts. We reach out and try to develop the best ideas and put those into practice. We're not proud of ownership in terms of where the ideas come from, we just wanna deliver the maximum value we can for all involved. Of course, we have a very stable regulatory regime and supportive stakeholders.
So we've got alignment with the landowners, who, we've got a great relationship with. With the State of Alaska, the acreage, all the surface development I talked about, those opportunities, that's all on state acreage, not federal acreage, which is really important in terms of, the regulatory regime. We've got a very positive one. It's stringent, but, we know how to work and get those approvals that we'll need going forward. So I think I'll stop there, but, thank you all very much, and, I'll turn it over to Alan to talk about SES.
Morning, all. I'm gonna speak to you today about some of the themes, the strategy behind the Santos Energy Solutions business and where that stands today. But probably more importantly, also about the products and services that we're developing, that over time are going to gonna lead to us to be able to develop pretty serious value. I'll start by maybe just saying, why did I join Santos in the last three or four months? Because I think it's actually quite relevant for for how we'll position the business today. Firstly, when I look at the assets that Santos has, they are absolutely right for repurposing as we think about energy transition.
When you compare them to some of the other energy businesses out there, and frankly, industrial ones as well, they are genuinely in a good position to be able to generate new earning streams over time. The second one is really about scale. Energy transition in all its forms is gonna require a lot of capital, and it's gonna be really important for businesses that are successful in that field to be able to operate at scale, which clearly Santos has. S lide First slide, please. So I'll start off just by noting some of the policies globally and the themes that we're seeing. We've split them up into global, regional, and then domestic.
In a way, the regional ones, and in particular, Japan, is arguably the most important. And the reason for that is that a lot of what we're doing in SES is gonna be customer driven. And when you've got a very large and well-established customer base in Japan and Korea, whose government is mandating what they need to do to decarbonize, that's a very good starting point, and we'll tap into that. From a global perspective, Mark mentioned that we're already on the DAC side of things in Alaska, tapping into some of those federal funds. But clearly, the Inflation Reduction Act is creating a lot of development around technology that we can actually tap into in our markets as well.
And then domestically, I think, you know, 12 months ago, if we had stood here, and said that, you know, there were tailwinds behind Australian transition, people might have questioned that. But actually, with the Safeguard Mechanism and the clarity that that brings, that actually brings a lot of opportunity for companies like Santos, where we're gonna, we're gonna, over time, build a significant third-party business, and we plan to be, to be very organized to help others with that as well. Similarly, with the London Protocol now having passed the Australian Parliament, that is a very good step in the right direction for our CCS business. Next slide, please.
So this is the SES strategy, and the first thing I'd say is that what we're really dealing with in SES is the second and third horizons of the group strategy. So decarbonization, and then ultimately, low carbon fuels as well. The three elements there in the middle, CCS, carbon solutions, and low carbon fuels, are all very complementary. These are products and services that can both decarbonize our assets and those of others, but also activities that can generate earnings over time as well. When you look at our climate change report, which we'll update in Q1 of next year, and it's quite aligned with what others are saying as well. Fundamentally, what decarbonization requires is avoidance, reduction, and then if you can't do those two, offsetting.
So we are positioning the business very much such that we can tap into that opportunity to help decarbonize, both on an absolute, and as others have said, on an intensity basis as well. Kevin showed a slide which shows some of the forecasts for the carbon price over the next few years. All of those forecasts are upward sloping, and really that drives the demand for some of the products that we're developing, because that's a cost for emitters. So if we can develop products and services that actually can allow for either sequestration or new products that are below that price, then that allows us to make a margin. One of the big things that underpins the strategy is the fact that we've got Santos as an anchor customer. Now, that isn't.
Doesn't give you a God-given right to build a profitable business, but it's very important because, as mentioned, scale is key. So if we've got already access to volumes around some of these products, that's a good start. But the main game really is around third-party business. So if I start from the left-hand side here, on the midstream infrastructure, that is a very high free cash flow generating, high return on asset, long contracted business, and it's a really good basis for having a capital envelope that we can then recycle into these newer areas. I should point out at this point, and perhaps it was clear, but just to be really clear, what is not in that midstream infrastructure is the midstream from our integrated LNG businesses.
So this is the ones that are contracted, as shown in previous slides. The CCS part of the strategy really is the first cab off the rank. And whilst that is domestically focused initially, we do see a very large international opportunity there, and I'll show some numbers around that in a minute. And on carbon solutions, building those nature-based projects where we already have a couple underway, but many, many more in the pipeline, what we're looking to do here is to access that developer margin, which, if anyone has looked at that market, is actually very lucrative. So we continue to build a scale there.
On the low carbon fuels piece, I'll speak about this a bit more in later slides, but what that really is, is playing to the Japanese and Korean government requirements and policies, in what is very much a long-term game, as we've said, in order to position to sell different products and services over time, when traditional LNG demand reduces. So we'll be using the cash flows from the left-hand side of the page, effectively the checkbook, to recycle capital into developing our Climate Transition Action Plan . And since I've come in, one of the things I've been really impressed about is actually the number of projects and quality projects that are in the pipeline.
And if anything, the challenge is to wade through those and actually work out which ones are the ones to prioritize and, candidly, the ones to say no to. Because, as we've said, we're gonna be really disciplined about where we deploy capital here, and not do things that don't hit the hurdles that we've set elsewhere in the business. All of this is gonna be done with partners, no doubt about that, and in particular, customers, who can also be partners. You're all familiar with how the LNG markets developed three or four decades ago. Those were underpinned by long-term contracts and concessionary financing. We will be positioning for that here, too. Next slide, please. So the three hub arrangement, which has been referred to already, is very deliberate.
These are all sets of assets that have quite different characteristics, actually, when you dig into them, but all of them are profit centers in their own right. Don't think of these as assets that have costs associated with them to decarbonize and reposition. They are genuinely assets that you can go and spend capital on and actually generate new earnings streams from, both above ground and below ground. You know, these pictures are showing what is there in terms of terminals and tanks and processing units, but actually, one of the biggest ones is below ground. The fact that we've got these depleted gas reservoirs, which we know better than anyone, that we can then build new businesses off, is sometimes forgotten.
Especially when sometimes confused with other types of CCS projects, which use saline aquifers, we're using depleted gas reservoirs, which are very well known and understood. So to start with, with Moomba in East Australia, I would say this is really the blueprint of how we would see asset repurposing work. What we'll do there initially is reinject our own CO2 emissions into the depleted reservoirs there via CCS. And over time, we'll develop third-party customer business.
You may have seen that we've this morning announced an MOU with APA, who's been a partner of Santos for many, many years, to explore how we will get CO2 from emission centers domestically out to Moomba, and clearly, that's a very important part of the chain. But ultimately, Moomba can also be a low-carbon fuels hub as well. We're investigating the production of hydrogen there and also e-methane, which I'll talk about more in a moment.
In the north and in the west, we've got Bayu-Undan and Reindeer CCS, both of which we plan to hit FID in the next two years, as has been mentioned already, and by 2028, have very significant injection and therefore earnings from those businesses. But to call out the different characteristics of each, the WA business initially will really be one of third-party business. So as you can see on the slide there, that is not about reinjecting volumes that we have of CO2 there. It's about landing customers, and we already have some of those under MOU, which will transition to binding arrangements in the next year or so.
In terms of the low-carbon fuel piece, at the moment, it's about identifying which assets and which locations have the best characteristics and the best options in order to do that. It often goes unnoticed, some of the resources that we, Santos, have, and at the moment, we're establishing exactly what those are, how they can be deployed, and create competitive advantage. The thing that I would say about all of these hubs is that we're moving from being a price taker in delivering into long-term oil and gas contracts, to one of being a price maker. So setting up these businesses is gonna require the setting up of new business models with customers, and not doing something that is vanilla or, in some cases, straightforward, so it will take time. Next slide, please.
So this is to give you a sense of the explosive growth that we and almost every forecaster expects in CCS in the coming years. You know, the extent of that growth, from the small left-hand bubble there, to the one slightly further to the right, is huge. These are WoodMac numbers, I believe, and you're talking 25 times the demand for CCS products and services between now and the end of the decade, and that number is 4x again by 2050. So you're talking huge, huge numbers of growth.
