First of all, welcome to the Dolphin Drilling third quarter presentation, 2023. This is our fourth quarterly presentation since we listed the company last year, 28 October 2022. Please put forward your questions in the chat functions in the web player as we go along during the presentation, and we will answer those questions as good as we can after the presentation. As always, we refer to the disclaimer for risk and forward-looking statements. For those of you who are particularly interested, please have a look at those. My name is Bjørnar Iversen. I'm the CEO of Dolphin Drilling, and with me here today, I have Stephen Cox, our CFO, and I have with me also Ingolf Gillesdal, Vice President, Finance and Investor Relations. Let's then have a quick look at today's agenda.
The agenda today, I will take you through the Q3 highlights and the key financials. Then, Stephen will take you through the Q3 quarterly results and the key financials. And I will then take you a little bit into the company with strategy and operational slides, and quickly through our market outlook, and at the end, I will have a quick summary before we turn into the Q&A session. Okay, so let's then have a look at the Q3, highlights. In general, we can say that this quarter has been dominated by improved operation and a serious accumulation of new order backlog in the UK and in India, which bring the backlog, the firm backlog, up to $422 million, and with $941 million, including our options.
This quarter, the company has delivered an EBITDA of $4.6 million, which is an improvement of $3 million from the second quarter. This is mainly due to Blackford Dolphin delivering high operational uptime, both operational and financial uptime for GHL in Nigeria, and we have also reduced the OpEx with approximately $10,000, down to $106,000 per day. Let's then have a little look at the fleet update. We have signed a five-year frame agreement for Borgland with EnQuest in the U.K. This contract include a 137-day firm drilling program, and it includes a contribution for the reactivation of the Borgland Dolphin.
EnQuest has further an option here that needs to be confirmed within 90 days from contract signing to extend the, their additional work significantly as part of a five-year strategic alliance over, as I said, a five-year period. Within this five-year period, Dolphin Drilling will have the full schedule flexibility. And of course, that gives us the optionality to slot in work for other operators in the North Sea in a way which is of very high strategic importance for the company. Then commenting on the Letter of award from Oil India, which is commencing Q3 drilling operation, commencing Q3 2024 for up to 21 months of drilling, where we have 14 months of firm order backlog and 7 months with options.
We are in negotiations with Oil India to mobilize the Blackford Dolphin for an early commencement there, post over operations in Nigeria. Then a couple of words about the closing of Paul B. Loyd Jr. and the Transocean Leader acquisition that we did before the summer holidays this year. We are expected to take over the operations within the next 60 days. The company gained a U.K. acceptance from the HSE in the U.K. for Paul B. Loyd Jr. in November, and now it's about planning and taking over the operation, and we will do that as soon as the current well is finished. The rig is currently working for Neo on a well, and as soon as that well is finished, we will take over the operation.
Today, we are now preparing, what should I say? Installing computers on board, we are doing systems on board, we are training people in our systems, and so forth. So we are ready to do that within the next 60 days. Looking at the order portfolio, commenting a little bit to the bubble to the right there. We have a total order by revenue backlog now of $941 million, with $422 million in firm order backlog, and with $519 million in options. And this is excluding the Peak Petroleum contract that we have decided to take out in our base case assumptions. So commenting on the Nigeria client and contract status, we are continuing to have some payment delays in Nigeria.
And we are in close contact with GHL and the funding partners, and Stephen will take us through that in more detail in the finance chapter. And as I said, Peak is out, due to a continued breach of the contract conditions by the client there. We have decided to take the order backlog out of both the firm and the optional backlog, so the figures to the right there are excluding those figures. Finally, at the bottom of this slide, financing, we have signed a term sheet for a $65 million loan facility with Maritime Asset Partners. And of course, this is to fund of course the mobilization of the Borgland. It's yeah to give us let's say liquidity buffer to run the company.
Yeah, I think Stephen will probably comment on that on a separate slide back in later in the presentation. So, let's move to the next page, which says something about our headline financial data point, points, and let me repeat a little bit. Firm backlog, as mentioned, $422 million, which is up $45 million, excluding Peak. That gives us an estimated EBITDA backlog for the firm backlog of $220 million, and more than double, of course, for including the optional backlog. And it also the Q3 EBITDA backlog was up $3 million to $4.6 million, and we are pretty happy and feel that we are delivering on operations.
