Good afternoon and welcome to DNO's first quarter 2024 earnings call. My name is Jostein Løvås and I head up communication here at DNO. The plan for today's call is to start with a brief presentation which will be held by DNO's Managing Director Chris Spencer and our CFO Haakon Sandborg. After the presentation we will open up for questions in the Q&A session where our Executive Chairman Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani will be available to take your questions. Please note that the Q&A session is for investors and analysts and any media requests will be dealt with separately. During the presentation all other participants in this call will be in a listen-only mode. If you want to ask a question in the Q&A please click on the virtual hand on top of your screen.
When you are selected, you will be notified on your screen that you are allowed to unmute, after which you will remember to unmute yourself. With that, let's start the presentation. I hand over to Chris.
Thank you very much, Jostein, and good afternoon to everyone from Oslo. It's my pleasure to be here today to talk you through our Q1 2024 and indeed subsequent events. I have the pleasure of presenting this quarter because I think it's a great quarter in terms of illustrating the value creation that we aim to achieve in DNO. As we've said many times, that value creation is based on our low-cost production combined with our attractive growth prospects both in terms of organic portfolio development and inorganic through acquisitions. All of those elements are at play in the slides ahead. That in turn allows us to return some of the value created to our shareholders by continuing our dividend program. Let's move into the first slide, Jostein. One back, please.
So if we look back at Q1 then on the back of the ramping up of production in Kurdistan and the similar production in the North Sea we had strong revenues. And in our flagship Tawke license we're pretty much back to where we were before the Iraq-Turkey Pipeline shutdown. And we discussed in previous quarters we are selling into the local market there at the moment. We continue to push hard on our buyers and we've now managed to get prices into the upper 30s. But importantly we're still selling what we call on a cash-and-carry basis. So we receive payment prior to delivery of the oil and now the vast majority of those payments are made to us in international bank accounts. On the North Sea side our exploration story continues with another very strong performance in the APA round.
I think we touched on that in the previous quarter. This is now all done and dusted and officially awarded, hence it appears again. But importantly we've made great steps so far in 2024 on rebalancing our North Sea portfolio through two bolt-on acquisitions, one of which was announced just this morning. And we will through that add more than about 12 million barrels of oil equivalent in terms of reserves and resources. And importantly they contribute immediately to the production and therefore the cash flow of the company. We're looking at probably around the 5,000 mark this year but the nature of the two transactions will actually see that increasing a bit over the next couple of years and we'll come back to that on the next slide.
As I mentioned, the strength of the operational performance, our growth prospects, and the very strong balance sheet that we still maintain, that Haakon will describe in his segment, has allowed the board to maintain the dividend unchanged. If we move on then to the next slide, please. Fresh news out this morning. We're very, very pleased with another bolt-on. We announced, of course, the bolt-on in the U.K. earlier in the year, and we're pleased now that we've been able to add some production in the Norwegian sector. Most particularly, we're very happy because it's giving us a new core area. We had a presence in this area already with the Marulk and Alve licenses, and the Alve license includes our ongoing Andvare development.
We've now been able to pick up from Vår Energi the other producing and under-development fields in this area and an interest in the Norne field and FPSO hub itself which is obviously critical for further development of the area. This is therefore now a core area for us in DNO and we obviously see good potential remaining which is why we chose to make this acquisition. In addition to that it's a nice production profile because the Verdande field will be coming on stream in late 2025. So we have we're expecting about 3,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day this year but it will actually be increasing over the next couple of years as that project comes in. Finally as anyone who follows our adventure in the North Sea knows we've had great success on the exploration side.
We have moved and we've now moved as I'll talk to you on the next slide our third project into the development phase. And so this adding production obviously generates financial synergies as we move forward and also should give our board and the market generally more confidence that we can fully finance our development program and reap the value from our exploration success. Jostein, next slide please. So indeed that then we've spent quite some time in recent quarters on the exploration side of our business and we're still very active in that area. But the milestone the recent milestone in our organic growth portfolio is the final investment decision amongst the partners on what used to be called Brasse and which will now be called Bestla.