You know, those are the sort of numbers that are often associated with businesses that are using new or novel technology, whereas actually, we've got, what we've got here is an established technology, something that's been used around the world, you know, for a number of decades. We're now using it in greater scale and in different forms. The great thing about this, again, for us, is that a lot of the customers for this are gonna be from the Asian region. So we're able to go and have the conversations with the people who are gonna be demanding this, these products and services, and they're people we've already worked with, in some cases, you know, more than a decade. So that's a conversation that actually flows very, very naturally.
When you are developing new supply chains, you wanna be doing that with someone who you have established relationship and established trust with. On the right-hand side, you can see the CCS projects that are actually in operation or under construction. And, you know, I don't think we're pushing the boat out too much by saying that Moomba CCS is a global trailblazer. It's as Kevin mentioned, one of the lowest, if not the lowest cost CCS project globally. And as you can see there, one of a very small number that has actually progressed through to construction today. So it's real. Next slide, please. So to talk a little bit more about how we translate that market opportunity into one of actually getting customers into the assets.
We're gonna be offering a physical sequestration service for Santos and then ultimately for third parties, as well. The schematics here and the font size is pretty small, so maybe look in your books instead. But you can see the steps that we need to go through in order to capture, transport, and then sequester the, the carbon. But these are, these are established steps. These are not new things. So, really, referring back again to the studies that we're doing with, with customers and how we're working through that value chain together in order to, to make a profitable business.
I should also mention here that we're looking internationally, around how we can deploy the capability that Santos is developing, and frankly, in some cases, IP that we're developing as well, to actually collaborate with others internationally. We have announced this morning that we're, we've got an MOU with ADNOC, out of the Middle East, who are developing a very large CCS project, domestically in the UAE, and that MOU captures global opportunities. So we'll look at other markets that we can deploy our skills and capabilities into, subsequently as well. Next slide, please. So in terms of the value drivers, you know, what we're trying to do here is give you a sense of the different elements of the cost structure that will go to building this business.
And you can see there on the chart on the left-hand side, a very large element of that is the capture. Actually, the transportation and the storage is a more modest element of that, and given where our Moomba CCS project is located, in fairly close proximity to the wells that we're using, the reservoirs that we're using, it is a very, very low breakeven cost, and as you can see there, an IRR well in excess of 20%.
So we're really proud of that, and what it does allow us to do is then think, "Okay, what's the business model that we need for the other projects that we're gonna develop?" Which you can see on the right-hand side, really starting with Bayu-Undan, where we have arrangements already in place for potential customers, and also in Reindeer. So we'll take the learnings from Moomba into those other projects. And in time, we have very, very large upside potential there, which you can see, which doesn't include other GHG blocks that we are winning in license rounds at the moment, both in the Cooper Basin and elsewhere. So there is very substantial upside there over time. What I would also say is that there are two elements to the value that we generate here.
The first is a tolling revenue. So people will pay us in long-term contracts for the physical sequestration that we're doing. So that, that is a ratable number that we can that we can put into our business models. But also access to ACCUs in the case of Moomba, which we think have very substantial upside opportunity. And for other projects, we anticipate that there'll be exposure to that carbon price upside as well, albeit depending on the project, that could look different depending on how we structure that. Next slide, please. So on low-carbon fuels, this is very much the third horizon of the group's strategy, and it is a long lead time effort.
We need to bring together multiple elements in order for that to be a success. Kevin had in his pack the schematic there, which shows. We are working through this with Japanese customers at the moment. We've been working with Osaka Gas for some time, and you may have seen yesterday, we also announced a further study in the Cooper Basin with Tokyo Gas, an established partner of ours on the LNG side. And we'll work in the next year or so to seek some of the concessional funding that's available from the Japanese government in order to get these projects up.
But what I've got on this slide is just a demonstration of the different items that we need to bring together in order to make one of these projects a success. So in terms of the gathering of the CO2, which is an input into the production of e-methane, we're working with aggregators and shippers to get the sort of volumes that we need. Direct air capture, which has been mentioned, we've got the arrangement with the CSIRO and their CarbonAssist technology, which is under trial at the moment. Green power, this is one that we are understanding the scale of how much we are gonna need in order to be able to produce hydrogen. Electrons, in effect, are the new feedstock for this program.
And when you couple the availability of very low-cost green power, water, and then land, as Kevin mentioned in his slide, we are actually in a very strong position in order to do that manufacturing. And then finally, around CCS, which goes hand in hand with the production of clean fuels as well. Next slide, please. So here we tried to summarize the order of magnitude of the earnings opportunity that we see for SES, between now and 2030, and then beyond. So the run rate of our midstream infrastructure business in the first half, I think, was about $120 million. So you can, that will give you, you know, a sense of the left-hand side bar there.
In terms of our target for 2030, the majority of that is from CCS earnings. Those are projects that are already established and at various stages between construction for Moomba and then FEED for Bayu-Undan and Reindeer. So those are identifiable earning streams, if you will. Over time, low carbon fuels will leak into that as well. It is more of a 2030+ play, but the bridge to that is the activities that we'll have in carbon solutions, which is a nature-based business today that can generate that developer margin that I mentioned, but also something that gives us a right to go and have discussions with third-party emitters as well, and earn additional margin through that in time.
So what I would sort of conclude on this slide is that we're in very strong preparation mode. This is gonna be a patient game for some of these activities, but the earnings are very identifiable, and the policy that sits underneath a lot of them is clear as well. Next slide, please. So just to try and bring that together, we've got a very strong policy backdrop. Yes, there'll be uncertainty. Governments change, regulators change. We'll learn more about the energy transition as we go. That is not gonna be a straight line effort. But nonetheless, there is momentum behind the shift to net zero, and one that actually supports the SES business very strongly. Our strategic infrastructure is in the right location.
It has strong earnings for a long period, and it is there and available in order to fund the transition that we're gonna be making. So that's a very good base to build from. The asset repurposing point, which I've made a couple of times now, I would encourage anyone who hasn't been to Moomba to go and take a look. I spoke to a few people in the room over the morning break.
If you go there and you see how interconnected these assets are with what we've had there for many decades, and the way the teams work together, and the pride and the passion that they have of increasing the numbers that we've now got, of people that we've now got in the base and building these new activities, it's not new. We're repurposing stuff that's there and will continue to do that. Earnings are real, as I've said, CCS first, and then carbon solutions and low carbon fuels subsequently. And ultimately, what we believe this allows us to do is put new contracts in place which have greater growth, and also have a greener tinge to them, which we believe should have a cost of capital benefit to Santos Group as well.
Thank you very much, and I think I'm handing over to Anthea.
Awesome, Alan. Thanks very much, and good morning, everyone. It's really great to see you all here today. If we just go to the next slide, I've got five key themes I want to talk through today, starting off with disciplined capital allocation and our capital management framework. As Kevin mentioned, we have a capital management framework, which sees us balance the intention to provide compelling returns to shareholders with managing our balance sheet and deploying capital into both our backfill and sustain horizon activities, as well as the decarbonization and in the future, the low carbon fuels as well.
This also works within the constraints of our capital disciplines, our disciplined operating model, which sees us targeting free cash flow of less than $35 in each of our core asset producing hubs, as well as across the portfolio. That discipline is really evident in all of the conversations you've seen today. It flows into the second theme, which is really around our production cost, the way we manage our costs as well.
Very important to have a very robust cost management because that allows you to generate maximum free cash flow from your assets, which is our third kind of free cash flow theme, and then flowing into what does that mean, with our current portfolio, and then growing that portfolio with the assets that we're seeking to bring online from 2025 with Barossa, 2026 with the Pikka Project, and then 2028 with the yet to be sanctioned Papua LNG project. What do these provide growing over time? Free cash flow to generate shareholder returns, which is the fourth theme there, and making sure that we have a balance sheet that's supportive of that strategy. So if we just turn to the next slide. If we're looking at the cost structure, this is a very strong story.
What we've done is compare the chart on the left-hand side of our production cost performance versus our peers. This is a mid-cap and large-cap peer group internationally. You can see we do, from a median perspective, benchmark very well just from a, from an underlying perspective. But also, if you look at the last 18 months or so of production cost performance, we've really kept a hold of our production cost base. We've seen, significant inflation flow through, principally to our U.S. peers, and a strong tick up in their production costs. So it's really a testament to the way we work across the business. Our unit production costs, we've, on the left, on the right-hand side, we've done year by year, just noting, 2022 and 2023, we've removed Bayu-Undan as a late life asset from that cost base.
