Morning, everyone. We've still got a few people that are waiting to join, so we'll just stand by until those numbers settle down, and then we'll kick the webinar off. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining me in this webinar briefing to discuss what is a momentous day for the company. We have executed the Petroleum Production Sharing Agreement with the Republic of Zimbabwe, an agreement that has been a long time coming, but one that certainly cements our future participation in the sector, in the country, and paves the way for others as well. My name is Scott Macmillan, I'm the CEO of Invictus, and I'm going to take you through the PPSA updates, some of the features of this agreement, and what's entailed in it, and go through the Musuma-1 drilling preparations that are currently underway, and also just a brief company update.
For those of you that are unfamiliar with Invictus, just a very quick recap of the company. We are an oil and gas company. We have operated in Zimbabwe since 2018 when we acquired the Cabora Bassa project. We are the sole oil and gas company that operates in Zimbabwe. We have a dominant license position, 360,000 hectares within the Cabora Bassa Basin in the north of Zimbabwe. We have been relatively busy from an operations front over the last few years, with a significant amount of data collected in the form of seismic, and also two wells drilled that have delivered two discoveries. From a technical perspective, what has been lacking has been the framework to develop a project within Zimbabwe. It hasn't had a proper petroleum agreement in place for over 30 years.
We have now modernized a Petroleum Production Sharing Agreement that not only allows the state to benefit from her resources, but gives the confidence and a solid foundation for the company and investors to invest with confidence within the sector that provides a stable and transparent legal and fiscal framework within which to operate. We have got a number of other incentives and provisions in there, including national project status, which was awarded to us last year. That recognizes strategic importance of this project to the country. We've got a fantastic portfolio that we have assembled that has been matured over the last few years. Importantly, we've got a fantastic monetization pathway in which to commercialize any discoveries. We have all the ingredients now in which to take forward the project with a lot of confidence.
We have an excellent board and management team that have done this before all over the continent. We're looking to repeat ourselves again in Zimbabwe, but also now beginning to spread our wings elsewhere on the continent as we start to grow our portfolio. We'll go into that in a little bit. First of all, just a summary of the execution of the agreement. This agreement was executed yesterday between Geo Associates, our subsidiary company that owns the Special Grant 4571 license, and the Republic of Zimbabwe. The signatories on government's behalf are the Ministry of Mines, the Ministry of Energy and the Ministry of Finance. That agreement will be gazetted and formalized into existence in the coming weeks. That is a standard government procedure to gazette agreements such as this so that they are enshrined within law.
This supersedes the Petroleum Exploration Development and Production Agreement that we signed with government in 2021. The only signatory to that was Mines. Although it did provide a relative framework for us to operate, there was very little in terms of the fiscal arrangements, and there was a risk that if we continue with the project, continue to develop it, in the absence with a firm fiscal framework, that may change and change adversely in the future. This is part of the reason that we took a lot of time to settle this PPSA framework, which contains all of these fiscal provisions. In addition, it contains a number of incentives for us upfront that help us develop the project, get it up and running quicker, provide us with numerous incentives in which to do that.
Reduces our cost of capital, reduces the risk, and so it makes it more attractive for investors or lenders and for partners as well. It has been, although a very frustrating process at times and lengthy, very necessary to put in place because now included in that are all of these fiscal frameworks, but importantly, a stabilization clause that means that over the life of this agreement, that these are not going to change. Again, a very important feature of this. This agreement now that we executed yesterday supersedes all of the other agreements that we have had with government. As I mentioned, it provides a robust, stable, and transparent legal and fiscal framework for oil and gas projects.
It will now form what will be known as a model contract so that anyone else wishing to come into the sector that enters into a license with government for any other area, the contract that we have worked on will be the basis of a new petroleum agreement that all other agreements will be based on. These agreements, importantly, and the terms within it have been benchmarked with comparative countries across the region. Countries like Namibia, South Africa, Zambia, Malawi, and that has to ensure that the country and we have a competitive framework that is relatively attractive compared to those jurisdictions. We've also included the adoption of some domestic investment incentives and protections to enhance the bankability. During this process, the government received independent legal, financial, and industry expertise, and that was all supported through the African Legal Support Facility.