Brasse's been a long journey for us and so we're very, very pleased to finally have found a commercially attractive route to development for the field. What is interesting to us is that the collaboration and cooperation that we've achieved with the operator of the host has in my mind been instrumental in opening this up. DNO has been very active on Brasse for a number of years and we have finally through a very collaborative relationship with the operator of Brage, the new operator of Brage, OKEA been able to come up with a commercially attractive solution. There's also been good alignment with other partners in the area and you've seen a couple of those come into Brasse/Bestla as I have to get used to calling it with minority interests. And certainly that alignment in the partnership has also helped us get to the point we are at today.
So now we're looking forward to ministry approval and getting into the project execution phase and seeing first production from Bestla in 2 or 3 years' time. H1 2027 three years' time. As I said at the top of the slide, we're not to put our exploration efforts in the shadow. We had an important appraisal well during the first quarter which we confirmed type of volumes we had thought we'd discovered at the Heisenberg Discovery and tested the Deeper Prospect at Hummer. And we're currently drilling at the Cuvette well which is also in the Trollveggen area and we have 5 more wells to come this year. So there'll be plenty more news on that front. I think with that I'm turning over to Haakon to take us through the numbers.
Good, good. Thank you, Chris. Yes, hello everyone and welcome again to our first quarter earnings call. We're looking at the financial review now and start with these key P&L results for Q1 2024. In the middle here. We'll compare those mostly to the previous quarter, the fourth quarter. Starting with revenues, I think that was noted already. We achieved higher net production in Kurdistan in Q1. A key reason for that was that the Peshkabir field was in full production for the whole quarter. Still our net entitlement production dropped under our production sharing contract as the carry-forward cost pool was fully utilised during the first quarter under our Tawke production sharing contract. The lower entitlement volumes in turn led to a $21 million drop in revenue from Kurdistan in the quarter.
Our North Sea production was reduced in Q1 mainly due to lower uptime on the Marulk and Alve gas fields. The sales volumes were still up on higher lifted volumes. This provided a $5 million increase in revenues from the North Sea in this quarter. In total group revenues were thereby down by $16 million in the first quarter. Now for the costs in this quarter we had lower depreciation in Kurdistan due to lower entitlement volumes. Other expenses are also down in Q1 including expensed exploration and impairment charges. Mainly due to the lower cost we thereby show an increase in operating profits of $23 million to a level of $61 million in this first quarter. As we move down further on the P&L statement net finance expenses are also reduced from Q4.
This is mainly due to lower interest expense following the buyback of our DNO 03 bond in January this year while tax expenses increased on higher taxable profits. But all in net income thereby increased by $13 million to $17 million in Q1. Next please. Moving now to the cash flow. And operational cash flow came in at $100 million. That's a good round number I think. And that was up $7 million from Q4 last year. This cash flow for Q1 was net of $10 million in negative working capital adjustments. And these in turn were mainly driven by a decrease in payables and accruals mostly in the North Sea. There were no NCS on Norwegian Continental Shelf tax payments or refunds in the first quarter. And we don't expect any and we don't see any in the second quarter either.
Likewise we don't expect any NCS tax payments in the second half of this year due to high exploration expenditures and CapEx through 2024. We had a drop in our net investments by $18 million in Q1 to $51 million. That was net including a $4 million in cash inflow from Côte d'Ivoire. The main investments in this quarter included CapEx of $36 million primarily on North Sea developments and also North Sea exploration expenditures of $18 million. Finance cash outflow was $162 million. That was primarily covering $131 million of the buyback of the DNO 03 bond and also dividend payments of $23 million in this quarter. Our free cash flow, which is mainly operational cash flow less CapEx and decom, came in at $44 million. Up $11 million from Q4.