But it does show a very compelling story. And just having the benefit of going through our five-year budget process over the last month or so, you know, we plan to see that flat to declining trajectory continue over the coming years as well, which is the way we run our business. Also, just from an FX perspective, we had, you know, benefit of FX, the lower Australian dollar in the current year. We've managed some risk in future years by hedging some of our 2024 exposure at AUD 0.644. Not all of that will flow into production costs, of course. That's our overall portfolio exposure, which also is sustaining, and major growth capital has Aussie dollar exposure in there as well.
From a free cash flow breakeven point, as I said earlier, we run our business at less than $35 for each core asset-producing hub and the portfolio, and we're certainly on track to deliver that in 2023. If we just turn to the next page. What I want to show here is really the transition of the business. You know, we are in a CapEx-heavy phase at the moment. We are transitioning to a lower CapEx phase, as Kevin referred to in his opening comments. What I've got here is the annual average CapEx per plan for our committed projects, plus, plus Papua LNG project, for 2024, 2025, and then for the three years out of that, 2026, 2027 and 2028.
What you can see is we do transition from a higher capital period to a lower capital period, and you've got a commensurate tick-up in your free cash flow generation as you see the benefit of that investment we're making across 2023, 2024, 2025, principally the Pikka, the Barossa, and also the Papua LNG project. If we turn to the next slide. If we just look at this. So this is the same data set, and this is really around showing, in aggregate over five years, the amount of surplus cash that this business will generate over and above our capital commitments, which is our committed projects, plus Papua LNG. For Papua LNG, we've assumed a project financing of 60% debt, 40% equity. Obviously, that is yet to be worked through.
It's just an assumption that we've made for the purposes of the modeling, because we needed to make an assumption there. What that does show is you've got, sufficient, you know, running room, and to deploy capital into some of the opportunities we've got in the portfolio. So if we look forward, there's a number of lower CapEx and higher CapEx projects, that we can work through. We phase and sequence our investment in these projects consistent with our capital management framework. And as Kevin mentioned, we've got options as to where we would deploy that capital, to produce the best returns, risk-adjusted returns, if we put it that way. If we just turn to the next page. We've continued to build out our debt profile.
In 2023, we did a 144A issuance in September, which was very well supported by the market. We raised $850 million. The thing that I was really comforted by was the strong support by the capital markets. It was significantly oversubscribed. We had about $5 billion in the book, at the top of the book, which enabled us to really tighten the pricing of that issuance. So the strong support from the debt capital markets was very important, and it's going to be very important, you know, as we continue to go forward, fund our projects through the energy transition. That support from the debt capital markets is mirrored also by the support we receive from our banking group.
So we've got a very strong and diversified banking group, which provides not only term loans, bilaterals, and syndicated facilities that we use for, standby liquidity, as well as to draw down on a periodic basis. One of the things I think is absolutely key to our retaining, access to bank debt and debt capital markets is our strategy. So we don't have a bolt-on transition strategy. We have a extent transition strategy, net zero Scope 1 and 2 by 2040. We have interim targets by 2030. We have a, we have a strategy that's in-integral to that energy transition, and really showing that we have a plan. We also have targets that we're meeting on the way through. Will be important at the moment and into the future to retaining access, to bank capital.
We've got very strong support from our banking group from that perspective. If we just look at 2024, you know, as I've said before, we are going through a higher CapEx period before that comes off from 2025 onwards. We entered into a hedging program over the last couple of months, just to take a bit of the 2024 commodity price risk off the table. So we've got 18 million barrels hedged, 13 million barrels at a $75 floor, zero cost collar, and about a $91 cap, and $80, sorry, 5 million barrels at $80 floor and just over $90 cap. So that just gives us the portfolio a little bit of resilience should commodity prices fall during a higher high CapEx period.
We continue to target a strong liquidity position. We're nearly $5 billion at October and again, the strong investment grade credit rating. Our gearing at the end of the third quarter was 22.6%, including leases, and 19.3%, excluding our operating leases. If we just turn to the next page, I'll spend a little bit of time on guidance, and then we can go back to Kevin for the Q&A session. What we've got here is our production guidance. We expect it to be slightly lower than 2023. The main drivers of that is end of field life at Bayu-Undan, and also continued decline in WA, associated with principally the Reindeer field.
Sustaining CapEx, we've pulled sustaining CapEx down a little bit, so we've revised our year-end target to be around about 1.1. It's come down from 1.2. We generally try and stay around the $1.2 billion from a sustaining capital. As a rule of thumb, $200 million of decommissioning and $900 million of sustaining capital across the business. That's a little out of balance between 2023 and 2024. We've had a bit of scope move into 2024 from 2023. So that's increased the exposure for decommissioning costs, as Vince talked about in 2024.
A part of the slippage in the AUD 1.1 billion sustaining capital in 2023 is associated; it's a good news story, associated with the deferral of some of the decommissioning costs for Bayu-Undan because the asset continued to produce beyond our expectations when we set that plan at the beginning of the year. From a major projects CapEx perspective, we're forecasting AUD 1.6 billion major project CapEx in 2024. This is all around; it's the Barossa story, the Pikka story, pre-FEED costs, sorry, for Papua LNG, and then some other smaller infill projects. But it's principally around funding our major capital projects. And on that note, I will hand back to Kevin for closing comments. Thank you very much.
Okay. Thank you, Anthea. Anthea, if you could just stay on the stage, and maybe everybody else, all the presenters come up and just grab a seat each, 'cause we'll go straight to Q&A. We'll go straight to Q&A in a minute. In a minute. So we won't go straight to Q&A, we'll nearly go straight to Q&A. I just wanna kinda wrap up. So if I can just wrap through these slides. So you heard a lot from across the business. You've seen the operating businesses. They've given you a summary of what they have going on. You've heard from Alan, in terms of our new business opportunities and Santos Energy Solutions. I can't see where all of the. Yeah, if you just wanna grab a seat, guys. Just grab a seat, we'll go to Q&A.
I'm just killing time while you get up here. If I can go to the next slide, please. The next slide. Yeah, there you go. Thanks. As we talked about earlier on, that in terms of how we're building the business, how we've been, the journey we've been on since 2016, is to really try and drive a business that generates a higher cash flow yield from those operations, whatever those operations are. So driving synergies across the business through scale, through complementary assets, complementary projects, utilizing infrastructure more efficiently to try and keep driving, we call it torquing up that, that free cash flow generation out of those operations. The plan, as you can see in terms of that cash flow sensitivity, is to continue with that journey over the next two or three years.
Taking that sensitivity from what was only in 2021, $330 million, for every $10 above our breakeven, up to $600. So that's almost doubling that in a four- or five-year period. And what's important about that is then maintaining that operating free cash flow breakeven at that $30-$35 level, and fighting inflation through efficiencies, through technology, all of those things, so you can continually maximize that margin. And so that's the operating business strategy that we run the company on, and that's what we've been doing since 2016. In terms of the other slides, I'm not gonna go through these again. We talked about the Santos investment proposition, and then I think I finished on the strategic priorities for 2024.
So I'd rather go through them again, I think, in the interest of time, 'cause I know some of you have got some questions you wanna ask. I've got all the presenters up here, so, yeah, I'll, I'll try and throw as much as I can to these guys and get them involved, but, I'll open it for questions. Thank you. James. Have you got a mic somewhere, the roving mic? And if you could just say who you are, please, so everybody in the room.
Sure. Good morning, James Byrne from Citigroup. Okay, first question actually for Anthea. This is just around balance sheet capacity to fund growth. And we had a bit of conversation around this up on the Slope, but kind of wanna open it up in this forum. Now, in the Alaska slides, there was a Phase II profile for production that kind of infers you'd be taking a rather timely FID on that project, probably around the time of first oil. But I also remark that you'd spoken about only taking FIDs once you'd actually de-geared the balance sheet and had an opportunity to get it down to or towards that 15% IRR.
Now, at your kind of $75 oil deck, let's probably call it early 2027, once you've sufficiently de-geared, and therefore would be later than what's inferred by the business unit. So perhaps a bit of healthy tension between yourself in Adelaide and your business units. How do you think we should think about when you're ready to take FIDs on growth in the context of the balance sheet?
