Good morning or good afternoon, all, and welcome to the Ithaca Energy Q1 2024 Results Bondholder Webcast. My name is Adam, and I will be your operator today. If you'd like to ask a question on today's call, please refer to the questions tab above the slides. I will now hand the call over to Iain Lewis, CEO, to begin. So Iain, please go ahead when you are ready.
Thank you, yeah, and good day to everyone. Welcome to the call. Just gonna go through a presentation, which hopefully you can all access, and we'll move through fairly quickly, pull out some key highlights, and then open up to Q&A. So if we move to slide three of the presentation, just an overview of some executive changes that we've announced today, and this really is in the context of the business combination with the Eni UK upstream assets that we are in the middle of executing with a plan to an expectation of closing during Q3. So with that in mind, the board has been moving to pull together the appropriate team for the next phase of the business, and these executive changes are announced today.
So we have an exec chairman change with Gilad Myerson, who's been part of the leadership growing the company to where it is today, leaving us with immediate effect. And we expect by the end of June to replace on an ongoing basis with Yaniv Friedman, who is a energy executive that has experience in the upstream environment in Israel, particularly, and as well as beyond, and is well known in the public markets in Israel. So Yaniv will join us at the end of the month. In the meantime, Dave Blackwood will act as non-executive chair. We're also able to announce today the appointment or proposed appointment of Luciano Vasques as the CEO.
So we agreed as part of the business combination with Eni that we would have the first CEO of the new business to be an Eni nomination, and glad to have Luciano proposed. A very experienced industry leader and technical and operational roles across the globe and in Eni locations. And we expect Luciano to join us at the closing of the deal in Q3. As well as myself going back to the CFO role at that point, when I hand the responsibilities for CEO to Luciano, we also have the appointment of Odin Estensen as the Chief Operating Officer.
Really, this is the next phase of the business in terms of operational depth, to have Odin, and really glad to have him coming to the team, to oversee the asset fleet, which of course will have the large-scale operated asset and the Cygnus asset added to it at business close or at close of the deal rather. And then also we've announced Zvika Zivlin as the senior independent director joining the board with considerable PLC and also Italian-listed company and Hebrew speaking as well. So, that's the lineup of the new team, and glad to be able to share that with everyone today, really setting us up for success at deal close.
Now, moving on through the presentation, slide 4 just summarizes the highlights of the quarter. Fairly robust and straightforward quarter in lots of ways. The unique things in the quarter were the announcement of the business combination with Eni. Also the completion of the Captain EOR Phase II project, the large project to polymer flood the subsea reservoirs in Captain. We actually achieved that large-scale project at over $500 million net project, and we achieved that on time and on budget. In fact, slightly early polymer injection in May 2024. So great project delivery, really. Captain EOR Phase II really provides and underpins the production growth in the following few years. So great to see that project completed safely and on budget.
Rig recertification has been ongoing at Captain as well. We're starting to drill after the summer shutdown, so that is in Q3, and really significant work scopes on that completed during Q1, and all the large pieces of equipment back in recertified condition and being put together now on the platform. We also were able to announce a two-year extension to the Cambo license, and that has given us the needed optionality around the project as we look to to determine our path forward and investment and high rank our investments. Cambo is a great option for us, and we're glad to have that two-year extension to work within with the regulator.
In terms of the quarter itself, the bottom line in slide 4 gives you the kind of highlights, the production, 58.7 thousand barrels a day, slightly lower than we would have liked it to be, but in line with our expectations for the year. We had some non-operated production outages through the quarter, which are now resolved, but that showed us with lower production than we would have looked for, and then our capability in the fleet. But we fully included that in the market guidance for the year, which we gave a couple of months back, and so we're able to reaffirm that guidance today.
EBITDAX remains strong in the context, $339 million, and $314 million of net cash from operating activities, which is very material in the context of the production. And that's allowed us to delever more in the quarter, down to $461 million net debt and 0.3x net debt to EBITDAX, with available liquidity of over $1.25 billion. Final operational and investor highlight from the quarter really is the cash generation, leading to an ambition to get up towards up to $500 million dividends subject to operational performance on and activities across the corporate finance side. Now, that gives us an ambition.
We've committed to 30% post-tax cash from ops and looking to raise that up to $500 million for 2024 and 2025. Now, the next few slides I don't intend to spend time on, so slides 6, 7, 8, and 9, and in fact, slide 10 as well. These are summary slides of the transaction with Eni. We went through them in April. They really just threw out the highlights of what is a transformational deal, brings the company into a materially increased scale of over 100,000 barrels a day. It gives us the agility of an independent, but the capability of a major with access to Eni's technical capacity and abilities, and really unlocks future opportunities and to grow the business as well as unlocks significant dividends for shareholders.
So, really a transformational deal that we're working hard to complete, and the timeline of the deal is, as per previously announced, expected to complete in Q3. So on to slide 11, please, and this is just a bit more detail on production. As I mentioned, we're really expecting the deal to complete economically from first of July. So although the deal will complete in Q3 and September timeframe, expected, 1 July is the economic date. And really that gives us a kind of pro forma guidance of 80,000-87,000 barrels a day for the year. And that's really the key figure to get hold of as we move towards a full year production that's over 100,000 on a pro forma basis.
So, looking to drive through the summer period, there are some shutdowns, obviously, and assets over the summer, as is normal. So we'd expect Q2 production and Q3 production to be impacted by that, and then full ramp up by the end of the year, including the Seagull asset that's coming, new wells coming on stream, in the second half of the year, as part of the Eni UK portfolio. Slide 12, summary of the EOR-2 project, really just worth calling out some of the key stats here. This is a huge project, 500 tons of steel work and equipment installed, 36 kilometers of flow lines, 1.2 million offshore man hours, 510 operational drilling days. The semi-submersible rig has now moved off.