So all in our cash balances were reduced by $111 million in Q1 mostly due to the bond buyback. To go to the balance sheet you see that our balance sheet strength is very much intact with high cash balances of $606 million. And we have a net cash position of $171 million at the end of the first quarter. We're also certainly pleased to see an increase in the equity ratio in the quarter reaching now a strong level of 49% at the end of Q1. It should be noted here that we since year-end 2021 have strengthened our financial position significantly through a debt reduction of $450 million in this period while we had the dividend payments and share buybacks totaling $270 million since year-end 2021.
So with the debt reduction and in addition higher retained earnings in this period our equity ratio has increased from 35% at year-end 2021 to the current strong level of 49%. And on this basis we absolutely remain in very good shape with our current capital structure. I think I'll now end the financial discussion and back to you Chris.
Thanks Haakon. And very impressive when you put that free perspective on it must I say. Thank you. Just before we go into Q&A as usual a few comments as we start to look ahead. We can't have a presentation without discussing the hope for the reopening of the export pipeline from the Kurdistan Region. Haven't touched on that much so far but clearly it's very, very important to DNO. It would double our revenue from the region if that were to happen.
And therefore we do spend a lot of time and energy on that. We engage directly with the governments involved and also obviously with peer companies. And we are again hopeful that the announced meetings between Baghdad and Erbil between the two ministries this week can then give a new injection of energy into those discussions. Notwithstanding the fact that we're on local sales clearly that market has stabilized. We have reliable income and positive cash flow because of our low production costs. So we have tentatively started to reinvest. We had three wells that we just stopped drilling quite abruptly at safe points last year when ITP shut. We're going back to recomplete those and stimulate them and bring them on stream.
Then the major investment from DNO into the region at the moment as we've described in previous quarters is the Baeshiqa 3 well which is the operating on the Baeshiqa license and is a commitment well as part of the development plan there. On the North Sea we continue to work as we've been talking about in this presentation. We will continue to work on adding value through the drill bit and acquisitions. And of course the drill bit is sort of euphemistic for exploration and development. And we've seen good milestones on both those areas in the past quarter and there's more to come. So summing up we still like to think ourselves as a bold and nimble international oil and gas company. We're into our second half century, our second semi-centennium.
I'll finish as I started by pointing to the value creation that we have based on our low-cost production, successful exploration, and attractive growth prospects supported by the robust balance sheet that Haakon just described enables us to provide what I think is attractive value distribution to our shareholders which as it says ultimately ranked highest for us and as they should for any listed company. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you Chris and Haakon for the presentation. I think we are then ready to start the Q&A session. Let me see some of you have already raised your hands. I think the first question goes to Teodor Nilsen. Please remember to unmute yourself.
Good afternoon and thanks for taking my questions. Three questions. First on the acquired assets which looks like a very reasonable deal from your point of view. Just will that be immediately free cash flow accreted? Second question that is a further M&A. How do you think around the cost or capital for assets on the Norwegian Continental Shelf compared to other jurisdictions you have assets in? And third question that is all on the pipeline. As you said Chris you didn't discuss that too much in the presentation. Of course acknowledge the fact that it's extremely difficult to predict anything or what will happen going forward. But I just wonder what have you seen in terms of progress since we last met at the fourth quarter presentation three months ago? Thanks.
Thanks, Teodor. Maybe I'll take the last question first and then hand over to Haakon for the financial questions on the acquisition. So over the last three months, what's been happening on the pipeline? I would say when we look back, there's been—we thought that there was an important agreement between Baghdad and Erbil on some of the technicalities around the budget law at one point. That wasn't a complete solution but was maybe one piece of the puzzle. Then it went quiet. And then I think that on the back of the Prime Minister of Iraq's trip to the US, there has been some renewed energy. Perhaps it was that. Perhaps it was President Erdoğan from Turkey's visit to Baghdad.