I think what we.
There's a mic, Anthea.
Oh, sorry. Hello? Can you. Is it?
That's, that's working.
It's on? Okay. What we've consistently said is that we'll phase and sequence our development projects consistent with our balance sheet target gearing range, so 15%-25%. I'm not. Was it 15% gearing you were talking about, not IRR? 'Cause you said IRR.
Correct. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So phase and sequence, we manage the equity interest in our projects. We don't have a target to de-gear before we invest in the next project. It's really around managing within those constraints between 15% and 25%, gearing, and we'll manage that balance sheet accordingly.
Okay, that's clear. Then secondly, obviously, Kevin, like you as a CEO, your direct reports and the board obviously think and test the strategy on a regular basis. It's just part of doing business. But at the moment, if you've got advisors on board thinking about the strategy, then presumably you've taken a bit of a step up in how you're thinking about the structure of the business. And perhaps that's early days, but I just wanted to understand, like, what's the terms of reference for this strategic review, and how might it vary to business as usual?
Well, look, it's just ongoing strategy. I mean, I have had advisors advising me for six, seven, eight years, and we work with different advisors at different times. They all have different skills. That's how we arrived at some of the acquisition decisions that we arrived at over the years. We saw opportunities. We're working them through, we get them ahead of time, and then we execute them when the window of opportunity arose. So there's no kinda deadline or sort of target date to kinda get to any particular outcome. I think that's really important to make that point, because the world's changing, and it's changing fast. For me, it's about ensuring you have the optionality.
So the structural reform we've been looking at through the business, we've been looking at now for a couple of years, we continually look at opportunities. That's why I welcome anybody coming forward. And as I've said, I think I've said to you, I've said to others, I've said to people in the industry, my door is open seven days a week for anybody to walk in and offer to buy any asset, any collection of assets, any group of assets, or all of the assets, the business, if they want, at any time. And it always is open for that, and as it should be.
The kinda structural stuff we've been looking at is to provide us with the optionality of being able to look at how we can unlock value, either through splitting the business into different components, and they may be something like an LNG business and everything else, or they may be an LNG business and different bits of whatever's left in separate structures, or they may be something else altogether, and it's about being open to whatever those structural options are in terms of portfolio optimization. There may be other solutions as well, right? I mean, I don't think anybody saw the Oil Search opportunity coming when it came in 2021.
One of the things that is probably lost on a lot of people is that from announcement of that. Well, it wasn't really an announcement, but from the awareness in the public domain of that opportunity being mooted to completion of that deal was less than six months. Less than six months. So an international M&A transaction was completed in less than six months. I think it was five, five months, just over five months, which, you know, for the people who've done transactions, they'll know that that's a remarkable achievement, a cross-border acquisition like that, which was necessary. 'Cause I'd like, you know, I, I would imagine that deal would have been very much at risk three months later with $120 oil.
So speed of being able to execute these things when you decide to execute them is really important. And we could only do that 'cause we'd worked that to tremendous levels of detail over about a year, year and a half, in advance of ever being in a position to execute that. So, you know, biggest mistake of my career at Santos is probably right after that, coming out and saying, "We're gonna do some sell downs." Right? And we made that very public announcement, and two years later, we're still trying to do that deal because of all the things that happened in that sort of external environment that complicate these things, right?
Whether that be the regulatory environment in Australia, whether that be approvals in country, in PNG, or whatever it may be, the things that complicate these deals, and that can be very difficult when you play these things out in the public domain. And so I don't wanna get myself caught and trapped into something like that. But what I wanna do, what I do wanna give you the assurance is that we're looking at every avenue to unlock shareholder value. We're very frustrated by our share price. We know we've got a business that's performing well. This business, nobody could have contemplated five, six years ago, a business generating cash flows like we're generating, and yet look where the share price is, right? It's stalled, and we need to unstall it.
So of course, we're looking at every option to do that, and we'll continue to do that. And I wanna get the best advice I can get to help me with that, to test it, 'cause a lot of it is about how you think the external environment might value whatever you do, right? I mean, from an NPV valuation point of view. We haven't found anything yet that we think can deliver more value than the whole, right? That this executing successfully on the strategy that we have, you know, whether that be access to capital. An oil and gas company without a CCS or without a carbon solution, is gonna be struggling to get access to capital.
I can tell you, Anthea talks up the relationships we have with the banks and the support we got, but the support from the banks wasn't there until we did the capital raise in the U.S., right? The banks were retreating. They were retreating from oil and gas. When they saw the level of support we got for that bond rate in the U.S., that changed. It gave them confidence to come back to the table. When we took them out and we showed them the CCS projects, we could see the appetite changing to support Santos, 'cause they see that we're physically doing these things. It is real. The decarbonization journey is real. And so it's a very fast-shifting, fast-changing external environment, and we've got to be flexible to that. One strategy doesn't last 10 years anymore.
I think it was Alan who said, that the, the transition . Alan, he's up here now. Sorry, I'm looking for him in the crowd. So it's not gonna be a straight line transition. It will not be a straight line transition. There will be many victims of this energy transition. There will be a lot of losers in this energy transition, and we've got to be- make sure that we're disciplined through that, so we're not one of those. And so having a really solid base business that gets the value of the synergies, and that's one of the things that, you know, breaking up the company on paper can look very attractive. One of the challenges with it is that you then. You are descaling, if that's a word.
I know it's a word, but I'm not sure if it's the right application of the word, but descaling the business, and there are challenges with that. There's no way any of these assets individually that we have today would have the production costs we have if they were operating standalone. It's just not possible. They'd all have their engineering and maintenance groups. They'd all have their exploration groups. They'd all have the other costs that we have associated with those smaller businesses, right? But by bringing them together, we've been able to really deliver on those synergies, and that's how we've been able to keep increasing that free cash flow generation. However, the point is, the markets aren't valuing that today, and we've got to find a way to get that value for that. And if that's a structural solution, then, then.
We believe that that will deliver the value, then, then we're open to that.
You might be coy on talking about sell downs, but you, you do also talk about looking at every avenue. There's a very interesting footnote on slide.
You've had your two questions.
All right.
Sorry, go on.
Can I. Well, just a very quick comment on GLNG.
Yeah.
You talk about the forecast being at current working interest, which is an odd thing to say. Are you suggesting that.
Did I say that or was that Brett? That was Brett who said that, wasn't it? Brett, that was an odd thing to say. What were you meaning?
Should we expect you to do something around GLNG?
You want me to answer that?
Yes.
Right. I got asked that question three weeks before we announced the Oil Search deal. Not that I'm tempting fate or predicting anything, so there's no relationship between the two conversations. I just wanna make that really clear. And I said to the person who asked the question, "And I'm gonna tell you in a public forum what I'm planning to do." Right? So I couldn't, even if I was thinking about anything, I couldn't say it. But what I can say right now is, I am not planning to do anything with GLNG. I think it's a wonderful asset. It's an asset that's got better over time. It was a, there was a flawed investment case at the time, but we've turned it into a really good asset. The team have done an amazing job, particularly in the upstream. I mean, the.
Actually, I shouldn't separate from the downstream part of that project. They run that plant superbly well. If you look at their operating costs and the reliability numbers, they are top quartile for a plant that's nowhere near full capacity, right? And so they don't get the benefits of volume in terms of driving the unit cost down, yet they're competitive. They're in top quartile for all global benchmark. That's an amazing, amazing. And they've had to do that because they've had to run with lean supply, right? They've had to learn how to operate really, really efficiently. In the upstream, though, that journey has been transformational. When you look at what they're doing in well costs, well reliabilities, way out in front of any of our peers in Queensland, in terms of the work over rates and stuff like that.
That drives your OpEx numbers down, and that's why we're starting to see those margins increasing over time at GLNG. And it's a fantastic journey. But no plans to do anything. If you're talking about buying Origin share or something like that, there's no plans to do anything like that.
Hi, Dale Koenders from Barrenjoey.
Oh, there's Dale.
A question, Kevin, maybe for you and Anthea. When we look at Slide 67 and look at the free cash flow forecasts, I just wanted to check my math firstly. If you're talking about $3 billion of free cash flow at $75 a barrel in 2026-2028, is that implying that you're reducing the break-even costs of the business from your 34-35 towards 25? Is that sort of part of this transformation of the business?