They brought in outside expertise to help them negotiate this agreement. Very understandable given the magnitude of it, but very important to have it done properly, thoroughly, and also independently from a government perspective. This framework now is the first of its kind in the country. It also provides Zimbabwe and its citizens with direct participation in the project in the form of an additional product or profit split, over and above the standard royalty and corporate taxes. This does create a very balanced and aligned development structure, and within that is enshrined the Mutapa Investment Fund, the sovereign wealth fund of Zimbabwe's participation. This is a slide that has appeared on our investor decks for a number of years, and it has always had an in progress for the PPSA over that, but finally, we've been able to update it.
We now have all of these various components that together form a very, very strong framework for us to develop the project that all coexist very comfortably, and it is now all finally completed. There have been some very important regulatory changes in Zimbabwe during this government's term with amendments of Indigenisation and Economic Empowerment Act. That has been very important from a foreign investor perspective, which guarantees your investor rights, provides you with 100% remittance earnings and 100% foreign ownership of assets. Special Economic Zones Act which provides a host of fiscal and non-fiscal incentives, including tax incentives, capital gains tax, exemptions, and especially offshore banking and transacting outside of the local financial system. That insulates you from the domestic banking system. Very important for projects such as this, where the predominant borrowing will be in foreign currency.
That allows us to attract lenders from outside of the country in these very capital-intensive projects. We were awarded national project status in August last year. That, again, signifies the importance of this agreement to the country. Within that, it again unlocks a host of fiscal and non-fiscal incentives for this phase of the project, and it helps streamline our processes of importation of equipment, of bringing external service companies to Zimbabwe, in an area where not many of them have operated before. Finally, the Petroleum Production Sharing Agreement, that's administered now through three ministries instead of one that we had under the previous PPDA agreement. It's an additional fiscal agreement to distribute product and profit share on top of the standard royalties and taxes, but again, contains a cradle-to-grave framework for us to operate in.
It's a globally competitive fiscal regime, so top quartile, very attractive, and will help us from a financing perspective in addition to all of the safeguards that are put in place there and from a domestic perspective of investment laws that have been also adopted into this Petroleum Production Sharing Agreement and enshrined. Just to take you through some of the features of the PPSA. In time to come, this will be a published document that people will be able to inspect. Whilst everything is being tidied up, we will just go through some of the features that I will describe in sort of generic terms, but just to give people a flavor of what's contained in it. It is a hybrid agreement, and what that consists of is a standard concession contract.
Under the mining laws of Zimbabwe, it operates under a royalty and tax system. With this particular agreement, there is an additional profit and product-sharing mechanism on top. That's relatively common across the world, and these product and profit-sharing agreements are adopted in order to balance periods of high and versus low rates of return. It is a sliding scale rate of return for the profit and profit-sharing mechanism. There's a standard flat royalty and corporate tax rate, then there's a sliding scale mechanism in which to distribute the product or profit-sharing once the project has been paid back. It provides the contractor, in this case ourselves, the ability to rapidly pay back the project with a low profit-sharing arrangement upfront.
Once that increases and on a cumulative basis, the government's take then gets greater and greater as the project goes on and becomes more profitable. It balances out for the government at the back end, but allows the company to rapidly pay back and get to a positive investment return very quickly on the front end. That also accounts for periods of high commodity prices, low capital environments, but also in periods of lower returns, so lower prices or higher capital costs. This balances it out across a number of commodity price cycles and capital price cycles. It is a very fair agreement. The cost recovery structure, though, also includes some exploration incentives, which allows us to recover exploration costs at a higher rate than what we incur them in, and that's to encourage further exploration and the discovery of new fields.
