Okay. Good morning, and welcome to DNO's Second Quarter 2026 Earnings Call. My name is Jostein Løvås, and I am the Communication Manager here at DNO. Present with me today in Oslo are Executive Chairman, Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani, Managing Director, Chris Spencer, and CFO, Birgitte Wendelbo Johansen, who will take you through the presentation slides. Before we begin, I would like to draw your attention to a slide in today's presentation summarizing DNO's possible offer for Genel Energy, which was announced on August 7. Due to strict limitations under the U.K. Takeover Code, we will not take any questions regarding Genel Energy or the potential offer during today's call. Instead, we will refer you to the slide and to the full statement, which has been published on our website through the news messaging service and via RNS. With that, let's move to the presentation.
Afterwards, we will have a Q&A session. First, let me hand over to Bijan.
Good morning. Welcome to the Q2 2026 interim results presentation by DNO. I am joined by my colleagues who usually attend and present at these quarterly reports presentations. I will just say welcome and say a couple of introductory words before we proceed to discuss the slides. This quarter has been a very strong one for DNO, among the strongest in our history, and our history is a long one. We celebrate this year the 55th anniversary of the formation of DNO, and that is more than half a century. We are still around. Many of the oil companies in the international industry who were operating and active in 1971 when we were formed are no longer in the industry for different reasons. This makes us one of the oldest of the international oil companies in the world, and we are very proud of that history and of that record.
This quarter was the strongest ever for the company in certain financial metrics. We are very proud of our performance. Our strong performance has taken place notwithstanding the fact that one of our most important operating legs of the company, our operations in Kurdistan, were shut in for most of the quarter. During that time, and of course, all of you who follow the company and follow the region and the industry know that we have had security events and threats to our operations, as have other companies in the Middle East and in Kurdistan, in particular. We used that period while we were not producing for safety and security reasons.
We used the period, especially the second part of the quarter, to initiate workovers on our wells and even to start drilling new wells to position the company to start operations and production, in particular, when the conditions are permitted and to have the ability to recover production at a rate that brought us back to where we had been pre-shutdowns. We have restarted production, and my colleague, Chris, will discuss the operations in Kurdistan. We hope to sustain production at the levels that we had before the shutdown over the course of the remaining quarters, but obviously with one eye, always two eyes or four eyes on the security conditions and situation, because paramount for us is the safety and security of our people on the ground, of course, of our facilities as well.
We hope that we continue to produce in Kurdistan and have a safe and secure operation in the coming weeks and months. I would also like to make a quick reference to what Jostein said about the possible offer that we might make for Genel Energy, our partner in Kurdistan. We hope that the board of Genel Energy will engage with us as we pursue this opportunity. I cannot, as Jostein said, because of our Rule 2.4 announcement of a possible offer and the conditions set by The Panel on Takeovers and Mergers that governs these matters in London. We cannot say any more about that other than say we hope to engage with the board of Genel Energy and to see how best to proceed on this matter. With that, I will ask Chris to present the operating portion of the presentation today.
Thank you, Bijan, and good morning from me. As Bijan has already touched on, another great quarter for DNO, and it really shows what a strong, diversified company we are now. We are just over one year on from the Sval Energi Group acquisition, and yet again, the merits of that acquisition are coming through extremely powerfully in our results. I have talked a lot over the last year about the operational synergies that that combination has unleashed, and you will see more examples of that in this presentation. I think the highlight in this quarter is the diversification. Obviously, as Bijan has described, we have had a difficult quarter in our Middle Eastern business in Kurdistan, with almost no production. But by having the very healthy North Sea business combined with the high oil and gas prices has meant that we have still hit record revenues for the quarter.
The strong, diversified, growth-oriented DNO that we mention in our press release today is very clearly evidenced by last quarter. The statistics are in front of you on this slide. Another very good quarter of production in the North Sea, a bit above what we were expecting. With the prices we achieved, more than compensating for almost zero production in Kurdistan in that quarter. West Africa, our Cote d'Ivoire business, as normal, around 3,000 BOE , all of which is gas, of course, and a nice cash positive contribution. Of course, it is the North Sea that is dominating the picture. On the back of that, we saw this record revenue of $ 760 million. We say largely unhedged. It is maybe 1% of the revenue was hedged, so effectively unhedged in our North Sea, and that traditionally has been the DNO approach.