Anthea?
Our discipline operating model is.
Do you want to use the mic, Anthea?
Oh, sorry. Discipline operating model is to run the business at free cash flow break even of less than $35. Now, within that, we include the cost to sustain the business, but also decommissioning costs. And so you will see fluctuation year-over-year within that $35, because in years of lower decom, that will come down as well. So I'd say, you know, we look forward, we run our business at a minimum, be at below $35, but that can come in and out, depending on what the particular profile of the year that we're talking about is.
But what I can say to add to that is, the answer is sort of yes, it's lower. So production costs will come down over the next few years, and there's a couple of bumps on that journey.
Yeah.
But over that five-year period, they come down, and subsequently, all things being equal, free cash flow breakeven, the operating business free cash flow breakeven, should come down as well.
So.
Particularly once Barossa comes online, that really drives it down.
Yep.
So then I guess second part of the question, Kevin, for yourself, you've presented both an outlook for a lot of free cash flow generation from the business, but every one of your generals has presented a compelling case for growth within their business units. If you were to have a spare AUD 1 or, I don't know, a spare AUD 1 billion from Kumul Petroleum turn up, where does that money get allocated towards? Do you have a favorite child sitting on the desk at the stage at the moment?
No, I don't have a.
Or even you said you think your stock is cheap. Is that a better use? Should we.
No, even at home, Dale, I've got three kids, and they all argue the other one's a favorite, right? So there's no clear favorite. No, there's no favorite. It's basically returns, right? So they're competing for capital. So it's really interesting. You go back three or four years, we were planning to spend more capital today in Western Australia than we are. We've taken a conscious decision to let that drift down in production and not go. We've a lot of resource around WA. A lot of backfill we could be chasing right now. Now, maybe given the regulatory environment, that's been a good decision in hindsight for other reasons.
But that's our lowest margin, hydrocarbons, and we've made a conscious decision because we've got Barossa, because we've got Pikka ongoing right now, that we will stay disciplined, and we'll let WA, decline, and manage that decline as efficiently as we can, take costs out, all the rest of it, while we deliver these other projects. And so they're competing for capital, and I think somebody used the phrase healthy tension. Whether it's healthy or not, there's a tension. It's not just between the business units and the corporate. They know they're competing for capital now. They're all competing for capital, so the best projects will win. And, there's a lot of different factors we will take into consideration when we take an FID decision on something.
But, you know, obviously, returns and the best returns are gonna be a big driver in that.
So maybe just to be a bit more direct, is the PNG proceeds still on track for the 31st of December this year? And, you know, is a buyback still an active and considered decision for the board from February next year?
Well, well, well, it's always an active and considered decision for the board. It's a board decision, and they'll make that decision at the full year anyway, right? When it comes to dividends and any other sort of returns to shareholders. Anthony, would you like to comment on the buybacks?
At present, the restated announcement that we made in September is on track for December, at present.
Last time, you'd really qualified, Anthony. At present, yeah. That probably comes from experience. Yeah. Over here, again.
Nick Burns here. Just to follow up, maybe on that question, Kumul also has an option to acquire another 2.4% interest in PNG LNG by middle of next year. Hypothetically, with all of these growth opportunities on the table, if they didn't take that option up, would the business consider finding another buyer for a stake in PNG, just as a means to accelerate investment in other parts of the business?
Do you wanna answer that first, then I'll come in the back?
Yeah. Thanks, Nick. Look, the 2.4% is purely an option at the moment. We're focusing on the 2.6%, as Dale said, to get that completed this year. I think the beauty of that option is that it gives us flexibility. If whatever they do with that option next year, and then it comes back to how Kevin just answered the previous question around that flexibility and optionality then works out, gives us ability to flex within the portfolio and work out what we want to do.
I think there's two other aspects to that decision, Nick. One is, is that 2.6% higher value than what you'd be recycling the capital into, right? Because if it's not, then that's not a good decision to sell, to invest into something with lower rate, lower rate of return, and/or, the regulatory environments we're in. So one of the things that, the strategy work that we are continually reviewing and evolving, is considering very actively right now, is over the next five, seven years, what the pivot opportunities are if the regulatory framework in Australia remains as tough as it is today, right? And, you know, we have challenges for regulatory approvals here in Australia. We can't hide from that. We were dealing with it real time on Barossa, as we can see.
So what PNG and Alaska give us, of course, is pivot opportunity for growth elsewhere and what would be very development-friendly, much more supportive jurisdictions at this point in time. So all of those would be considerations. If, if you're asking, are there interested parties out there who would like to buy that 2.6? The answer is yes, absolutely.
Got it. Thank you. And you touched on the regulatory environment in Australia with Barossa.
Yeah.
Just on that, there was no update today on timing or costs for the project. I understand it's probably a challenge for you to give any meaningful guidance on that, given the uncertainty around how long getting the approvals will take.
Yeah.
But just maybe if you can talk through the risks from here, if it does take longer, recontracting risk with contractors, what the cost exposure is there. You've got an FPSO lease that will start at some point. Can that be pushed to the right? And also on your LNG contract as well, what flex there is around that?
Right.
Thank you.
So I think the big one. So when it comes to sort of drilling and pipeline, these are fixed execution costs. So the materials, everything's there, right? So we've done all that, all the wellhead and subsea kit is bought. If we get delayed in execution, there are recontracting risks. You're paying for slots you didn't use, and you've got to recontract. So you have those recontracting risks. It's not really possible to say what that is today for a number of reasons. One is it's hypothetical until we know. Right? And so I wouldn't wanna get down that path. But if we end up having to recycle some of this stuff in Barossa, that will lead to a scheduled delay.
That's a fact of life, and there'll be a cost impact to that, and we will come out as soon, if that's the case, we'll come out as soon as that is, and we'll clarify that to the market. Ironically, it'll mean a CapEx reduction in 2024, right? And if that was to occur. But it would be a delay, so it'd be a recycling of those approvals and recontracting. I've never done it before, but what I'd call a post-FID recycle of a project. We've never experienced that before, so it'll be a first for us. Not a good first, right? So that's that. On the FPSO, yeah, there are some contractual issues there.
That in itself is not that material, but there's an issue there, maybe you wanna slow that down. That is going remarkably well. That is going remarkably well. You saw the pictures of the hull. It's now in Singapore, the modules are all constructed. And if any of you are going through Singapore, any of you going through Singapore, reach out, happy to take you through and show you what we've got there. It's a pretty impressive vessel. We'd like to think we could be using it by mid-2025, but whether we use it or not, it's still a pretty impressive vessel, and it's cost us a lot of money. So if you ever wanna see it, please reach out.
But really, beyond that, I can't really give any guidance yet until we know what the outcomes of the various processes are. And you can see, you know, what we're, we're not an orphan in this journey right now. The entire industry's kinda caught up with us, and we are working together as an industry to talk to government and to try to get government to understand that this is much broader ranging than consultation. You know, this is activism that's found its way in to stop our projects here in Australia, and we need regulatory and legislative fixes in order to be able to move things forward. Now, I don't mind where this is all heading legislatively, provided it's not holding up pre-approved projects.
The problem we have is we've got a couple of big projects in Australia right now that have been approved by the regulator; now they're caught up with these secondary approvals. But for new projects, fine. If the rules are gonna change and all of that is good, you know? We won't take FID on Dorado until we get through whatever the new system's gonna be. But right now, it's impacting projects that have been FIDed, and, you know, we've got pretty frustrated partners as well as ourselves, who are suffering as a consequence.
Just on that.
Kevin?
Sorry, just Kevin. On the LNG contract, Nick, the LNG contract's fully flexible.
Oh, sorry, yeah.
Yeah, the LNG contract's fully flexible.
Yeah.
We can call it off annually, or we can call off the total volume.
Yeah, so there is no take or pay risk to Santos for those LNG contracts. They're quite unique contracts.
Hi, it's Mark Boudreaux from JP Morgan. I was just interested in some of your forecasts for upstream supply at GLNG. You indicated that this year you'll see the greatest activity in well connections, and you've got an increasing supply of production from the upstream facilities there. So I was just wondering, does it depend on similar levels of well activity going forward to see that production grow? And also, how you think about the potential price caps impacting some of those forecasts.
Brett?