The rationale behind that is that it is always better for us to be going out and trying to find new fields. The cost of that compared to what you're writing off against your production costs is fairly minimal, but it does incentivize you to keep exploring, keep finding, and the ultimate prize for the companies that are doing that and for the government is to find more fields and develop them, and then the cycle continues. There are some incentives to encourage us to explore further. national project status and Special Economic Zone status are also enshrined in this, and those contain numerous fiscal and non-fiscal incentives that will reduce our development costs and accelerate the project timelines. This agreement also establishes very clear roles and obligations during the life cycle and each phase of the project.
For the contractor, the work program, the development plan submissions, the production and operation requirements, and the environmental standards. For the government, clear timelines for approvals. What we've seen in cases such as ours and others, there are sometimes unnecessary delays that prevent your project from sticking to its schedule, and then that erodes value. There are clear timelines required for approvals for various phases of the project, and that ensures that we stick to our schedule and preserve the value. There are a number of measures contained within this agreement to ease the importation of equipment and services for ourselves and for our subcontractors as well. Particularly important at this phase of the project, where we are importing equipment temporarily.
You have service companies coming and going, and you need to make it as easy as possible for them to move their equipment in and out of country. For us, being in a landlocked area, the burden of importing and exporting equipment is quite tedious. We don't have a single port in which to bring in everything, and so it does complicate the logistics aspect of our projects. Being able to reduce the cost and administrative burden of that saves us a huge amount of time and money, and that's particularly important at this phase. Ultimately, that goes into a cost recovery pool. The cheaper that we can do it, the more profitable it is, the better the profit shares end up on the back end for both the company and also for government.
There's a stabilization mechanism, as I mentioned previously, to prevent changes to this agreement in the future. There have been instances where, and this happens globally, where there are changes to the rules of the game, which is what investors are always irked by. It provides uncertainty, and often leads to a disincentive to invest further or at all. This provides the stabilization mechanism is a very thorough one. It will prevent any changes from happening in the future to our agreement, enshrines all of these very important clauses within our agreement and ensures that the rules of the game don't change, and we can invest with confidence over the decades that these projects run. Very important from an external lender's perspective, from a company perspective, and also from our shareholders' perspective.
From a government and a citizen perspective, the Mutapa Investment Fund direct 10% equity participation that they have in the form of a back-end right that they're able to exercise once the production license is gazetted and comes into enforcement. That provides them with a direct equity participation in the project over and above the product and profit share. It does create a balance and aligned development structure and a win-win scenario for all parties. Under that direct participation mechanism, the product and profit share, the corporate taxes, and the royalties, we've benchmarked the fiscal agreement on the whole, and from what's known as a government take. All of those items together form, in the industry, what's known as government take.
What government will receive in a percentage-wise from the project that's been benchmarked across the region and globally and is a very attractive and important measure that companies use to evaluate their participation in a country. What does government get? What do we get at the end of the day? That's been benchmarked to across the region and globally, and it is a top quartile agreement. Coupled with the domestic provisions that are put in there that are Zimbabwe specific, that cater to some unique aspects of Zimbabwe business environment. We believe it's a very strong contract, a very fair agreement that is a win-win for both parties and will allow us to go forward in confidence, and rapidly develop this project.
Moving on and looking ahead, we have a number of investment catalysts ahead, as we laid out in our investor presentation that we put out a few weeks ago. Firstly, our priority has been to finally execute this PPSA. That has been done. Now that has been concluded, the next phases of these multiple work streams that we are engaged with will now accelerate. Partnering and financing, we expect that now to advance in and as we go towards the drilling of Musuma-1. That is planned for the second half of this year. We are, and I'll come to that in a little bit of detail, following this slide. Very excited about this well, and looking forward to getting back to operations, drilling again and, now that we've put all of this administrative stuff behind us with the PPSA.