So safe, solid operations, high uptime, low operational cost, and taking in a significant amount of order backlog in the company, bringing the total backlog, including options, close to $1 billion. So we feel that we have really delivered in this quarter and really, really lifting the company. Let's then go to the Q3 results in more details, and I give the word to you, Stephen, please.
Okay, thanks, Bjørnar. Hello, everybody. So I'm gonna run through the financials for Q3, and I'm gonna dive a little bit into the balance sheet and in particular into the receivables position with GHL, as Bjørnar alluded to there, and some of the work that we've done around that balance. So first of all, our P&L statement for Q3. So we achieved $20.8 million of charter revenues for the quarter. As referenced, that's close to the maximum that is possible under the contract with GHL, so we're very pleased with that result. As we look down the page, we incurred OpEx of $12.5 million. That reflects reduced daily operating expenses on the Blackford. And again, we're very pleased with that as the operation stabilized in Nigeria.
We did have a one-time cost adjustment between our G&A line and our OpEx line at $0.4 million for those that are adjusting. So though our G&A on the number side of it, on the front of it, looks like it's up a little bit here, the bulk of that is really the adjustment between OpEx and G&A. Underlying G&A is $0.2 million more than previous quarter, and that's all attributable to the work that we've done onshore to support the transition process, training, et cetera, around the Paul B. Loyd Jr. crew. Our stacking costs for Borgland and Bideford are very stable. The bulk of that spend is on the Borgland, as we've discussed in the past. That remained very consistent with the previous quarter, and as I said, G&A's underlying is very consistent with previous quarter.
So all in, very stable cost base, slightly down OpEx, running on the Blackford. And with that increase in revenue, that almost all falls through to the EBITDA number. So we have a $4.6 million EBITDA. That's in line with our projections from last quarter, as we saw a very sort of stable result into June, and that carried through into Q3. Running down below the line, then down to the net unfortunately, net loss number, the bulk of that really being depreciation, amortization, and taxes, and just as the statement says on the bottom there, we're not actually cash paying taxes at this point. There's no requirement for us to do that as yet. These are accounting adjustments.
So moving into the balance sheet, as everybody is very much aware of, $65 million net proceeds raised following the placement and the subsequent repair offering in July and September. That is now reflected within the total cash balance of just shy of $60 million on the page. The account receivable number, and I'm gonna dive into this a little bit in the next couple of pages, is showing just shy of $41 million there. That is what I will refer to as a gross number. It, it does not reflect some of the deposits on account and some of the cash receipts that we've had through the quarter, and I'll explain that in a little bit. Our net PP&E number now includes the deposits we've paid to Transocean in line with the acquisition agreement of the Paul B. Loyd and the Leader.
So there's been two sets of deposits paid there, just over $6 million. That's included in that balance. Other current liabilities is the other number I'll call out and draw attention to. That's $42.4 million. That number includes the deposits we've received from GHL. It includes deferred mobilization revenues, including the Peak $6 million, and again, I'll touch on that in a little bit. It includes amounts we're due to our factor, and those amounts will be repaid as we look to refinance using the new facility, and it also includes various tax provisions, the bulk of which are not cash payable for many years into the future, if at all. We do then have the $50 million debt balance. That is the shareholder loan, which was in existence at the end of last quarter.
Just moving on to the cash flow. So we show here the year-to-date position on cash. Unfortunately, as we've alluded to, the receipts have been very slow from GHL. We've seen what I referred to as, drip-feeding of cash payments through Q3. We do have the investment, mainly again in Q3. That was CapEx related to the Transocean acquisitions. We had very little CapEx underlying, the Blackford up and running, and we do not have any investment yet flowing to Borgland, although that will happen with the reactivation in the future. And as I said, the full proceeds are invested. So really, our big focus here is working capital and the amount of cash we're having to deploy there, to keep the Nigeria operation running.
The net cash balance at the end of Q3 was just shy of $60 million. Included in that is $9 million of restricted cash, and that restricted cash is related to bid bonds, it's related to guarantees, it's related to the import bond that we had to post to get the Blackford into Nigeria, and it also includes just over $3.2 million worth of receipts that we had from entities related to GHL, but not GHL themselves, and I'll explain that on the next page. So this page 11 is a specific update around the Blackford in Nigeria. So as Bjørnar mentioned, a strong operational performance of the work we've been able to do. The rig has successfully drilled a well, a prospect there for the client.