Yeah, so look, I mean, this year is a very busy year. We don't expect the next few years to be as busy, but to actually increase and have an incline in indigenous production, we're gonna actually, you know, need to drill a lot of wells to build that up. But again, it's we're taking control of our own gas supply, so we're not having to be reliant on third parties, and hopefully we'll grow the margins on that, considering we're developing our own, our own gas. But, you know, we will have to have a, you know, a pretty busy few years going forward. But we have about 650 wells currently connected, still dewatering.
So, you know, we've got a big inventory of wells that we've drilled in the last two years that will be part of that pathway going forward, and they're just waiting for the, you know, the timing for the gas to break through. So 650 wells, which is the largest number we've ever had online, actually, which gives us confidence in that ramp going forward.
But it does actually ramp off after a few years, right?
Yeah, that's correct.
It has to come down, the drilling activity, two or three years out, as the base production gets stronger. So the, you know, the good thing about the CSG wells is the. The bad thing is, like Cooper Basin, they decline pretty fast initially, but the good thing is they've got very strong tails. The unconventional, very strong tails, so you're building that base production all the time.
The implications of the price cap?
Well, price cap doesn't really impact GLNG, domestic price cap, because it's LNG, so it's all LNG sales. So it's just, we've got very good contracts at GLNG, as you'd be aware. They'd be among the best in the industry right now, the GLNG contracts, and they go out to 2030 and 2035. So we're pretty good from a GLNG point of view. Is that what you meant?
Yeah.
Yeah.
Secondly, just on Granite Wash, I mean, some of the information there was pretty interesting in terms of the opportunity that provides. 9 million scf seems very, very high compared to Cooper Basin wells. I mean, is that normal? I mean, is that an outlier? Can you give us a sense of whether that's.
It's very good, isn't it? It's good for a Cooper Basin well.
Wow, very, very good.
I just want to get 10. I actually forecast, I think, unconstrained production was just under 10, wasn't it? If you could open that thing right up. I'll let Brett talk more about it, but what would the average be for in the Cooper? 1.5?
I think we've only got one data point for horizontal well in the Granite Wash, so you could probably draw the trend line through it any which way you want. But, you know, I think the pleasing thing is with a lot of pressure behind it as well. So we're seeing, you know, good pressure behind this well. So early days, we only just put it online the last few weeks, but it's been rock solid, so it's, you know, we're very pleased. And given the, the sort of type curves that you would expect from a, unconventional reservoir like this, we don't expect it to be, the sort of well that, that blows out quickly.
Yeah.
There's a 10-stage frac over a horizontal stimulation over a horizontal wellbore. So again, it's not just poking its head into a reservoir. It's got a fair amount of coverage.
I think what you're starting to see now across the onshore operations is that same sort of trend you saw in the U.S. with the shale, where we're really learning how to make these wells bigger. Bigger fracs, bigger frac spreads, bigger rigs. We're getting well costs down. We're getting much better ultimate recoveries from these wells. And if this play opens up, as Brett said, this offers the ability to get a much, much stronger and more consistent baseline production in the Cooper Basin. The vertical wells in the Cooper Basin, I remember when I first came to Santos, I learned that they deplete around 19% per annum. So if you think about that, you drill 100 wells a year or whatever, you're chasing your tail just to stand still.
You've got to drill a bunch of wells just to maintain production. If we can get that baseline production up steady with very little decline for a big chunk of it, going forward, that takes the pressure off to drill as many wells every year to stand still. And so that can have a huge sustaining CapEx upside for the Cooper Basin in the years ahead. And that's particularly important as we get to 2029, 2030, 'cause that's when the Horizon contract rolls off, right? And so that's a real opportunity for the Cooper Basin to ramp up its value as well. But as Brett says, one of the things, it's only taken us seven years.
So when you talk about structural challenges and stuff, seven years it's taken us, but the GLNG partners are now aligned, and they have a working group on looking at new acreage, or new opportunities, for gas to come in and backfill and try eventually to fill that plant up.
If I could just ask one more. A couple of years ago on the Investor Day, you talked about potential sales of infrastructure assets, and I'm probably gonna get this number wrong, but I think it was about AUD 300 million of annual EBITDA. I mean, given interest rates have gone up, have you kind of missed the boat in terms of terms of selling infrastructure assets, or was your comment about structurally separating Port Bonython, meaning that you're still on track, or you still-
So what we talked about, Mark, was separating them out from the upstream business. I don't think I ever said to anybody I was looking to sell them. Everybody else joined those dots. So I'm going to throw that down to Anthony, 'cause he caused that forest fire. So Anthony, you answer that question.
Thanks, Mark. Yeah. We basically did that for optionality. As Alan said in his, it's about getting the structure right to set it up for SES. So that was even before I think we announced SES at the time, that was the beginning of as we were moving internally into that optionality that Kevin spoke about, the structural relook of what the portfolio looked like. And Kevin's correct, we put a number of AUD 300 million -AUD 400 million EBITDA out there in the market to show the optionality that sort of business could create with a strong base in earnings. And now it's flowing into the SES portfolio, and it gives the optionality into Alan's group.
Now, interestingly, DLNG creates a lot of value when Barossa comes online for that portfolio as well, because of the toll. And so if you think about what SES will create its revenue from, it's gonna create revenue from tolls, whether that be for processing oil and gas, whether it be tolls for taking people's carbon and storing it. And it will be from ACCUs, generating ACCUs from CCS projects and/or from our nature-based projects, and ultimately from other fuels, lower carbon fuels. So there's a range of revenue sources for that business going forward. Those commercial models, we are still working through, 'cause particularly around the CCS structures, you know, whether they're tied to carbon price, the tolls or whatever, or whether they're fixed tolls, not so sure.
I think it'll be a bit of horses for courses sort of thing as we go forward. As Alan says, that's still developing, but I believe that can be very lucrative. I mean, you just have to do the math, right? I mean, we're saying that we're assuming a carbon price of around $50 right now, right? So if you think, you know, by 2030, if you're generating 10 million carbon credits a year from your business, valued at $50, that's a pretty significant revenue stream coming in that we're not getting today. That we do not get today. And so we're pretty excited by that business.
So the structural separation work that we're doing there was to separate those midstream assets out, so we can have a very separate SES business, and we're still doing that work. Now, you know, if we want to put those assets somewhere else, by separating them out, it gives you the optionality to do that. You know, whether that's a domestic versus an LNG player, whatever, gives you the optionality to do that. So we're doing that work, and we will announce that work as it is done, right? We will announce that work as it's done. The South Australian ones have been complex, 'cause some legislative changes required to break them out. But I think it's very important. It's even to the point where it's important to get a lot of complications to that.
For example, the union arrangements we have in the Cooper Basin have all integrated it all over the years, right? So we're working with the unions right now to separate upstream from midstream. So the two different, two different agreements. Because they recognize, as we do, that the midstream will have a very different access to capital in the future than the upstream oil and gas business will have. You know, very different appetite with banks to support a, a decarbonization business or a decarbonization-focused business and a low carbon fuels business. So all of the work that we're doing here, and that we'll be doing for some time, is about structuring this business for that future environment that we get into. Now, I think that makes the company more attractive. I think it makes it more attractive.
If that optionality is known, it's understood, then you're right. You know, somebody could walk in and offer to buy this bit because they know it's easy to take it out. Obviously, we've got to clean up things like Barossa. We've got to get Barossa back on track. That would be a complication in any of those sort of things, and I think that is weighing very heavily on our share price. But I do genuinely believe that when Moomba CCS comes online next year, that is gonna be a monkey off our back, so to speak, because, once Moomba's up and running, if it's up there and it's producing, sorry, injecting 1.5+ million tons per annum of CO2, nobody can tell us CCS doesn't work anymore, right? I mean, it's as simple as that.
If it doesn't work, you probably won't find me anywhere. But I'll be hiding somewhere. But it will work. We've just done an injectivity test, and it's very, very successful. Well, Mark.
Yeah.
And then we'll come to. I saw a hand down here next, I think.
Yeah, Mark Wiseman from Macquarie. Just a question on the Bedout Basin. You know, Anthony's comments on the WA gas market were fairly clear. You know, the state needs gas, Bedout could be part of the solution, but you've also been very clear that you won't invest in Dorado until there's clarity on the approvals and permitting. You also mentioned Concept Select on Dorado. So really, a couple of questions. Is it still a liquid stripping Phase I.