And with the great volatility that we've seen this year, that position has been rewarded by not capping the upside from these commodity prices. On the back of the high revenue, of course, you see that flowing through the operating profit and the net profit. But particularly gratifying for a simple engineer such as myself is the free cash flow, which is my most important key performance indicator. With this very high cash flow, we have actually paid down $220 million of debt in a quarter with zero production from Kurdistan. Who would have thought that three years ago for DNO? Of course, the board were comfortable to approve the quarterly dividend once again. A few years ago, we pivoted towards our shareholders. We are maintaining that pivot, if that makes any sense, as an English expression.
But in any event, we continue to provide an attractive dividend yield, in addition to the upside potential we see in our equity story. Moving on to the North Sea. Very strong quarterly production, as I've already mentioned. We had expected things to go slightly worse in the second half than the first half. So we were expecting a stronger, but it has exceeded even our estimates. What you see, and in the last quarter, we had a deep dive into the tieback projects that we have ongoing and coming up on the North Sea. My colleague, Morten Grini, for those who are watching, gave you a good run through of those projects. Once again, last Q2, you see that portfolio delivering with two new developments coming on stream.
This is, as we explained last quarter, very much the model, and you see that with the developments that were approved in the fifth bullet point on this slide. The fourth bullet point points to yet another value-adding transaction. As I've mentioned the last few quarters, that's another element to our business model in the North Sea, very definitely. Here, it's a great step that we've been looking to do for some time, because we have multiple projects either already tied back to the Jura hub. We have several, including Ofelia, Cerisa and Njord in the next bullet point that are being tied back to that hub. We did not have an ownership position there, and the team have managed to get us in with a 5% interest, which is extremely helpful, obviously, when you're tied by so many of these satellites.
So we're very pleased with that transaction, and comes on the back of a string of similar North Sea either swaps or small acquisitions, small divestments. With the majority of return into production, with the majority of the maintenance shutdowns behind us now, and still ahead of our estimates, we are increasing our guidance for 2026 production. We're now estimating we should get about 85,000 BOE , on average, through the year. Next slide, please. Turning to the growth side of the business. We are, as we've said many times, very growth-oriented, not only here in the North Sea but looking at the growth in other areas also. The latest in that regard was our Carmen appraisal, which came in in June.
You see the results there, and that, of course, is right next to the Atlantis discovery, which is moving forward to development, and which we entered through another one of those North Sea deals that we've been delivering. We announced that in March, so we discussed that also in the last quarter. Carmen is within, I think, about 20 km. In the same area is the Ofelia discovery, where we picked up a 10% interest. We're hoping for the best on that appraisal, but that is a deep sort of tight gas opportunity, so we'll see what comes of that. We're operating on a well at the moment. Four more wells to be drilled in our exploration appraisal portfolio this year. Thank you. Over to Kurdistan, and unfortunately, again, the quarter dominated by the war and the knock-on effects of the war in the Middle East.
We had to shut down for the safety of our people, and remained so for most of the quarter in terms of production. When the ceasefire was signed, we started to cautiously ramp up activities. Really, the slide describes that cautious ramp up that took place. As Bijan said, the priority, of course, is the safety of our staff. We have put in place extensive passive protection in both the accommodation blocks but also around our process facilities in the form of big concrete walls, which we are advised is the best way to minimize the impact of the greatest risk we have, which unfortunately is drone attacks. With that in mind, we felt sufficiently comfortable to restart production. But as anyone who reads the news knows, it's a very uncertain environment, and we are, not quite daily, I guess, but we're driven by events.
We're reviewing security frequently. I would say we've been close to shutting down again recently, but we're still going. If the security condition allows, we do expect to be able to get the PSC back to around the same level of production as we had pre-shutdown. We are drilling. But really, you can't get away from the security situation at the moment, and I hope in three months' time, we'll be able to look forward with more confidence and give better estimates. At the moment, really, it's anyone's guess. We are, of course, producing, though, and we are, as we have done for the last few years, selling the oil to local traders. At the moment, we're getting in the mid to upper 30s. As we always do, we've been insisting on being paid internationally before we deliver the oil.