We have seen a lot of disruption to the operation, and that's through delayed delivery of client-supplied equipment and services. We are on location, and we're on our first location still. The rig is there in standby mode at 95% day rate as per the contract. The client has given us indication of what they want to do next with the rig, which includes a sidetrack on existing location and a rig move. Unfortunately, we have been in a lot of dialogue and, and a very frequent dialogue with the customer and the principal and the customer directly, discussing the situation of payment and the overall financial condition of the client.
We have a lot of insight into that process, we are in direct contact with the client's main financier, which is First Bank of Nigeria, and we have visibility line of sight to how financing is going to work there. We also have line of sight to how the revenues and the current, production offtake, is happening in that client, and that is how our main payment source, is, is looking for the future state. We will obviously inform the market as payments come in from this point forward. But our net position, as I describe at the bottom of the page there, is, as at the end of Q3, GHL were due us $17 million. So the breakdown of that and the waterfalls to the right-hand side that we're displaying.
First of all, we explain how we moved from the Q2 receivables position, which was $19 million. We cut $23 million worth of invoices in the quarter. We received just over $4 million worth of payments. However, $3 million of those payments has not been applied to the receivables balance. Instead, we're holding those in the other current liability side of the balance sheet, and that is because they came from sources other than GHL as a company, and until we run our checks on those balances, we will not recognize those as offsets to the receivables. If we do, however, clear that process, and I move down to the breakdown of the balance, the $41 million of receivables can be viewed in the manner of $6 million is linked to Peak. As Bjørnar mentioned, and we're continuing to assess the options there.
There is an invoice in the system for $6 million. The offset of that invoice is recorded in our books as deferred mobilization fee, so that makes up part of the other current liabilities balance. So there's a netting there in the balance sheet. We have received just over $11 million in total from GHL and other parties connected with GHL. So that $11 million, 8 of that is the $8 million advance we received before we came to Nigeria, and the other 3 represents receipts we had during Q3. So that 11 can indeed be applied to the outstanding balance. Then within the receivables, there's $6 million of VAT and tax, and that's money that will obviously go through to the Nigerian government ultimately. So we have a corresponding liability recorded for that in the books as well.
So net position in our balance sheet at the end of Q3 is the 17, and that's the math. That's how that balance is derived. We obviously maintain contact with GHL frequently, and as I mentioned before, we will update. We are anticipating some payments in the coming weeks. So moving on to financing. We have for some time now been in discussion on financing with regards to specifically the Borgland, but obviously the situation with working capital is such that we are looking to pull some more money into the company over the period of the next few weeks. We have discussed this being connected specifically to the Paul B. Loyd, and that's how this indeed will be structured. So the most efficient way for us to do this financing is to pull this in at the subsidiary level.
The financing is gonna be connected to the Paul B. Loyd, and that's how this has been derived. All the other assets within Dolphin, the rest of the fleet will remain unencumbered. The financing will include, PCG from the listed vehicle, Dolphin Drilling AS. It is lined up and connected to the fixed tenor of the Paul B. Loyd with Harbour. So that gives it roughly 3.75 years through September 2027. And as you can see, the headline rate there is just below 10%. So we're very pleased with this facility and the process we have gone through, with MAP to get this done. As it stands, the facility is in a signed term sheet with a very advanced negotiation on long-form documentation.
We expect this to be ready within the coming weeks, and we plan to close this contemporaneously with the acquisition of the Paul B. Loyd Jr. As I previously talked about, the factoring facility with GHL, while that's worked very well for us over the past few years, it did restrict our flexibility, so we will repay and close that facility down. This new facility will very much give us an efficient way of funding the group. As I said before, it's at the subsidiary level. It's at Dolphin Drilling Limited, the UK OpCo level. But it will allow us to manage across the entire group very flexibly, the working capital needs of the business, as well as moving cash around and getting ourselves to the stage where we can hopefully get distributions done as quickly and efficiently as possible.