Difficult to really put cause and effect together, but it seems that there is a new initiative that's been launched by the Ministry of Oil in Baghdad which they talk about in the press having two committees to try to resolve the issues between them and Erbil. And they're reportedly meeting this week in both the technical and commercial committees. So we will see what happens. As you know, there've been lots of attempts to solve this over the past year, so I've given up speculating on when a resolution may come. Haakon?
Yeah. Sorry, Teodor. We didn't hear you very well on the first two questions. Could you please repeat on those? We hadn't gotten the volume set up correctly.
Yeah. Sure. Absolutely. We'll do it. So first question that was on the acquired assets in North Sea. Question is will those assets be immediately free cash flow accreted or will there be more CapEx and operational cash flow over the next few quarters? That's the first question. And second question was on cost of capital. How do you assess the cost of capital for assets on Norwegian Continental Shelf compared to assets you have in other jurisdictions?
Yeah. On the first question whether these acquired assets will be free cash flow positive? We have a clear yes on that. There'll be some CapEx going in so that free cash flow number will of course move up and down a bit through the years. But we see free cash flow out of the assets from early on. I'm not sure if you want to add to that Chris?
No. Just agree. Yes.
I think your second question Teodor was on the cost of assets or the acquisition costs for licences or assets on the Norwegian Continental Shelf relative to some of the other provinces that we are in. Is that right?
Well yeah partially. It was more around the cost of capital when you assess M&A opportunities. How much higher risk do you assess to jurisdictions outside Norway compared to Norway i.e., what's the spread of cost of capital Norway versus other jurisdictions?
Right. Okay. Well, we work through our WACC model for the regions that we are in, and they will differ as you point out, Teodor. So, exactly what the difference would be, it could be 4%, 3%-4% between what we typically apply in Norway and some of the other areas that we are in. So, it depends a bit on the inputs to our WACC calculation, country risk, etc. But I would sort of point you in that direction on a level of what the difference will be.
Okay. That's.
It's a tough question. I mean that's correctly answered from a financial point of view. But Teodor, one aspect is jurisdiction. Another aspect though is, are we talking about exploration, development, production? Are we talking about deep water offshore where we have to say spend $1 billion before we get any oil? Or are we talking about Peshkabir where we have positive cash flow as soon as we bought the first well on stream? All of these things have vastly different risk profiles and so we add that to the jurisdictional risk when we're assessing projects.
Yeah. Sure. Understood. I'll leave it there. Thanks.
Okay.
A couple of points from me. Teodor, as you know, it's not possible to get access to traditional sources of financing in Kurdistan because of the status of Kurdistan. So there is that difference. And in the past when we have accessed financing it's been typically through the Nordic bond markets. But traditional sources of financing are not available in Kurdistan so it's not really comparable to the range of options available in the North Sea and perhaps other areas. Secondly on the issue of the pipeline reopening and our status in Kurdistan I mean I can say with some comfort that we're not in a terrible position in Kurdistan as we were when the pipeline first shut in. There was no market for "local markets" for crude from us and from the other producers.
But that market's now developed and it's almost limitless in the sense that oil directly or in product form finds its way to global markets. What matters to us is that we are paid based on our contractual rights and the formula in hard currency outside of Kurdistan and before we agree to load the tankers. This has not always been the case as you know. And we approach sort of a $40 mark to the extent we are actually paid that amount. And on delivery that's worth $10, $20 a barrel to us and maybe even more. And $40 is not a bad price given our cost of production in Kurdistan. We prefer to have had all of the above: global prices, prompt payment, no arrears, etc. But that's never been the situation in Kurdistan for us or the other companies.
Although we have said that when arrears build up we have confidence that over time we'll find a way to get those arrears paid to us. We did it when the big arrear buildup occurred at the time of ISIS and we got that more in terms of sort of contractual cancellation of certain obligations we had. We got it by picking up a larger piece of the Tawke license which turned out to be a very good deal for us. And I expect our arrears which are now probably just over $300 million we'll get paid in some form or fashion. But in the meantime we have an unlimited market for our production. We keep investing in Tawke, raising production. We're now averaging about 80,000 barrels a day. I hope we can get that up higher. We'll see how those wells that Chris referred to perform once completed.