So at least we have complete payment surety for our oil. Thank you. As obviously many of you joining the call, or if not all, are aware, and Bijan mentioned, on 7 August, we publicly announced our possible offer to acquire Capricorn Energy PLC. As already been mentioned a couple of times, we have strict guidelines from The Takeover Panel that we have to stay within what we've stated in that announcement. I think that's fine, because I think it speaks for itself. The indicative offer we made is 0.69 per share. Which is a premium of 38% to the price of the Capricorn Energy share the day before we made the announcement.
We believe that if they were to accept this offer, the shareholders of Genel Energy would see certainty of value, and that is irrespective of what happens with their offer for Capricorn Energy on the terms that they have announced. We note that if they do not succeed in taking Capricorn Energy, then Genel Energy will not have the diversification it has been working on for some time, and a significant G&A cost burden that we consider to be disproportionate to the company's scale. The proposed offer that we have made is not conditional on completion or lapse of Genel Energy's announced offer for Capricorn Energy. It will not matter what happens in that process to our offer. Genel Energy shares have had a relatively poor trading liquidity in recent history, so we consider that our offer represents a liquidity event for those Genel Energy shareholders, should they wish to take it.
For those who elect to take the possible offer of DNO shares, then as you have seen once again this quarter, that would allow them immediate participation in a strong, diversified, and growth-oriented business, with not least an established track record of dividend payments. With that backdrop, we have to decide by the 4th of September, most likely, although there are certain circumstances in which that date can be extended. But we will have to decide whether to announce either a firm intention to make an offer or that we are not going to make one. The famously dubbed put up or shut up deadline for us. As Bijan mentioned, our hope, as we stated in the 2.4 announcement, is that we could get into some constructive discussions with the Genel Energy board on this offer.
That concludes my part of the presentation, and I just hand over to Birgitte to tell us more about the record revenues. Thank you, Birgitte.
Thank you very much, Chris, and thank you, Bijan. Good morning, everyone. As you said, Chris, at the start of this call, we present another very strong quarter for DNO. Revenue in the second quarter was $761 million, up 21% from the last quarter. The increase from Q1 is driven by higher realized oil and gas prices, partly offset by lower sales volumes in the North Sea, explained by underlift as well as seasonal maintenance. As production in Kurdistan restarted very late in the quarter, we recorded no sales or revenue here. Comparing with the second quarter of 2025, we must of course take into consideration that Sval Energi Group was included in our figures as of June, which explains most of the large movements, almost 200% revenue increase. Year to date, revenue was almost $1.4 billion, tripling the revenue from the first half 2025.
Our operational profit ended at $439 million, also a substantial increase of 55% compared to $284 million in the first quarter. Our tax expense in the quarter was $340 million, an increase mainly due to higher taxable income, which is a good thing. Net profit in the quarter was $83 million, representing a 65% increase compared to the first quarter. Year- to- date, the net profit is $134.1 million, up from $-10.9 million in the first half of 2025. Next slide, please. Let's move to the cash flow. Our cash position moved from $531 million at the end of the first quarter to $550 million at the end of June 2026. The operational cash flow was $639 million, supported by robust earnings and working capital movements. We had three tax installments in Norway in Q2, totaling $98 million.
As these installments were the final ones related to the 2025 results, the cash tax in the coming quarters will be higher. We expect the total tax installment on the NCS in the second half of around $320 million , though this will also, of course, depend on the exchange rate at the time of the payments. The strong free cash flow in the second quarter should be seen in context, of course, then of the higher tax payments starting from Q3. Net investing activities was $228 million, with the main effects coming from $202 million in asset investments and $26 million in decommissioning. We had a material reduction in drawn amount under offtake financing, as Chris Spencer mentioned, of $221 million, and other financing of $73 million covers dividend and interest on our debt.