So with that, I will move on to how we are looking at the three assets: the Paul B. Loyd, the Borgland, and the Blackford in particular, and a little bit of high-level discussion around how we see day rates and OpEx for those rigs once we are on contract with all three. So as previously disclosed, the Paul B. Loyd rates with Harbour are known and in the market. We are seeing the rig and the results that we have visibility to from Transocean very much in line with the data on the page here. The Borgland and the Blackford, as Bjørnar has mentioned, we now have sight of the contracts and where those assets will go. And we're providing some very high-level guidance on what that could look like in the future.
The Bideford and the Leader remain stacked for us. Those are included in the waterfall here. Along with the startup in India and the exit from Nigeria, we would expect G&A to remain roughly stable with the position we have today. The CapEx and the maintenance CapEx for these assets will be somewhere in the $3 million-$5 million per range. That's consistent with how we have seen Blackford and Borgland, in particular, run as they've run through operating periods over the last 4 years. All in all, when we get to this position, we should see free cash flows for the company somewhere between $80 million and $100 million per year, and we reaffirm that guidance from the perspective of the future play of Dolphin Drilling. I think with that, I'll hand back to Bjørnar.
Thank you very much, Stephen. Thank you for taking us through the financial details. Let's then have a quick look at the company and the operational update, and have a little bit look at our strategy and where we are positioned in the market. As many of you knows, we are the only drilling contractor that are specifically focusing and have the moored semi-submersible market as our core focus. And as you see from the slide here, that's in the middle of the market with a water depth from around 65- ,800 m moored.
This market, and just to mention briefly, the market has been through the most extensive capacity reduction in history, where the market has been adjusted from 140 units, around 140 units in 2013, and down to a total, total around 36 today. Of which, there's a majority or 12-14 being landlocked in the Caspian Sea and in China, and that brings down the total market to around 20 rigs, 20 available rigs. So that means that this market has now limited supply in a market that is growing. So that's the underlying scene for the company, and that's why we see this also backlog growth. Okay, let's have a quick dive into the Paul B.
Jr. and the Transocean Leader acquisition, just to take you a little bit through what we've done lately since we signed the agreement with Transocean in June. As we said, it was signed the twenty-sixth of June, 2023. We have spent around 13,000 man-hours on execution to bring the operation over to Dolphin Drilling. The project is on track, and we are ready to take over the operation as soon as Neo Energy has finished their well. We have a milestone and more there, authority approval. The safety case was granted from the U.K. authorities the seventh of November 2023, which was approximately one month ahead of schedule, and the feedback from the U.K. authorities were excellent to the company, and we were very happy about that.
We had a very strong team that was really executing better than we anticipated. The remaining scope now is to transfer the contract scope over to us formally. And as mentioned, as soon as Neo has done their well, that will happen. So then we will transfer the ownership and the flag to us. On the people side, the Paul B. Loyd Jr. will come over with the crew intact, and we will strengthen it on certain onshore position from Dolphin Drilling. We see consistency in safety and operational performance and income through the whole period. So we are very happy with the way that Transocean has done the handover, the way they are operating the rig, and we are now phasing in our organization and systems day by day. The integration team, it's ongoing.
We have a lot of onboarding activities now every week, and in fact, I'm going over this week again to meet with parts of the crew. We have now 3-4 rounds with the crew to do the familiarization of the personnel and to build a strong and integrated team, both with incumbent people on the rig, but also with the Harbour organization. We expect to see this happen over the next 60 days. But as of today, I would say something early January, early mid-January, is to be expected based on the well progress as reported this morning. Let's then look a little bit at the company. As we said, we were heading for growth, and we did the acquisition in June. We are very happy with that.
If we look at number 1 there, let's take them one by one. Number 1 is in the right, upper right, the left corner. We have the Blackford Dolphin currently operating in Nigeria from GHL, and we had the details from Stephen there. We plan after our operations in Nigeria to move the rig to India and work for Oil India after the GHL/Peak campaign, but the GHL campaign. The Paul B. Loyd Jr., on number 2 there, will be taken over, as mentioned, and will operate under a 10-year frame agreement, 10-year frame agreement with Harbour, which is the largest oil company, oil operator in the U.K.