We're doing a lot of other workovers. We have other things in our inventory of short-term low-cost investments we can make to get production up. We've managed to make up for the losses we incurred early in the process by having a reasonably robust revenue stream and cash stream coming out of Kurdistan. It's manageable and our financials are showing that now.
Okay. I believe the next question goes to Eivind Hagen. Please go ahead, Eivind.
Yes. Thank you. Adding to Bijan's comments on the local market, you are mentioning that the realized prices are up from mid- to low-$30s to now high $30s. What is it that is driving this price increase? Is it the buyers that are now starting to compete more in price as volumes are reaching some sort of short-term maximum level or what is the driver?
Yes. It is about there's now more demand than there is supply. Before there was more supply than there was demand. Obviously the laws of supply and demand do work. There are buyers who prefer working with us because we're reliable, we have large volumes, and we've been a good partner for them in this process and vice versa. We have our choice of buyers as well and we have preferred buyers. They understand that as markets move in one direction or the other prices should be adjusted and we're in a position to adjust them. There's of course also a dearth or a lack of sufficient volumes of heavier Iraqi blend crudes in the Mediterranean because the pipeline's been shut in for as long as it has been. So the market for these kinds of crudes is stronger.
That happens seasonally or sometimes in respect to market movements. The buyers are making a lot of money on these trades. We like to see buyers make some money on the trades but we don't like to leave extra dollars behind. We have conversations with them and they understand. When the markets move in the opposite direction we move and when they move in our direction they move. It's been a good relationship and I think there's a large constituency now of buyers for our crude. It's finding its way again into the far corners of the global oil trade. It does take some discussion with them and explanation of our situation. If we understand, which we do now much better, what their economics look like we can ask for a better split for us.
They know that if they don't concur, we have other options. My hope is that we will continue to move this price up because there still is money left on the table by us and we have a fairer share of that. So I mean even if $40 a barrel isn't a bad price, there are times when oil companies would love to have had $40 a barrel for their crude. If the trade-off for us is somewhat lower prices in exchange for predictability and assurance of payment in dollars, well, that's a pretty good trade for us. We are taking in quite a bit monthly. I think probably more than the market has realized from our Kurdistan operations. We reinvest some of it. We have to invest to keep production going given again the nature of these fields and the natural field decline.
It doesn't take very much to invest to get attractive additional barrels out of the ground. In my mind it's still a very good business. There are political challenges and other challenges legal that have to be addressed. In the meantime we reached a not unhappy equilibrium between the Kurdistan producers and the markets. I think this is true probably of other companies as well. We're in a special situation because we produce as much as we do. My hope is that in the not too distant future we'll get up to 40 and maybe push a little bit higher unless there are major changes in the global market. That we can maintain 80 and maybe push that up a bit more. We're pretty optimistic about that.
Good. Okay. Anything else Eivind or Javi? Okay then I think we'll move on to Tom Erik Kristiansen. Please talk.
Thank you. Thank you for taking my question. Tom Erik Pareto here. I'm understanding it correct that you now after earlier being kind of quite cautious of saying that local demand will fluctuate a bit over time saying that you see it more steady and more established. So that's question one. And then is there a scope now to as this progresses and times move on to negotiate with the KRG to receive some of the receivables back or recover some of that on an ongoing basis in the near future? And then third and last question is on CapEx on the NCS. Can you touch a bit on where you expect that to go kind of this year, next year, and 2026 on a profile basis given the development opportunities that you have in front of you?
If you start with the first part of that again on Kurdistan, as I mentioned, the market for Kurdish oil is unlimited at the right price. We had the same issue came up during the ISIS period when there were a lot of topping plants around in Kurdistan. And I'd be asked, "Well, how large is local demand?" And we'd say, "Well, local demand is not exactly the amount that's consumed in the local market but it's the amount of oil that local refiners, topping plants, refiners, traders can take and move.