The project is essentially complete, really is in close out, and we're injecting polymer into the first well. So, very, very proud of the delivery in this project on time, on budget, against a COVID background and also an inflationary background. So we're really looking forward to the delivery of production over the next few years from those wells. Slide 13 just gives us a summary of some of the rig recertification work as well, to give an idea of the kind of scale of equipment that is recertified in this kind of program. These rigs are very complicated pieces of machinery themselves. At one point, we had large-scale assets across five European countries being recertified, and it's a major project in itself to bring those all together.
So, great to see those come through to completion, this quarter. Okay, slide 15, please. Most of these numbers we've called out already, but, key ones on the right-hand side here, 58.7 thousand barrels of oil equivalent a day. Unit OpEx, slightly up at $22.9 a barrel, but actually, that is, to do with operational production being a bit lower than we would have liked. The actual unit cost, so literally the cost, operating costs in dollar terms, is lower in 2023, 2024 Q1 rather, compared with 2023 Q1. So again, strict cost control continues, which helps us to maintain EBITDAX at over $339 million.
Just a net debt and liquidity, clearly from a bondholder perspective, is critical, and we're down at our lowest leverage ratio in our recent history. Slide 16 gives a bit more detail on EBITDAX. You'll see that there's hedging gains there of $73 million or $14 a barrel in the quarter. Again, very material delivery on our hedge strategy, which protects the business. I think it's called out there, operating costs of $122 million in Q1 2024, compared to $137 million in 2023. So a reduction there quarter-over-quarter, just calling out the cost management that is ongoing. And so despite production being materially lower, Q1 2023 on Q1 2024, we've maintained substantive EBITDAX at $62 a barrel.
Slide 17 gives a snapshot of the financial framework that underpins the execution. You can see that de-leveraging status and trajectory right through from June 2020 right through to the current results in March 2024. You see that we have excess cash of $285 offsetting our bond position and our other debt positions. That gives us, together with the liquidity we have and the low leverage ratio of 0.3x, that gives us a lot of confidence as we face the future and the decision that we have to make around projects and investment. Slide 18, just a little summary on the hedge book. Effectively driving value through the hedge book. You can see the targets there on the left-hand side.
We have been hedging at the peaks from a price perspective and seeking to do so for the last several years, with lots of value being delivered, and you can see that we've been active in the last week, in fact, particularly on oil. On gas hedges, rather, as we've been able to get the benefit of a lifting gas price. Actually, more of a flattening of the forward curve, particularly. So it's around hedging when the value is there in the market, and we've been doing that at scale in the last week or so. Latest positions on slide 19. And you can see the additional gas hedges we've put in place, including what we've called wide zero cost collars.
We had a put policy where we try and get 25% production to put options. The volatility in the market has meant that those have been very expensive to lay down, but the skews on some of the pricing collars have meant that we've been able to get some nice upside on the ceilings. So we've been laying down wide zero cost collars as part of our gas hedging strategy. So just part of an amendment, a minor amendment to our policy that helps us to protect the business and drive value. Okay, with that, I'll just move to slide 21 and the guidance. No change on the combined business or the base business guidance.
So really just saying that Q1 results are in line with expectations, in line with guidance, and enable us to confirm that today. Still looking to close out the deal, such that we have 87,000 barrels of combined guidance for the year. That's a full year of Ithaca standalone and six months of the Eni UK business. Same applies for the OpEx and the CapEx, and then the standalone Rosebank CapEx, as well as cash taxes. Those ranges should be familiar to those that are following the investment story. Slide 22, quick summary of the capital allocation framework. Very well known to most of you, if you follow the company. Quite unique, we think, in terms of our invest, protect, return, and evolve strategy.
This is just simply reset here for the combined business with production of over 100,000 barrels a day, with a renewed commitment to less than 1.5 times net debt, EBITDA, leverage, and with a commitment to 30% post-tax cash from operations dividend for 2024 and 2025, with a view to augmenting that up to $500 million using the evolve excess cash flow from the business. So strong, clear framework that we know investors and bondholders appreciate. So closing remarks from me. The business combination with Eni is transformational is slide 23. Really looking to close that out in Q3. We've announced changes to the executive team today, which is all built around supporting and readying the company for the new phase of the company post-deal.
We have delivered on the Phase II of EOR and Captain, which really is, underpinning value and growth in the next few years. We have built optionality into our portfolio by, extending the Cambo license such that we can work, options there, and partner discussions, towards FID. And we close out by confirming our ambition for up to $500 million of dividends in 2024 and 2025, due to the high cash generation in the business, that we, that we see. Right, so at that point, I will, I will take questions. I was trying to do that in 20 minutes, and I've done it in 19, so that's, that's, that's reasonable. Quick, just a quick fly-through. Happy to jump into any detail questions.
We have the financial release today, and happy to answer any questions on those or any strategic directional questions. I'll now pass back and open up for questions, please.
As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question on today's call, please refer to the Questions tab above the slides to submit your question. We'll take a brief pause. Actually, as a reminder, that's the Questions tab above the slides. As we have no questions, I'll hand it back to Iain for any concluding remarks.
Yeah, sure. I will take that everything was crystal clear in the presentation. As always, realize that not everyone asks questions on the calls and come to us directly, which we're very happy to do so. So there's an investor inbox that you all have access to, and very happy to answer questions directly through those and to explore any areas of the company strategy and performance, as well as the financials with you. So with that, I'll close out the session. Thanks for your interest and your support, and looking forward to an exciting second half of the year, particularly as we close out this deal. Thank you very much.