It was signed a 4.3-year contract, plus a 5-year with option at the end, which basically take the rig to close to 10 years. Also to mention on that, originally, it was assigned for a very long P&A campaign on the Balmoral field. With this is now changed in many ways to do production drilling for Harbour. So we see a change in the U.K. market, where a lot of the P&A activities, also the companies are twisting their well programs to production drilling, and we see that as a general trend. We also... Let's move to the number three, which is the Borgland. As sent out earlier today and also reported here, we have signed a 5-year frame agreement with EnQuest, with a lot of flexibility.
We plan to keep her in the North Sea to fill her up the next five years with the drilling activities primarily in the UK, and she's perfectly positioned to that. So the contract with EnQuest, including the options there, and the options there, this is we said this is significant amount of options that will be executed within the next 90 days, according to plans. So the Borgland will be operating in parallel out of our Aberdeen office on the UK shelf. Then we have number 4 there, the Dolphin Leader, or the Transocean Leader, which will be named Dolphin Leader. We are in the process of course, in the progress of renaming and taking over flag state and all the formalities.
We are now in the process of getting a full understanding of the rig, and we also have people on the rig this week, and we are positively surprised so far. We are working to get mobilization and SPS budget in place, and we can say that we have had several clients that has shown the interest in the asset. So what we say here, looking also at the Bideford to the right there, considered sold. It's, for us today, it seems that the Dolphin Leader is prioritized as the next rig out, and we are considering the Bideford for sale. They have completely different characteristics. You can say that the Leader was...
Transocean Leader was once the largest semi-submersible in the world, and the Bideford is a smaller P&A exploration, field developing, development machine, while the Leader is a big rig with very high capacities. So, of course, we will, when it comes to the Bideford, we will, we will consider alternative use of that asset, and we are, it's a candidate for sale for us. Let's then have a quick peek at my favorite slide in this quarterly presentation, the next slide, which is the build-up of revenue backlog. And as we see, if we go to the Q4 2022, it says $85 million, and that is back a year from now, when we listed the company.
So in many ways, when we listed the company, it was a company with a lot of rigs and little backlog... and today it's the other way around. We have a lot of backlog, and the rigs are in many ways, the three first rigs are in many well ways sold out for the next years. And now it's about converting backlog to cash flow and dividend. So the company has undergone a complete transformation, with, as I said, with no backlog, to close to $1 billion, including options. And this is in a market with good demand, where we have had quality operations over the last quarters and with very limited supply.
So in many ways, this quarter, and over the last quarters, we have feel that we have delivered on our promises, and, based on the market as we see it, there is more to come. So let's have a quick look at the market. Here we see the Loyd and the Blackford. So let's jump to the market outlook. Just commenting on the market, here we see some bubbles here. One bubble says 10 tenders and requests. That is the... I would say, the European market, including the Med. Then we see, let's say, South Africa and, no, sorry, South America and West Africa, 5-10 tenders at the moment. And we see India, Asia, with 5 tenders and requests moving.
Even if the ultra-deepwater market has flattened out a little bit, as we've seen from the market trends lately, we as a more market, we have been, I would say, 6-12 months behind that market. So that means we still have a lot of demand momentum in the market, as we see from these tenders and also from the latest awards with Oil India and EnQuest. But there's more than 20 opportunities out there that we are actively working with, where we see momentum and opportunities to sign up more work on our assets. So time-wise, as I said, we are behind. There was a big momentum in the ultra-deepwater the last year up until now.
We still have a lot of momentum in our part of the market, and as mentioned, we have a lot of opportunities in the pipeline. Having a little bit closer look at the UK semi market, we see a trend where the contracts awarded goes from... It was short, a short-term market, but if we look at the latest awards with the Ocean Patriot, the Paul B. Loyd, and the Borgland, we see an average contract award length between three and five years. So we see that the whole market in the U.K. goes from short to long, and with our acquisition and our assets, we are in the dead center of that, in a market with very few assets, as shown in this foil. Okay, let's then jump to the summary slide.
Looking at the summary slide, if we go to one, the company has delivered $4.6 million in EBITDA during this quarter. This is up $3 million from last quarter, with high financial and operational uptime and low OpEx. Two, we have signed a contract, a five-year frame agreement with EnQuest, which will, with a lot of options that will be called on within the next 90 days for the Borgland, with full flexibility for us to slot in work in the U.K. or wherever over that five-year period, which gives us a strategic position, which we intend to use to bring in more work.