And they can move that oil into the far reaches of the market: Singapore, other refineries." So the demand is in that respect at the right price, unlimited at least for now, even though the topping plants were collected and shut down many years ago because they were dirty in terms of they're very simple topping plants and spewed a lot of noxious gases and other byproducts. So I think we're in a good place there. On the question of the arrears, last time around our arrears were approaching I think $1 billion. They're huge. And when the Kurdistan government was in a position to sit down and talk to us for a while they weren't, they asked us to share in the pain of the ISIS attacks and lack of any revenues from Baghdad. And we shared in that.
So when the situation turned around, they sat down and said, "Well, what do you want? Do you want cash?" And we said, "No, because if we get the cash, the best place to put it is in Kurdistan and in Tawke." And we had an arrangement where we had set certain parameters for the Tawke assumptions: $50 oil prices. But anyway, so we got the money back and then some. I expect there'll be a similar conversation. Hopefully the Sheikh Owais comes in. There'll have to be some discussions with the government as to how best to proceed and under what terms. That could be a time to do some trades, cash for producing rights. Maybe it can be part of an extension of the Tawke license which has now been operating quite some time.
So it'd be hard for the government to come up with the cash to us and to the other producers which I think approached about $1 billion because that money was used and it was the only source of revenues that they had at the time. It'd be hard but not impossible and maybe as part of a tripartite arrangement with Baghdad, there'll be some resolution of that. But I'm certainly not worried that in due course we'll find a solution that'll be fair and will be fair and it'll turn out to be a win-win situation as it was last time. It has been painful for us but now we're comfortable that the money's coming directly to us, not going through that channel where it can be blocked again if the government's needs grow once again.
If we're belt-tightening, we've always expected them and then told the government they've got to belt-tighten too. It's not something that governments want to do but they understand the importance of the oil companies, those remaining Kurdistan now, to their economy and to their future. So it'll sort itself out. And I think we've revisited some of these contracts that are quite complicated and have a lot more going on. And we've been able to sort of claw back some monies towards the arrears but not significant ones. That'll have to be part of a different kind of a negotiation. But in the meantime, cash coming out, I don't know how much we get. Chris and Haakon would know. So maybe $30 million a month or so coming out of Kurdistan. As I say, that's not peanuts. Okay?
Good. Then there was a question on CapEx for the NCS from Tom Erik. He asked about 2025 and 2026. Well, we haven't really guided much on those years in detail as of yet. This year we have provided a CapEx number for Norway and North Sea around $175 million which was given in our February Q4 update. As we look at spend levels for 2025 and 2026, there will be some increase from that number because we're going to have more developments coming in. Previous Brasse, now Bestla will ramp up over the next years. We have others as well like Berling and others. So there will be some years now that you will see a bit higher than we had or projecting for 2024.
Then, when you head into later on in 2027 or at least 2028 and onwards, there will be increasing CapEx on developments as we have several development projects that are kicking in with the more spending especially from 2028. So, I think just to give you some idea of what we're talking about, at least some increase now from 2024 over the next years. And then with the bigger increases kicking in later on from 2028 onwards. So, there's quite a big program here now over those years. And as we have talked about before, that will give us a real organic ramp-up in production as these various projects come on stream over the next many years. And we have so at least a very significant increase in our production from all these organic projects. So, anything to add on that, Chris?
No, it's a good summary. Of course, once you get into 2027, 2028 and so forth, there's a lot of work to be done. A lot of the decisions to be taken before that time. But that's certainly what we're aiming in order to get that production increase that we've challenged ourselves to achieve in the North Sea.
Okay. We've got some more questions here because I think the ambition is to round this off at the one-hour mark. We'll move on to Christoffer Backe. Please go ahead.