Yeah.
Followed by a gas platform, Phase II? And secondly, are you willing to drill some of the exploration targets that are quite large up there for oil and gas in the interim?
Yeah.
Or is it really tools down until.
Maybe Vince will want to add to this, but all I'll say up front is that it's Bedout Basin, not Bedou, right? So I just thought I would say that, yeah.
Thank you.
French. French, right? I think it's Bedout. Is that right? I'm right saying that, yeah? With a Scottish accent. So the Bedout Basin.
Right.
Now, we are really excited by that basin. We think the prospectivity across that basin is huge. If you look at the success rate to date, with Pavo and other wells we've drilled, you know, been very high success rate. Fortunately, unfortunately, depends how you look at it, we kept finding the liquids when we look for gas. And every time we look for gas, we found liquids, and every time we looked for liquids, we found gas. So it's a kinda odd basin, lots of different kitchens, lots of different systems going on there, which complicates it a little bit. Phase I will be a liquid stripping. It has to be. Has to be to maximize the value from the project. We think it's a world-class project. We think it only gets bigger.
From a capital discipline point of view, what I'm saying is, we wanna work up the concept now, which will be an integrated concept. It will be liquids, then gas. 'Cause there's a lot of gas there, we know that, that WA is gonna need that gas, and we think we've got the best gas new gas supply and the most doable new gas supply for WA. What we need to do is get all those secondary regulatory approvals in place before we take FID, right? So we're not gonna take FID anymore and then be subject to what we're seeing today. We need to have confidence that when we contract rigs and vessels, we're gonna get to execute. We need that certainty. That wouldn't be there right now. Some regulatory change will be required to give us that.
And I'm confident that will happen, and we'll work with our partners to do that. But we think it's a very valuable project. We're excited by the project. It will only get bigger, not smaller. It will get bigger as you drill those prospects up. But that comes down to capital discipline. So what we've said, WA, you've got a big decommissioning burden. We can't put that off anymore. Let's get on with that. Let's smooth that out, as Vince was talking about. Smooth that out, optimize that decommissioning, and run WA for the next few years, cash flow positive, including its decommissioning. Right? You got to pay for your own decommissioning, return a little bit of cash to the center, get over this couple of years hump and you know, where we're investing elsewhere, because our other projects took priority, they were better projects.
Then we'll turn our mind back to drilling and developing the resources we have in WA. Unless there's another way that we can unlock capital beforehand, in WA, another way to fund that off balance sheet or whatever, then we would be sticking to our discipline of working within 15%-25% gearing balance sheet. So that slows down the ability of us to go and fund any more activity in WA until we get the CapEx burden off our back. Now, what you will see is the CapEx, the all-in CapEx for this company drops considerably, 2025, 2026. The minute Barossa comes online, our all-in break even for the company drops like a stone, right? So Barossa is a big.
You know, it's a big burden from a CapEx point of view for the next year and a half or so, and then our CapEx demands drop off very considerably.
Just another question on the SES.
Did you wanna add anything to that? Sorry.
No, I think I.
You sure?
Just on the SES business. I've been asking this question for the last couple of years: How close are customers to signing third-party CO2 storage? It seems like it's been a journey for a lot of heavy emitters, but it does sound like you're getting closer. Could you just talk a little bit more around the APA deal? Is that repurposing existing pipelines, like the ethane pipe, or is it about new greenfield? And how close are customers to signing some of those big deals?
Alan?
Yes, so maybe take the APA one first. So they've been a partner of ours for a long period on the gas pipeline side. They've got a stated strategy of getting into CO2 pipelines around Australia, so we're gonna work with them on the various different options there are for getting CO2 to Moomba. It's not around a particular route, and at the end of the day, we'll work out which one is cheapest and can be built. So that is an exercise over the next 24 months, in effect, to land that.
But, Alan, it does include, possible repurposing of existing pipelines?
Nothing's off the table for that. So we're trying to find a low-cost way to get the product to Moomba. And as you saw from there, the transportation is a reasonable chunk of the overall cost of doing that. In terms of the customers, it's a different story across each of the hubs, as I alluded to in the presentation. We have MOUs signed, which are non-binding, but they are in effect, they're subject to CPs, and those CPs really amount to taking FID.
So it's a chicken and egg situation, but we're at the stage where we have term sheets, we have numbers in those term sheets which show that there's a viable pathway to landing those customers. So whilst they're non-binding, they allow us to go forward with confidence around FEED and then into FID. Kevin, I don't know if you want to.
Well, the challenge for FID is, just like you wouldn't want a FID and LNG project without an offtake agreement, you wouldn't want to build a CCS project without an offtake or intake agreement, what you call it, intake agreement. And, so likewise, we'd want to do that. The FID decision, so the CP that's subject to FID, all that's really holding that up in these projects from really around the end of this year, is the regulatory regimes that are being developed, right? So, so the, the regulations for offshore, particularly offshore CCS projects, but even onshore in different states. The only state that I think is a fully fledged regulatory system now is South Australia, which we've been able to kinda work with the South Australian government to put in place in the last few years.
The other states are still in the process of preparing and developing theirs, and I think that'll happen quite quickly in most of the states. For the international ones, there'll be various agreements that need to be put in place between different countries, but you know, bilateral agreements for the transfer of CO2 across borders and the accounting that goes with that. But again, we're working to help progress that because we need those things to be in place before we could FID a project. Thanks, Mark. There was one over here, I think. Yep.
Thanks. So Henry Meyer from Goldman Sachs. Just a first one on the PNG production profile. Are you able just to talk a bit about how that development schedule has changed since picking up from Oil Search? I think the plan originally might have been for the associated gas expansion next after Angore. That's obviously been pushed out to support Papua Tolling. And if you've got this dip in production now and I guess a bit of a risk if Papua is delayed, how do you think about managing that risk and other optionality you have in the development plan to maintain stable PNG production if Papua doesn't come online 2028, 2029?
Go for it, Brett.
Yeah, look, so, you're right. So we did have the Associated Gas, gas field project happening in between. But looking at it, looking at what the Angore is gonna produce, and then also looking at the Papua timing, we didn't want to spend that capital upfront, and it may not have got into the facilities, right? So spending that capital upfront and not being able to produce it, that's obviously something we don't wanna do either. I think you can see from the reliability, we're able to produce up to 25% of the PNG LNG feedstock at the moment. So the confidence that we can actually bring our existing fields in and provide more production, far more than we're actually contracted or we have agreed to put in, even in this time frame, will help allay some of that risk.
But ultimately, from a capital point of view, investing a significant amount of money in AGO with Papua coming on and with Angore coming on also would have been a decision, I think, that from a capital perspective, wasn't very efficient. So I think it's a balance of risk, but I think the reliability increase, we've got the ability to actually ramp our facilities up to produce well over what the PNG LNG project requirement was from our fields pre-AGO gives us confidence we can mitigate some of that risk if it occurs.
But I think that's a very good example of what someone talked about earlier on about value over volume, right? So by getting the value through the toll.
Yeah.
There's the three components to that. There's an access fee on first gas from Papua that we get paid, and, you know, at current equity levels, we get 42.5% of that. Then there's a, an OpEx sharing, so we get a lower unit cost for our PNG, LNG, volumes as well. And then thirdly, we've got the toll itself. So you put those three things together, we're satisfied that with that, sure, we'll miss out on a little bit of the upside from the additional volumes from giving that 2 million tons capacity away to a lower equity position project. But we get a lot of value back through those tolls and, and through that, that upfront payment. And for us, that, that's a really good hedge and a good balance for the longer term.
You know, when we look at our long-term LNG price assumptions, I think we estimated that added about 2% IRR to that decision. It puts off the CapEx as well for AGO, but only by a couple of years, right?
Yeah. And actually, Anthony raised a good point. AGO was taken to a point where we basically put a bow on it, so it's on the shelf. If we do need to actually reactivate it, it's in a good position to reactivate and do relatively quickly. So with the cheaper part of getting the project ready, so the engineering and getting it to a point where we could actually pull the trigger on that, we've got it in a good position.
Mm-hmm.
But I think it's, you know, value over volume, as we've been talking about. We actually wanna make sure we get higher margins as well, and not spend capital. And again, have to compete for capital with a few folks here up, standing up here.