We have letter of award during the quarter received from Oil India, which, according to the contract, should commence Q3 2024, where we are doing negotiations, we have negotiations with Oil India to mobilize the Blackford for an early commencement in India. The total revenue backlog has grown to $941 million, adjusted for the Peak, which we have taken out, of which $422 million is firm and $519 million with quality options. We have also signed, as mentioned, earlier and in detail by Stephen, a term sheet with Maritime Asset Partners Limited for a $65 million loan facility to increase our liquidity robustness. So that sums up the quarter. I will also, on the next page, comment a little bit on the company and the company structure.
We have 53% of the company and the shares floating on Euronext Growth. We have more than 1,000 shareholders, primarily consisting of Norwegian, U.K., and U.S. investors. We have Strategic Value Partners, SVP, as one of, as our largest owner with 28%, and we have S.D. Standard and the Third Cliffsville with the Ferncliff as well Øystein Spetalen in there with as a 19% owner in the company. We are very happy with, as I said, with the current, with our current quarter and the way the company has transformed. I have also, on the next page, I'm summing up the whole presentation with our vision, mission, and values. Why do I do that? I have promised myself to use this in all our presentations going forward.
We are onboarding 2 rigs and 2 rig crews. That is close to 300 new personnel, and we're using, of course, our vision, mission, and values to onboard them. But of course, as we say, the company is deeply committed to deliver pioneering drilling services for the future, being the oldest Norwegian driller with 65 years experience. We have a vision to be the trusted team with delivering unmatched customer service, innovation, and performance. And our mission is to work very close to our customers to achieve this. And in that, let's say, illustration to the right, we see trust, excellence, accountability, and momentum, which can be summed up as team. And of course, built on trust, built on excellence, built on accountability, and built on momentum, and team is our values.
With that, I think I would like to open up for our Q&A session. So I think I'll give the word back to you again, Stephen. Have we got some questions in there?
Yes, we do. We do. So I will attempt to do these in some kind of logical order, so we've got quite a few to go through here. And I'm gonna try and start with the market-kind of based questions first, Gunnar. Here's a good one: "So in management view, what is the biggest misconception when comparing the current cycle for oil rigs compared to 2000- 2014 that we observe in the market?
I think this time, there's more a supply issue than a demand issue. We see all the, what should I say, traditional oil drilling basins coming back to life, and as I said, there were 140 assets before, now there's 20 available. So what I see, it's the supply, it's lack of supply of people or rigs, first of all, or assets, and we see that particularly now with, for instance, Petrobras, who is trying to grow, and they don't get hold of assets and services. And also, what should I say, people and services. So drilling rigs, people and services, there's a lack this time of it. Looking at the last circle, there was a new build cycle in there, and there were a lot of yards building.
Now, there's zero in that, on that side of the equation.
A very related question, which you may have already answered: "How do you consider the potential work in the Brazilian market?
I think there's an awful lot of work that will be done in the Brazilian market, and we are in dialogue with Petrobras continuously. And we have continuous meeting with the Brazilians, so we look at Brazilians as one of the core markets. And what should I say? It's the biggest offshore market in the world, and I think that says everything.
Mm-hmm. I'll maybe add a little bit on it. We obviously, looking at that market, are very conscious of economics.
Definitely.
There's many things to consider to work effectively over there. Okay, so then maybe in a couple more of the detailed questions. There's a question regarding how the frame agreement works regarding the Borgland. "Will we be on standby with EnQuest for them or work for them all the time?" I know you have mentioned the program.
Well, we can say that what we have there, we have To sum up the mechanics of that contract, it works in the following way: Per today, there's a firm work scope. There's a optional work scope that will be firmed up within the next 90 days, subject to partner approval, and we expect, of course, that to happen. That flexibility in that frame agreement is we can do the work when we want to do the work. So that means we can do it continuously, let's say, from after doing the SPS of... and mobilization of the rig, or we can put it at the back of that five-year cycle or in the middle of that five-year cycle.
So if another, let's say, player in on, in the UK market, and we can mention there's a lot moving out there, you have the Repsol, you have the Ithaca, you have the Dana, you have the Serica, you have... What more do we have there in Gulf? We have,
Neo.