We had a cash at quarter end of $550 million, as mentioned, and as you can see, this is a similar level as the last quarter, reflecting that we have mostly used the strong free cash flow this quarter to repay debt and not build a cash position. Next slide, please. Our total balance sheet as per quarter end is around $6.2 billion, of which PP&E represents around 50%, $3.2 billion at the end of the quarter, a slight increase from last quarter. Our net debt ended at $553 million, down $238 million or 30% from the last quarter, mostly driven by the previously mentioned reduction of the offtake financings during the quarter. Our equity share as of quarter end 21.8%, and with a total equity of $1.36 billion, we are well within also within the bond covenants.
On the back of this strong balance sheet and cash generation, the board has decided to distribute NOK 0.375 per share, as Chris Spencer mentioned. Following this payment, DNO will have paid dividend to our shareholders for 17 consecutive quarters, totaling $491 million, in addition to $62 million in share buyback. All in all, a very strong quarter for DNO, and by that, I think we'll move over to the Q&A session.
Thank you, Birgitte and Bijan and Chris, for an excellent presentation. Before we move on to the Q&A, I guess it's timely to remind you all that we will not take any questions about Genel Energy and the possible offer due to The City Code on Takeovers and Mergers limitations. With that, I think we can take the first question and, Teodor Sveen-Nilsen, analyst, you may unmute yourself. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for updating. Thanks for taking my questions. A few questions. First on the Tawke production and the current production in Kurdistan. You mentioned that you have really started, but it's a little bit on and off. Could you comment on at what level has the quarter to date production been in Kurdistan? That's the first question. Second question is also on Kurdistan. That is on local prices. I know you get pricing authorities, which also I think that you highlighted in your presentation. That's the same as previous periods. Why hasn't the local price increased when global oil prices has increased substantially lately? Then a third question that is on NCS and 2027 production outlook. You definitely have several fields coming on stream into next year. I'll also assume some long decline on the current production.
Should we expect double-digit percentage production growth on NCS next year, or is that too aggressive to assume that kind of growth? Thanks.
Let me start with the Kurdistan question, and I'll turn to Chris and ask you to respond to the NCS question. With respect to our production level, that's a hard one to respond because as I mentioned, as Chris mentioned, we look at the safety and security situation in Kurdistan, in Iraq, in the region, and importantly in our areas of operation on a very regular basis, almost a daily basis. It's possible that we will have to shut down production very quickly, and Chris may refer to that as well. Because of the uncertainties and the shut-in, we prefer not to give a figure because today's production may not be tomorrow's production. I think it would give a false projection and raise expectations or lower expectations if we report our production on a weekly basis, a daily basis, on a monthly basis.
It's not really helpful to our investors. It's not helpful in other respects either. We will obviously, in our next quarterly presentation, present the numbers for this quarter. I hope they will be strong numbers, but I can't give numbers that represent one day's production, high or low or not at all, because again, this would not really give a good guidance to the market as what to expect in terms of Kurdistan production. We're producing currently. We've said that our expectation is that we will reach, if all goes well, our reach and sustain on an ongoing basis our pre-shutdown production levels. What we have said about drilling and workovers would help offset normal decline in some of the wells, and hopefully give incrementally higher numbers. We just can't say.
This is a very unique situation, and we have one foot on the accelerator in terms of operations, in terms of drilling, and one foot always on the brake. I think the best numbers we can give you would be the numbers we present next quarter, which will be backward-looking rather than forward-looking. Having said that, you asked about pricing. Obviously, pricing in local markets sometimes are related to external markets, sometimes they're not. in this instance, there is a disconnect between prices for fuels and diesel, gasoline, other products in larger Iraq and the global markets, oil-producing countries typically sell products into the local market at well below international prices. This is true of Iraq and also true of Kurdistan. So there is this disconnect. If the oil is moved into international markets, that changes.
But at the current time, our sales reflect, again, other conditions, other considerations than those in terms of our North Sea pricing for our oil in particular. That tracks the global supply and demand of global markets very closely. We have said that the price that we are currently selling to local traders, and where that oil moves, we don't know, but our sales price is in the mid to high $30 /bbl range. Before the shutdown, we were very low $30 range, so that's already about a 20% increase over our pre-shutdown levels, which is great. But our pricing, the net pricing to us does not reflect international prices. That's unfortunate.