In conjunction with that, we're furthering the Mukuyu appraisal plan. Looking at drilling Mukuyu-3, following Musuma-1, doing an integrated test with those wells and then also acquiring 3D to determine the core development areas of the field and optimize well placement. We'll come to a Mukuyu versus Musuma discussion in a second, once I show you the planned activity. New venture portfolio addition. We have made significant progress with this in the last few weeks. We've met with, a number of financiers, in discussions for a number of assets and have formed a new consortium, which is going after now these producing assets and near-term development opportunities. We've made strong progress on that in the last few weeks, keeping us very busy. As I said, we've now got preparing for operations as well.
The team is very busy now and it's going to be a busy second half to this year, but very exciting nonetheless. Finally, the Eureka gas to power pilot project and looking towards advancing that to FID within the next 12 - 18 months and getting into an early production scheme, so that we can demonstrate we can produce gas, process it, get all the approvals, get it to our customer, get paid, and from there we are scaling up then into a full field production scenario and proper commercialization of the resource base. Just a reminder of the portfolio that we've assembled over the last few years. We have managed to what was a blank canvas when we first started in 2018. We now have an extensive inventory of prospects and leads.
Very, very large. Going from west to east, we've got the Mukuyu gas field that was discovered officially in 2023 with Mukuyu-2. That's in the north of the field. The Exalo 202 rig is currently stacked at that well site at the moment. Exalo are preparing to do some maintenance and get ready for a rig move. We will relocate the rig all the way over to the Musuma-1 location over here. Musuma-1 is approximately in this location. We have a number of seismic surveys that we've acquired. Two infill seismic surveys in addition to the mobile survey that was acquired in 1990. This has revealed a relative treasure trove beneath the surface that we've identified and mapped on the seismic data. We've got Mukuyu in the west, which is the discovered gas field.
We're planning to shoot some 3D over this field in due course. That will allow us then to identify the core area for development for the field. We have the eastern margin, and we have a variety of play types within here. We've got both the shallow prospects, Musuma, which we'd be drilling next that's targeting 1.2 trillion cubic feet of gas and 73 million barrels of condensate. A sizable target. In a success case, we believe and what we see over a number of seismic lines is this could potentially spill over and form part of a greater closure through here, which would be, if that works out, very sizable. Larger than the P10 combined cases that you see for these. What we've got some volumes up here, which are all of the mean numbers.
The high case numbers will be in far greater excess than these. On a Musuma-1 success, we will suspend it. We'll mobilize the test kit, come in then for a testing campaign. Depending on the time of year that we drill this. If we've got some time this year, we'll test that. Otherwise we will defer it till early next year, attack it with a further drilling campaign, either Musuma-2 or stepping over to test this greater closure on the other side of this fault that you can see here.
If we are successful at Musuma, in all likelihood, because it is a much shallower prospect, it's cheaper to drill, that we will then focus our early monetization efforts in the eastern portion of the basin, where it is cheaper and quicker to drill, and focus on this area for a first phase development. What we're trying to do is not drill out the entire resource base of the basin. We are able to phase this development, do it quickly, get on stream and producing, generating cash flow. From there we can drill out the basin and identify what the ultimate resource size is. We have this early monetization strategy that we are pursuing, and so depending on where we see the most positive results, we will focus our efforts on that first. Mukuyu for now sits there, remains as a discovered gas field.
We have the suspended Mukuyu-2 well, which we can reenter at further stage. In the first instance, we want to understand what is in the eastern portion of the basin, and if this shallower play comes in and is successful, we'll likely focus our early efforts there. In addition, in the southern part of our license area through here, we've got what is known as the basin margin play. This is, we believe, a more liquid prone play. We saw some evidence in the Dande formation of residual oil in Mukuyu and that these closures have been mapped against the basin-bounding faults and look like a classic East Africa rift basin system, these three-way and four-ways up against the basin-bounding faults. At some stage, we'll come and test one of those as well.