We have the Neo, and we have probably Peak, no, not Peak, Harbour. So we see at least between 5 and 10 core clients in the U.K. that need drilling assets. And what we have now, we can slot it in wherever we want.
Yeah. So there's a couple more here. I'm just gonna run a bit... So there's a few obviously related to Nigeria... and we'll maybe try and wrap those into one discussion. So, there's a question around: Has Blackford itself experienced any technical difficulties related to the rig, or is it more about suffering from lack of equipment and services?
The answer is the rig has operating perfectly, so has the crews, and I would say it's 10 out of 10. What we see is logistic issues and all these normal issues that we have seen earlier in, let's say, African operations. It's about logistic, it's about approvals, and of course, we are providing services.
Mm-hmm. And then there's a couple of questions that are related here about expected payments, and as I said before, we will update as and when those happen. I think the key thing maybe to say is Bjørnar and I are in constant dialogue with GHL, with the principals in GHL and with the financiers. We do anticipate cash is coming relatively soon. However, we're not gonna give any specific guidance on that. We will update instead when that does happen. And then a couple of related questions to that, obviously, about we have talked before about when we can get to the point of distributions, and we've talked about mid- to late 2024. Is that still the case after the problems in Nigeria?
I think I would say the answer to that is, that is still very much our plan to get to that point. We obviously are watching the situation carefully in Nigeria and planning the cash flows of the company carefully, around about that situation. But again, we don't wanna... We wouldn't go too much around that. Then there's a couple of questions around Oil India and taking Blackford across. Are we negotiating timing and start date, and is there a possibility that that can start early?
The answer is yes to that. Oil India, they have a wish to take that earlier than anticipated, and as we said, that was what we have communicated before, is third quarter. Sorry, third quarter next year, and they would like to move it into the second quarter. I can be as specific as that.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. And then one topic we obviously haven't mentioned too much, but there is a question about the Keppel rigs.
Yep. What we see on the Keppel side, we see that the Norwegian market seems a little bit quiet, and of course, those two rigs are built for the Norwegian market. We have been in close dialogue with the biggest player in Norway, who's been the Equinor, Vår Energi , and Aker BP, and as of today, we don't see any long-term active prospects in Norway, but that might change. But that's what we see now.
Mm-hmm. And then there's a couple of questions here just around the illustrative EBITDA and cash flow from page 13. Is it representative of, of what we're seeing? The answer to that is yes. It is representative of, of contracts that we are now seeing. And, regarding the Bideford, can you elaborate on whether or not you're in any discussions already?
What we can say on the Bideford, we have had the Bideford in layup for a long time. We have, as you see, you take out one rig, after one rig, after one rig. That's the way the world works, and now we have taken out from... We had five rigs in layup, of these rigs, more or less, and now we have two left. Of those two, we have the Leader as the biggest one and the one probably with the biggest potential. Then we have the Bideford, as I would say, as our rig number five, with complete different characteristic. To answer specific to the question, there's been dialogue with two different clients for the Bideford on P&A activities, and that's what we see there.
But still we see that the Leader has a bigger operational framework than, or footprint, than the Bideford. So I think I cannot say so much more than that.
Mm-hmm. Then just one more has popped up relating to EnQuest. Can you make a bit clearer what this contract would mean for Borgland if you got no other work from the incremental availability? So I think that where that question is going and what we're talking about there is the firm scope that we have booked and the mobilization contribution that we have booked, that more than covers our reactivation cost and OpEx through that period. So we very much reaffirm the commitment we made previously, which is we will not take rigs out and take risk on investment to hope for more days.
Exactly.
- The economics in that cover us.
Definitely.
That is all the questions we have for today.
Thank you. To sum up, I would like to thank all of you for calling in and listening to us. To sum up, we are happy with the quarter. We feel that the company is completely transformed within the last year, and I think with the latest contract with EnQuest and the work that we're doing with Oil India, it seems that we now have the three rigs committed and with close to a $1 billion order backlog, including options in there, with quality options in there. I think we feel that we have delivered the last quarter. So on that note, we would like to thank you all, and I hope that you can call in on us also on the next quarterly presentation. Thank you.