Anyway, we were shut down production-wise at the periods, the weeks in which oil, international prices were extremely high because of the war in the Persian Gulf and in Iran, which has now spread to other parts of the Middle East as well as you know, in terms of strikes. We missed that opportunity, in Kurdistan to capture those prices, but we did not miss that opportunity in the North Sea. Again, you've seen our performance, our financial performance, that's been terrific. So while we were not able to capture it in Kurdistan, we did in the North Sea, where the North Sea operations were hitting on all 12 cylinders. Very pleased with that. So the North Sea carried the quarter for us.
When we first started going to the North Sea, it was Kurdistan that was carrying the quarters, multiple quarters for us, and allowed us to move into Kurdistan revenues and Kurdistan operations allowed us to go to the North Sea. Now, the shoe's on the foot of the other sister, and the North Sea's carrying Kurdistan. Hopefully, in the third quarter, in the fourth quarter, both will have their dancing shoes on. We just don't know, and we can't offer you that guidance. I wish the situation were different, but it is what it is, and we try to make the best of it. Again, the safety of our people on the ground in Kurdistan are uppermost on our mind.
That's not to say we're not concerned about safety and security in the North Sea or the Ivory Coast or any other part of the company. Safety and security and the well-being and welfare of our team is uppermost in our list of concerns and considerations and therefore our corporate policies. Chris?
Thank you, Bijan. I'll turn to Teodor's big question about North Sea production. Yes, you're right that, Teodor, we are growing in the North Sea. It's a very exciting part of our business. It takes a huge amount of energy from the team, primarily in Stavanger. A few over here in our corporate headquarters as well, so we like to get involved, too. The growth trajectory that we're pushing for, we first set out in the pack we published at the time that we bought Sval Energi Group. At that point in time, I think we set out our ambition for 100,000 BOE /D DNO share by 2030. We put a graph in the slide pack showing the sort of trajectory towards 2030. We updated that in February presentation, I believe.
I can't remember, unfortunately, Teodor, off the top of my head what the number was for next year. If you refer to that will give you a sense of where we're going. We're not putting out official guidance for 2027 yet. So that's the best I can do to help you with that, but we're standing by our ambition for 100,000 BOE/D by 2030. I personally am confident that we will achieve that target.
Thank you. That is clear. Just to clarify on Tawke, Bijan, you said that you expect production to come back to pre-shutdown levels whenever the war ends. We are still talking about 100,000 bbls gross from Tawke expectation, right?
Teodor, I do not want to give, again, any projections or any guidance. We had said, I think at the start of the year that with the eight-well drilling program that we had planned, that we thought we could reach 100,000 bpd by the end of this year. Circumstances changed. We shut in production. When you shut in production, performance of some of the wells will be affected. We have to go in and do workovers, and get pumps that perhaps, because we were shut in, burned out, and replace those and make other repairs. That has been something that we have initiated, and it is an ongoing process. The wells we thought we would be drilling at the first part of this past quarter, we did not drill. We could not drill.
We started drilling in the latter part of the quarter as conditions seemed to have improved security-wise for some period of time. We are behind the schedule that we had anticipated early in the year, and they are behind in terms of the ability to reach targets that have been set back. Again, if security conditions deteriorate, we will stop drilling the new wells again. I hope that will not happen, but we are mindful of that. Teodor, I think you should assume based on what has been happening on the ground in other regions, that our goals will not be met, that these will be suspended. By how much and for how long, I just do not know. I wish I did. If we had a crystal ball and knew what was going to happen security-wise, we would stop operations or expand operations.
But we do not have that crystal ball, and we just have to watch this day by day. But as we have said repeatedly with onshore wells and onshore fields, it is easy to hit the brakes and easy to hit the accelerator. But when you hit the brakes in a fast-moving car, and then you start again, you lose some time in terms of your performance. I should also note that I have talked about our North Sea and then Kurdistan as sisters. Again, this is a relic of the period in which DNO was formed in the 1960s-19 70s. The big oil companies were called the Seven Sisters. Why as sisters, I do not know. But the sisters or Seven Sisters are now, I think, maybe four is the super majors, and we were always the small sister.