We've got a fantastic portfolio that we're looking to unlock now, and we can now go full throttle with confidence now we have the administrative and fiscal framework in place to govern this project. Our lenders and financiers and shareholders can be confident that we've got a very robust framework in place, in which Stewart, no more uncertainty sitting there and creating, I guess, a lack of confidence to invest. We can now go full throttle because we've got all of these elements in place, both from a subsurface and now from an above ground perspective in Zimbabwe. Looking at Musuma, and I mentioned this greater closure that could potentially be here. This is just in a bit further detail. This is this potential closure that we have mapped here, outlined in black. It could form something that's very large.
This has been mapped based on these seismic lines that we've acquired over this area of the basin in 2023. The survey in the red is new. We didn't have this at the time that we drilled Mukuyu-2. Well, we had hints of it from previous surveys, but we didn't have enough coverage to confidently map these prospects. We've now done this with more infill seismic. With Musuma, what we see is a very attractive-looking prospect. We've got this flat spot, what's known as a DHI, a direct hydrocarbon indicator. A flat spot is often evidence of a contact between your hydrocarbon phase, either gas and oil, and another phase, which is typically water.
Seeing this shut off at this common depth, not only at Musuma, I think it is probably this line through here, but going across this fault that you see through here and going through, it'll be this line here, with Mupani and Mahoara as well. Seeing that common amplitude shut off with depth gives us that evidence that potentially this forms part of that greater closure. A very enticing-looking prospect. If that high side works, it will be enormous. Also the fact that it is a much shallower, much cheaper well. Very simple, low-cost vertical well that we're attacking. The quotes that we've been getting align with this cost estimate that we provided in our previous investor presentation. That looks like we're all on track.
We were concerned that there had been some inflation in oil field services and diesel with the energy crisis that has been going on globally. Fortunately, that has still come within that range. We're well on track from a costing perspective to deliver a well within that cost range that we provided there of $6 million-$10 million. A very low cost well to attack. Again, that's why we've mentioned that if this works, then we'll focus our efforts on this side of the basin for the time being for an early monetization scheme. We've also made some changes to the well design, and how we approach our commercial contracts with service providers. Now that we've done this a number of times, we've found better ways to do it, found win-win scenarios for our contractors to work with us.
They are now more comfortable with operating in the country and are not pushing all of the risk and the cost that comes associated with it all onto us. This has resulted in significant savings in future campaigns compared to what we were experiencing in the first two wells where you've got to grin and bear it to mobilize people to a remote location in a country where it's never been done, in a basin that's never been drilled before. There were a lot of lessons that have been learned and applied, and looking forward to a successful campaign in the second half of this year with Musuma. That preparation has commenced, and that's been supported by our recent $10 million capital raise that we concluded last month.
From a readiness perspective, on track for a planned spud in the second half of this year. We're progressing the drilling services procurement and contractor selection. That's well advanced. We are seeking to award contracts next month in June. That's not too far away. Once we have those in place, we'll be able to commit to a spud date. The contractors that we select and their equipment availability will dictate the spud date from that. That's why we haven't been able to provide an exact date as of yet. We'll be able to do that in the near future. The well pad construction, that will commence shortly, as well as the rig maintenance and upgrades for the Rig 202, the finalization of the engineering and operational readiness program.
All of those associated programs that you need to have in place to drill, mobilize the rig to the Musuma-1 well site, mobilize the services at roughly the same time, and then drill and evaluate Musuma-1 and preserve it for future testing and early production on success. With Musuma, we have a busy work stream ahead. We've had some good meetings with the team here over the last few days to get them firing and ready. They've been doing a fantastic job in the background. It's now all coming together and everyone's excited to be getting back to business and drilling again, as I'm sure our shareholders and investors are. That is all I had for this presentation. I'd just like to thank our shareholders for their support.