That one's pretty good, though, right?
That one's good?
That one's pretty good. Yeah.
That one's all right.
No problems with approvals. Maybe one more question. Oh, down here. There you go.
Thank you. It's Rob Koh here from Morgan Stanley. Thanks very much for today's presos. Just a question on your CCS portfolio that you're building and the massive global opportunity that you're trying to catch there. Can you talk about your ability to scale up this portfolio? You know, I think you've got supply chain, you'll have some shipping advantages, the marketing, access to finance. Can you maybe just talk to anything else in the scaling up phase of that? I know that's off in the distance. Also, can you talk about the optionality that you're trying to preserve in thinking about both DAC and repurposing of infrastructure? 'Cause one might strand the other.
Well, Alan, why don't you start and maybe I'll just complement anything that you, you say.
Sure. Maybe I'll take the DAC one first. I mean, that is a technology that has a way to run both on the ones that we're looking at here in Australia and globally. And that's a, if we, as I think Kevin used the term, game changer, you know, so we're right behind that, and we don't see that as mutually exclusive with what we're trying to achieve, given the scale of the decarbonization task. In terms of the portfolio, it's really, really simple steps. Firstly, land Moomba and get our own volumes into there. Then bring Bayu-Undan and Reindeer online with our own volumes and third-party volumes.
Continue to win other license blocks, which are being made available by the various governments to add to our storage capacity, and in parallel, look at international options as well. We'll be, we'll be sensible around how we attack that, but I would say that there is a window of opportunity at the moment for people who are skilled and versed in what we're trying to do. And part of the reason for teaming up with ADNOC and some of the opportunities that they have globally is to try and get a seat at the table as that market grows.
So, yeah, all I'd say is, I think you've gotta walk before you run in this space. We're really excited about the portfolio that we have and the opportunity we have to repurpose assets at relatively low cost. Moomba CCS coming online in 2024 is a major catalyst that underpins the future strategy for SES. And so that coming online, I think, really should be the catalyst that builds the belief, if you like, in the other two assets as well. And I suspect the spotlight will very much then move to Bayu-Undan and of course, Reindeer, as well as Moomba Phase II and III . So I'm very excited by that. When it comes to DAC, DAC works. Technically, it works.
The technology we are testing is technology we use on our facilities in the main, right? It's whether it works economically and at scale. And if we can get this to work at scale and capture multimillion tons per annum, we have the basins where we can take that CO2, and that's quite unique about the portfolio Alan has. Alan has the Cooper Basin. Very few basins can take tens of millions of tons, right? And you know, I'd hope by year end that we will be increasing that 100 million tons of storage capacity. We've just been awarded.
You will have seen the award, announced recently by the South Australian Government, give us more storage acreage, and we're just evaluating what that means in terms of new capacity for us, and we'll announce that, as always, with a reserves report at the end of the year. So we're really excited by that. But I'd say our focus right now, myopic focus, deliver Moomba Phase I, CCS Phase I, and then we'll take it from there. I don't think anybody knows how to value this business yet, but when you look at government policies for emissions reduction, what else are they going to do? We can talk about shutting down oil and gas all we want. The world's not shutting it down, it's growing, right?
So unless we get on and decarbonize oil and gas, you're gonna be using a lot of oil and gas in 2050, and we'll have missed the opportunity to decarbonize it on the way through. So I think CCS is one of the most certain growth markets I've ever had the opportunity to play in. And we're in a very good position to do that at relatively low cost and with a lot of interest in our region, which also happens to be the region that has the biggest gas growth between now and 2050. So as much as there are a number of scenarios, and we've looked at about 100 scenarios out there, they all have different ranges of how much gas we'll be seeing in 2050.
None of them have no gas, but nearly all of them, if you break them down and look at the Asia-Pacific subset of that data, show gas growing in Asia. Growing in Asia. Because Asia's got a lot, an awful lot of coal to displace, an awful lot of coal to displace between now and 2050, and it does not have the land mass and the availability of renewable solutions that we have here in Australia. They don't have that same, same luxury. So we see CCS as a massive growth opportunity. Alan showed you those numbers, and those numbers will probably get bigger, right, with time? It's a case of how do we liquidate that? How do we turn that into revenue streams?
I hope over the course of the next year or so, you're gonna see some clarity on that as we move towards FID readiness in some of those projects.
Great, thank you. I'm starting to think I should have asked that question, second, because.
Oh, I thought that was your final question.
Sorry.
All right, maybe a quick one then.
But we, I really do appreciate the answers there.
'Cause at this time, we should be turning on the fans to blow in the smell of the pies. Right?
All right, well, so my final question. A number of times today, you mentioned that your sustainability activities help your access to capital.
Yeah.
I just wondered if we could maybe drill into that a little bit. You're talking about the corporate finance facilities with the credit investment-grade credit rating. You're talking about non-recourse and concessional finance, all of the above. Is there a particular metric that lenders are focused on in that regard?
Well, maybe I'll turn that to Anthea first.
Yep, no worries. So I think it's both. So thematically, what lenders are looking at, as they look at their portfolio, they're looking at transitioning their portfolio to a lower carbon portfolio. So having a plan and demonstrating progress against that plan is important, almost as a checkbox to say, "Okay, well, this is someone that I want to bank because they have a transition plan." So I think that's one very important element and important for us. We have a plan, and we're showing progress towards it. It's not an aspirational target. So we are showing, and we're deploying capital into that plan as well, and I think that's also very important from the point of view of, you know, various emissions projects, but also the decarbonization plan we have.
The second element of that is there is a lot of capital out there that is looking for a home to deploy into the type of business that Alan is running. So that could be limited recourse, that could be partnership-type arrangements, that could just be straight lending into a CCS project, for example. There's a lot of optionality out there, and there's a lot of interest. And really, what we're looking at doing is, you know, what is the best fit for us as a business going forward? There's also options to partner with capital providers as well, and you've seen some of the big capital providers, like BlackRock, et cetera, lean into funding the energy transition. That kind of provider also does throw up opportunities for us.
What I would say is we're working with all of our customers as well to understand customers and supply chain, to understand our Scope 3 world much, much better, at a much more granular level, to understand what we can do in that space to help them reduce their emissions as well. That's been a very interesting journey. You'll probably see some of that in our climate report this year. Well, you will see some of that work in our climate report this year, and that throws up opportunities as well, not only just to take their carbon, but to help them with carbon reduction strategies for themselves, 'cause of course, that is their Scope 1 or Scope 2 emissions.
So look, on that, I just want to say thank you to everybody for taking the time to come and join us this morning. We've got food outside. The management team will be happy to mingle, talk, answer any questions that you may have over lunch, and please join us for some lunch. It's been a long morning. I do appreciate it's a long morning. But we had a lot to get through, and we wanted to share a lot of the good things that the company's doing, and been doing. And, you know, I think, as I said earlier at the start of the day, I may have a big management team, but I think this is the strongest operational management team I have had in all of my time at Santos. Secondly, just on Granite Wash, I mean, some of the information there was pretty interesting in terms of the opportunity that provides. 9 million scf seems very, very high compared to Cooper Basin wells. I mean, is that normal? I mean, is that an outlier? Can you give us a sense of whether that's.
I have absolutely no doubts about that. You can see some of the great things coming through the organization from that focus on operations, the reliability improvements, the, the operational, the Drill Complete Connect model really starting to yield results in the onshore business, and I'm very confident we'll be able to unlock value from that. In addition, as I say, at a corporate level, we are very focused on unlocking value. We will work, and we will work with shareholders, and we will continue to communicate with you how that work is progressing, on other ways of unlocking value. Whether that's structural, portfolio optimization, whatever that may be, we will be looking at all as we go forward over the next year or two. We've got some priorities, though. We've got to get clarity on Barossa.
Barossa is a big overhang on the company right now, and we wanna get that clarification on how that's looking going forward and get that progressing again. And I'm really excited about what this business looks like in two or three years from now with Barossa, with Pikka, and with our CCS projects online. So thank you very much for your time. I really do appreciate it. Sorry, it went on. I probably got a wee bit carried away in the first session this morning, but it's been a wee while since I've been here talking to you all, so I was enjoying myself. But I'll look forward to talking to some of you over lunch. Thank you very much. Thanks.