But the feminine term is used when it comes to the oil industry, maybe to show the softer side of companies. We have a soft side for our operations.
Absolutely.
But we work in a very difficult masculine geopolitical environment, and that's okay, too.
Okay. Thank you. I'll hand it over.
Thank you, Teodor Sveen-Nilsen. Next question comes from Analyst Nikolas Stefanou. Remember to unmute yourself before talking.
Hi, guys. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Congratulations on a very strong quarter, and it is really good to see these numbers coming through. I want to ask you a couple of questions on the North Sea and then one on Kurdistan. I understand the reluctance from giving an outlook for 2027, but you have increased this year's production in the North Sea. Would you be able to give maybe an exit rate for this year? And the other question, could you please remind me the number of FIDs planned for this year, and what else is left in the North Sea?
Me, I can dissect on the production side. You asked for an exit rate for the year. I do not have that number in front of me, but obviously we have this morning reported the actual production for the first two quarters, and we have upped our guidance for the year to 85,000 BOE/D . I think that you should be able to quite easily calculate what to expect in the second half, if that helps answer that question, unless any of my analysts here are coming up with a number for you. In the meantime, what was the second question, sorry?
Yeah, it was the number of projects sanctioned and to be sanctioned in 2026, and where are we at there? Just an update, basically.
Yeah. So we updated this quarter that we sanctioned three more of the subsea tiebacks in Q2, Cerisa, Ofelia, and Gjøa Nord. We are still projecting that the [Kjøttkake] project will be sanctioned later in the year, which I think is consistent with the presentation we made three months ago where we did a bit of a deep dive into that satellite portfolio. So if anyone is interested to get a bit more information on our near and medium-term satellite tieback project portfolio, if you click on the slides from last quarter, you will get a bit better overview. And I think the dates there are still valid.
Okay. So it is just one more FID planned for 2026 then?
For 2026, yes.
Okay. Thank you so much. The other question, I guess it is for Vedran, and it is kind of like a bit of a strategic one. I guess in the past few years, the DNO narrative, especially after the Sval acquisition, was to bring investor attention towards the North Sea. And it is a magnificent business. You are doing very well there. Given the recent developments, where does Kurdistan sit in your strategy at the moment? Because if this still kind of happens, you are going to have to have a very large presence there, even a larger than it is now. So I just want to kind of get a sense of where Kurdistan fits with the rest of the portfolio now that the North Sea has grown so much.
Kurdistan is very important to DNO. It has been historically. You might recall that this past December, we hit a very significant milestone. We announced that we had produced 500 million bbls for the Tawke field and the Peshkabir field. This is a very important milestone. It is by far the largest production from fields in Kurdistan, fields that are operated by international oil companies in this recent period of 25 years or so. It has been very important to the company. But obviously, given all the challenges in Kurdistan, these challenges are not just Kurdistan. We have seen these challenges now throughout the Middle East in much larger producing countries as a consequence of the war. It is always imprudent to be a single asset company.
Single asset companies are, again, very exposed to movements in oil and gas prices, movements in production, and then the external conditions, geopolitical, political, security, and otherwise. It was a very smart move. It was a deliberate move. We started moving into the North Sea, starting about maybe five or so years ago, and then were able to accelerate and move up in a major way with the acquisition of the Sval Energi Group assets. And before the shutdown, our two legs were each producing about equal volumes, about 8,000 bpd in an operational sense. Of course, the net figure and the entitlement figures are a little bit different. But we felt that the two major parts of the company were both doing well and contributing importantly in a diversified way to our performance and to our growth. Kurdistan remains a very important part of our business.