It has been often a very long and arduous and torturous process, and a lot of uncertainty associated with the timing of this agreement. There have been a lot of frustrations. Believe me, I've felt it. I'm just very, very pleased that we've been able to finally deliver this agreement. It wasn't for lack of want or desire or effort. It is a very important agreement. It will dictate the future of the industry in the country for decades to come, important that we got it right. Now that it's settled, we can go forward in confidence. Thank you to everyone. Look forward to what is going to be a busy year, rest of the year for the company. We've got multiple work streams in progress. The team is going to be very busy. As always, thank you for your support.
Appreciate it, and look forward to delivering some fantastic results for our shareholders across multiple activities coming up in the next few months. Thanks, everyone, and I'll just open up for some quick questions. James.
Hi, Scott. Hey, mate. Congratulations on the PPSA. It was great seeing you on the Facebook Live and your big grin. I just had a few questions. You mentioned that you're coming to the final deal agreements with the financiers for the new ventures. Would love to know a bit more information about that. Is it based upon negotiations with the seller of the asset or just finalizing the deal's terms with the financiers?
I'd love to give you some specifics, unfortunately, can't give any guidances yet. We are in discussions for a number of opportunities. We've got a number of financing options as well, so there's a few things that we're lining up. With the consortium that we have formed, puts us in a good position to secure these assets. There's a lot going on. We're very busy on that front, very active, and very determined to conclude in the very near term. We are pushing as hard as we can.
No, great. You also mentioned early monetization for Musuma. Can you give any indications to the timing of that? Would that be second half of 2027 or first half?
Sure. Again, that would be dictated on the results and the timing of when that happens this year. The quicker we can do this, we could have the time to mobilize a test spread this year. If that's possible, we'd love to do that because then that will save us a number of months. The big lead time for that really is around the compression equipment that's required. We can produce the gas, no problem. It's then compressing it and then transporting it to Eureka. Those lead times, depending on whether we're going a compressed natural gas or a small-scale LNG, have different lead times. We've got to have a look and see what the deliverability is from those wells.
Also have a view on whether we should perhaps expand that part of project in the early phases to something larger, because these things are modular. It'll be determined on whether you can expand by the flow rate. You've got a question of, is it one or two wells that you use to expand, and the associated kit? There's a number of variables, but the results from Musuma will provide us some guidance on what to do as well as Mukuyu in the future.
Given that modularity, is it generally months that it takes to quickly bring the asset online, or how does that typically play out?
Yeah. It's lead time for the procurement at the moment, and you have had some disruptions in supply chain with some of these components, particularly compression. We have got, fortunately, with the size of units that we're talking for CNG, with Siemens they do have those that are relatively available. The compression equipment, again, the lead time will be dictated as to whether we pick compressed natural gas or small-scale LNG compression technology. That's a scale thing. It's in the order depending on which technology you pick from 6- 12 months lead time.
Yeah. One final question. In terms of the financiers or the JV partners for the Cabora Bassa, with the PPSA ticked off, is there anything further that they want to see before execution, like service contracts, or is it just, I guess, this PPSA, which was the main headway?
Yeah, predominantly this has been the main headway, and that's also been the case for our subcontractors as well, because there are a number of things in there that they will benefit from and want to understand better so that they can provide a cheaper service and better commercial terms for us. All of that fits in and some of the potential partners that we're talking to, they also come with services. They're not only E&P companies, but they have service arms as well.
This is, yeah, it has been preventing us from advancing discussions, but now that that's concluded, we expect that to kick off. Sorry, not kick off, but advance. Now we can pick things back up and now that the agreement's finally settled and in force.
When you say advance, is that in terms of near-term horizon, like progressing rapidly or more still in that kind of quarterly basis?
Yeah, I can't give you guidance on timing, James, unfortunately.
No
understand. Yeah.
Awesome. Thanks, mate. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Okay. With no more questions, we'll leave it at that. Thank you everyone for your support. Again, looking forward to a big back end of the year. We've got a lot of activity going on, multiple work streams, and lots to deliver for our shareholders. Thank you for your support and thanks for your time. Goodbye.