Hello. Christopher from Clarksons here. Thanks for taking my questions. First of all, congrats on a strong quarter. My first question relates to your expectations in terms of production in the North Sea this year. Do you still anticipate a closing on Arran in Q2? Second question relates to M&A. While it's quite clear that you still want to increase your footprint in the North Sea, are you considering doing even bigger things in the North Sea, for example, spinning off the North Sea segment or merging that part with another NCS-based company? The last question, a rather technical one but regarding the ITP agreement between Turkey and Iraq, is there anything stopping KRG from exporting through Turkey once the current agreement runs out in the summer of 2025? Thank you.
So the first is on the question. The second was Arran. So Arran, yes, we will complete Arran in Q2 as previously forecast. That combined with the acquisition we announced today is changing the frame quite a bit on our North Sea production. We've also had some ups and downs as we always do in the fields that are going on. And similarly, as Bijan's touched on over in Kurdistan, we've been ramping Tawke up and we have hopes for the rest of the year there. So we are looking at our production guidance to the market. We haven't changed it as yet. But as with all other companies, we'll keep that under review and make the updates as and when it is necessary. Anything to add on that, Haakon?
No, that's it.
What was the other question? Oh, yes, the ITP. Well, is there anything that stops Kurdistan using ITP after the current agreement runs out? I'm not sure I'm the right person to answer that question because that really has to be addressed to those governments. I mean, I don't like, as you know, to get into sort of speculating. I'm not sure I have a full insight into the full suite of agreements that cover that very strategic piece of infrastructure. So I can't give a definitive answer on that. So I'd rather not go there. Bijan, I don't know if you have any if that internet connection doesn't look very good.
Can you please hear me?
Yes, we hear you.
Okay. I agree with Chris on the response on ITP. I think for us DNO, the interesting sort of bit of a wild card is at the Baeshiqa, our partner is the Turkish energy company, TEC. And if we have a significant discovery and need to move oil, then the question is how will that sort itself out? Because then you have Turkey having a stake in production directly. So that's going to be a fun one to watch. But for the rest, it's very political. The legal issues aren't resolved. The arbitration continues. Part two continues. How that might be affected by how the parties deal with ITP, these are all issues that lots of lawyers on all sides have been struggling with and trying to deal with. And we have no particular insight other than we sort of hear what's going on.
So I have nothing more to add to what Chris said. But Baeshiqa could be interesting and how that'll work, how that order will move to the market and move to Turkey and maybe through Turkey or to Turkey whether by truck or a special pipeline that would be built. We just don't know. Fingers crossed, we will have that problem because that would mean we have had a successful drilling program at Baeshiqa.
I think if we had a middle question, whether we would consider spinning off our North Sea business or merge or do something structural? Well, first of all, to note that we have been successful in building tremendous value through our exploration successes over the last year. And we have a big development program we just talked about. So we're starting to get really noticed among other oil companies that are active in the North Sea. And we have very good business development discussions both through the large investment banks but also in bilateral discussions with other oil companies. So there's a lot of opportunities for us to look at restructuring. But we are focused on what we have been doing is to grow organically through exploration and development.
And as we have now shown, also quite busy on M&A-led growth to especially bolster production over the next years until our own production crops up. So I don't know that we want to sort of answer your question. But just to kind of confirm that we are starting to really become an important actor, especially on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. And through that, being seen as an attractive candidate to talk to on various ideas. And that goes both ways towards DNO but also that we speak to other companies. So I think we're basically seeing a lot of what we call BD or business development type opportunities for us to maybe jointly explore with other companies or that we do more M&A than we aim to. So a bit of a roundabout answer. But anything to add to that?
I think just a fun reflection for me because most of my time in DNO, those type of questions have been directly to Kurdistan, whether we should be merging with others in Kurdistan. So it's a nice validation of the importance of our North Sea business now that that comes onto the radar screen, as always with DNO. And that's very much in the motto that the shareholders are our number one stakeholders. We're always in pursuit of shareholder value. So if people come to us with transactions that we believe will add value to shareholders, we are open to discuss. I think it's as simple as that.