And we, again, are investing now. We have our own rig. We have a DNO-owned rig that is drilling shallow wells, but also dealing with our workovers of our existing wells. We have another larger rig drilling additional wells on Peshkabir. We have engaged a second large rig. These are rigs that can drill to the depths of our producing reservoirs in our fields. And we are now looking for a third large rig to come in. So we are actively drilling. I think we are the only international oil company in Kurdistan that is drilling. We are the only international oil company in Kurdistan that is producing. The others have all shut in because of security concerns and their own reasons. But we are the only one drilling. Drilling a lot. The only one producing. And we are committed to Kurdistan, and we are committed in terms of spend, in terms of activity.
And we are able to do it because we are a large company. We do have our North Sea business that can support our presence in Kurdistan. We have been the first international oil company in Kurdistan. We have a strong presence in Kurdistan. We have great working relationships with the Kurdistan Regional Government, and we are proud of our history of our relationship with them, and that allows us to have the confidence and the support to keep going. And this is not the first time. When ISIS came into northern Iraq, and they came very close to our operation, all the other companies shut down and left. In fact, the U.K. government instructed British citizens to leave, as did the U.S. government. But DNO stayed, and we produced. And during that period, we were not paid very much.
But it was important for us to be a good corporate citizen and to be there for Kurdistan at a very difficult moment when millions of refugees had come into the country. Kurdistan's financial support from Baghdad was cut, and we felt we needed to be supportive and be in Kurdistan at bad times as well as in good times. That mindset continues. Both then and now, we remain committed to operation of Kurdistan. That shows. But we are able to do it because of our size and our diversity and our history there and our relationships with the people of Kurdistan, the government of Kurdistan, and the Ministry of Natural Resources there. So we feel that they have our back, we have their back, and we are going to keep going, and hopefully, the situation in the Middle East will resolve itself.
It can't go on like this. Once it does, and we hit the accelerator, we are going to go faster than any other company and hopefully it will make up for the period in which our production and our operations have been disturbed. So we have the confidence and we are putting our money where our confidence is, I suspect, in our operational activities. We support our people. We go in very regularly to be with them, to understand the security issues, the safety issues, and other considerations at multiple levels. I go to Kurdistan, Chris goes to Kurdistan, the rest of our team, we are always happy to do it, always excited to go there, but we are mindful of the security conditions, and we plan our travel accordingly. So we are very committed to Kurdistan.
Thank you.
You really have one point, Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani, you cover it very well, but on the financial side, I think that Kurdistan fits better in our business these days. We used to have to hold hundreds of millions of U.S. dollar on the balance sheet to protect the company against downturns in Kurdistan. You have seen us successfully navigate that, especially if you are a bond investor, over 20 years. But that comes at quite a significant cost, and we have, in the years I have been with the company, many comments from equity investors pointing out the inefficiency of holding such large amounts of net cash. Now, with that [Eirin room] in the North Sea, you see the balance sheet, in my mind, is a much more healthy one for any company with a modest level of net debt.
Okay. Thank you, Nikolas. The next question comes from analyst Tom Erik Kristiansen. I should say that if there are anyone else that wants to ask a question, you have to please use the raise your hand function at the top of your screen. I didn't say that at the very beginning. If there aren't any others asking questions, then we'll wrap it up after Tom Erik's questions. So Tom Erik, please go ahead.
Thank you for having the opportunity to ask a question. Could you please talk a bit more about how you think about the export payment regime. Do you see that now as more proven that you see some of the companies that have got paid through that mechanisms, or is it higher risk if you take a look at Iraq's total economy and the lack of southern exports? Is that a regime you would like to change to now when you think about access export pricing, what you mean with that? Or is it this is the right time maybe to stay with the local sales? How do you think about that and timing of how to manage this process?
We have no visibility on the payment scheme that the other companies have set up. We know how it works, but we understand that there is a preliminary payment. I think based on a $16 /bbl payment. What the actual figure is, we're not sure because there's a large formula that governs that. There was to be a top of payment for both of the payments to match international pricing was to come later. It was anticipated to come in a matter of months. I don't think that payment has come.