I hope to be able to squeeze in questions from two questioners at the end here. The first one is Lucas von Platen. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much for taking my question. I'm Lucas von Platen. I'm a private investor in DNO. The question relates to the arrears from KRG. My question is maybe pretty blunt. Has there been any sort of discussion about KRG paying their debt using their part of the oil that is produced now? That is, instead of sending the KRG part of the oil to KRG and selling DNO's part of DNO locally, DNO keeps part or all of KRG's oil and sells it as part of an arrangement to pay off the debt.
Yeah. The answer is yes. Of course, we've explored with them all sorts of mechanisms. As the price moves up, there's more money available for the KRG to share with us and with the other companies as one way of addressing the arrears. But you can be sure that where there's $300 million involved, we're focused like a laser on exploring with them the options. But we're always realistic about what their limitations are and opportunities are. And for the limitations, we try to be a good corporate citizen when there are opportunities. We try to grab them. So thank you for your question. I'm delighted. There's a group of our shareholders in this call, on this call, always happy to meet other shareholders and discuss with them what their concerns are.
In addition, of course, to the analysts and others who filter this information and process it for shareholders as well. So I just want to tip my hats to our shareholders. As Chris says, we are very focused on our shareholders and try to meet their needs and try to be in communication with them and hope that continues. So thank you for your question.
Thank you very much.
Okay. So the last question goes to [Nick Linnonen]. Please, Nick, can you unmute yourself?
Hi. There was a report I saw about Iraq looking to reopen the old pipeline to Turkey, kind of to the west of Kurdistan. Do you think that's feasible, that they can repair and get that working in the not-too-distant future? And what do you think that could mean?
Yeah. We have no special insight on that. We speak to all the parties. But we have no particular insight. That's an option that the governments have to sort out. And we're not counting on it. We hope the pipeline will be open. We hope that the terms and conditions available to us and pricing and other contractual modifications, possibly, will be favorable to us and put us in no worse situation than before and probably more so. But as Chris said in response to the earlier question, we don't have really anything to add. It's an interesting question. And we posed it ourselves. We really have nothing to add on that. Somebody will have to take its own course. And governments are involved at the highest levels. And we're just there producing oil and trying to stay as much as we can out of the regional political scene.
That's not our role or our interest to do so. But when you have this kind of oil, 100,000 coming out of Tawke license or 90,000 coming out of Tawke license or wherever that in that range and then another 200,000, maybe a bit more from other oil companies, this oil will find its way to market. We've said this before many years ago. If it was 5,000 barrels a day, it wasn't going to get very far. But at these levels, this oil will come to market. And Kurdistan, in a sense, production has become the tail that wags the dog. The U.S. elections may be won or lost based on oil prices and their impact on the economy. And then Kurdistan becomes a bit of a factor. That's one reason the U.S. governments are involved in these discussions from time to time.
So we'll leave it to them to sort out. And we'll, again, try to avoid the pitfalls and try to grab the opportunities and do what we do best: find oil cheaply, produce it efficiently, safely, cleanly in Kurdistan. And we have a great track record in that respect. I think we're in year 20 now of the Tawke to Tawke contract. That's before my time. Maybe Haakon was around then. He must have been 14 or something. But so we've been there for a long, long time. And we've done well. There have been some very, very strong years and some weaker years. But over time, DNO has managed well. And from the very beginning, I was very impressed how this then, when I first got involved with DNO, had the small Norwegian oil and gas company.
This plucky company was there and how fast the Norwegians were able to bring the oil to market. It's a source of pride for me, although I can't take credit for it. There are others among our shareholders who have been there from the beginning who can do so. We've been very successful on balance in Kurdistan. I think we can do better. We can continue this great run that we've had over 20 years for the bumps along the way.
With those exciting words, I think we are about to conclude today's earnings call on a good day for DNO. Thanks for taking part. We all look forward to seeing you again in three months' time. Bye.
Thank you.
Thank you.