I do know that Iraq's budget is squeezed, importantly because during part of this crisis, they have not been exporting through the Persian Gulf. It's not a secret that the Iraqi government has said that their ability to meet various budgetary needs and commitments has been reduced by the fact that their exports have been much lower than the budget and the plan. So where that's going to go, we don't know. We, DNO, together with our partner, Genel, on Tawke, decided that we preferred certainty of payment rather than promise of payments. We've been promised payments certainly in Kurdistan in the past that were not made. We had to find other ways to compensate for that, and we did so successfully in the ISIS period where we weren't paid.
We put in a place a plan that eventually worked out quite well for us and also for Kurdistan. This time we thought that we don't want uncertainty of payments. We don't want to build up receivables as all the companies have done, and that certainty of payment would allow us to budget how much to spend to grow the business. We thought it was better to have one bird in the hand than two birds in the air, and that's allowed us to conduct our business, to keep producing because we know we're getting paid when we produce, we wouldn't otherwise, and to invest. That's why we're uniquely placed. The one company that didn't participate in that scheme is the only one producing and the only one investing. Maybe we've done something right. We've been told we've done this right.
Our payment scheme, we've described it as cash and carry. We don't really mean cash and carry, although during the ISIS period, bankers would show up with suitcases of cash, and it's like going to the gas station, and we'd fill them up. Now, of course, it's not cash as such. We do get payments in advance of deliveries. The belief companies deliver the oil and they're paid, depending on the location, approximately the market, they're paid 45 days later, 60 days later. We get it in advance and we deliver the amount of oil that was prepaid for to the trading companies. That's worked out well for us. It's worked well for them. I think there's a margin for them.
We don't know what that margin is, but just the fact that they're prepaying, there's a cost to them, and we try to regulate a relationship with them and work with them. We work to try to get that price as close to the actual market price as possible. We would love to export, but there are, as you know, political and other constraints. Kurdistan is landlocked. It has to export through a neighbor. That neighborhood is a difficult neighborhood. The outlet of choice for the companies in Kurdistan, for others, has been through the pipelines that go through Turkey to the Mediterranean or to Ceyhan. We'd like to access that. We always work towards trying to get to that point. That's a work in progress. I can't give any visibility or projection or guidance on when that'll happen, but that clearly is our aspiration.
We hope that will be possible. I can't give you a date, but that is an aspiration. I assure you, we work on that, on finding a way to do that on a very regular, ongoing basis and speak to the different stakeholders. But as we understand it's complicated and very complex. If we get there, that would be fantastic, and I hope to get us there, but I can't give you a date. For the meanwhile, we're doing, I think, quite well, thank you very much, because our payments are secure, and we use part of those payments to reinvest. As long as we're producing and getting those payments, we recover our cost pretty quickly. But as Chris Spencer said, and as I've suggested, we have a backup now.
In the past, the backup was several hundred million dollars target that we had to always have that cash on hand. Now we do not need that in the same way because we have the North Sea. The North Sea has its own challenges, but payments is not one of them. In the past, Chris mentioned the bond market. The bond market was really the only way we could raise funds to invest in DNO, given our portfolio at the time. We now have access to pre-financing because of our North Sea oil and gas. The cost of that pre-financing is probably half of our blended cost of bonds and our hybrids.
We now have access to financing that the very largest oil and gas companies have across the globe because they are part of our pre-financing arrangements, and we are effectively borrowing against their balance sheets as part of this arrangement that we have, where we give them secure supply, committed supply, and they help us with the financing. That is going to make a significant difference to the company. We will not need to maintain as large cash balances. We can use those cash balances to invest in drilling, in bolt-on acquisitions, and other acquisitions, and do so with cost of money being something under 6% versus 12% for other Kurdistan oil and gas companies, versus other companies anywhere that are not of that size of scale of the big sisters. That makes a big difference to us as well. I will just let you keep going, Birgitte. Any further questions?
Do you want to say anything more on that point, or have I covered this?
No, I think now we have very efficient and sustainable balance sheets. As you say, we now have a broader portfolio of financing sources that fits our purpose, fits the purpose, and is also correctly priced. Yeah.
Chris, anything more to add on this or any other points?
No, I think you've covered it very well, sir.
Okay. With that
Thank you very much
I think we can safely conclude this earnings call. Thanks to all for attending, and see you again next quarter.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you.