Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. Welcome and thank you for joining the Equinor Q3 results call. Throughout today's presentation, all participants will be in a listen-only mode. Presentation will be followed by a question-and-answer session. If you'd like to ask a question, you may press star followed by one on your touch tone telephone to register for questions. Please press the star key followed by zero for operator assistance. I would now like to turn the conference over to Mr. Peter Hutton, Senior Vice President. Please go ahead.
Thank you, and indeed, very much welcome to the Equinor Q3 results call. Thank you for the participation. We're joined today by Ulrica Fearn, Chief Financial Officer, who will run through a presentation of our results, and then we'll open up for questions, which we hope to complete within the hour. Also on the call, we have Svein Skeie, Head of Performance and Risk, Ørjan Kvelvane, who is Head of Accounting, and Mads Holm, Head of Tax and Treasury. With that, I pass immediately over to Ulrica. Thank you.
Thank you, Peter, and thank you all for joining the call today. Today, we present our strongest financial results since 2012. Clearly, these results benefit from higher prices, particularly European gas prices. They also reflect our ability to capture those prices through our solid operational performance with high production efficiency, our flexible gas capabilities, which gives us potential to optimize volumes, and our continued focus on cost. We deliver very strong cash flow from operations of over $10 billion in the quarter before tax, and over $9 billion after tax, reflecting the normal phasing with only one tax payment on the NCS in the third quarter. Along with strict capital discipline, this further strengthens our balance sheet, makes us more robust for any future volatility, and allows us to continue to invest in the energy transition.
It also allows us to increase our capital distribution, and I will get back to that shortly. We are seeing significant moves in the energy markets, and particularly in the gas market in Europe. Record prices in the second quarter were beaten in the third quarter, and prices have continued to rise in October. This generates higher revenues for Equinor, but also serves as a reminder of the level of volatility in our markets. We are experiencing a tight gas market. At present, European inventories are low, and we expect the market to remain tight and subject to volatility going into the winter. The tightness of the energy market affects European industry and households, and Equinor remains committed to be a stable and reliable supplier of gas to Europe.
Therefore, we are now flexing to produce as much as we can and turning every valve to produce and export more gas to meet European demand. Earlier this autumn, we received permission to produce 2 billion cubic meters of additional natural gas from Troll and Oseberg. I can also mention that at Gina Krog, we have in October decided to redirect gas from normal injection to be able to increase exports over the next 6 months by about 30,000 barrels per day oil equivalent. This is an extraordinary measure resulting from the collaboration of partners and authorities. We started production from Troll Phase 3, and as I witnessed myself when visiting the platform this month, the production of Troll A has fully ramped up again after the startup. It's worth reminding you of its profitability, a break even below $10.
While this has only limited impact on near term production, it improves resilience, and its real value is over the longer term with recoverable reserves of almost 350 billion cubic meters of gas extending to deliveries to Europe beyond 2050. We continue to make progress on our ambition to reach net zero by 2050 as outlined in our Capital Markets Day. We passed an important milestone for low carbon value chains when the East Coast cluster in the Humber region was selected as one of the two first carbon capture, usage and storage projects in the U.K. This is the area where Equinor has its largest portfolio of projects for blue hydrogen and low carbon gas power to be realized with CCS. We further introduced the concept of our Norway Energy Hub, an industrial plan for the energy transition in Norway.
This sets out how, by working across industries and supply chains, we can industrialize offshore wind, make carbon capture and storage profitable, and scale hydrogen production. It further shows how we can mature the solutions for the future using a base of existing capabilities and technologies. The board has decided on a cash dividend of $0.18 per share. At our Capital Markets Day in June, we introduced a share buyback program, which provides more flexibility for capital distribution to shareholders. Our first tranche was set at $300 million and completed in the quarter.
Based on the strong commodity prices, strong cash flow generation, a strong net debt ratio, the board has decided to increase the size of the second tranche of the share buyback program from the indicated level of $300 million-$ 1 billion, including the government shares. At the CMD, we highlighted the cash returns of $0.18 per share in cash dividend and $0.09 per share from the share buyback. This took us to $0.27 per share level with April 2020. With this increase in the share buyback, the return to shareholders increases in the quarter to $0.30 per share from the buyback, which in addition to the dividends of $0.18 takes us up to $0.48 per share for the third quarter.
This is over 75% higher than the pre-COVID levels of $0.27 and shows the advantage of the flexibility in the capital distribution process and ability to return cash to shareholders. For the last 12 months, we report a serious incident frequency of 0.4 and a total recordable injury frequency of 2.5 per million working hours. We are not satisfied with this. We work systematically to find root causes while working with our suppliers and partners to strengthen our joint safety culture. Turning to our financial results. Adjusting earnings totaled $9.8 billion, up from $780 million same quarter last year. The IFRS net operating income was $9.6 billion and the IFRS net income $1.4 billion. We see strong results across all our business areas in the quarter.
From our Norwegian upstream business, the higher prices, solid production efficiency, and continued cost focus result in the highest contribution to net operating income since 2012. Our Midstream and Marketing segment, MMP, post results far above our normal guidance. This is mainly due to the mark-to-market development on our derivatives. Equinor's gas sales are mostly spot-based, but a relatively small proportion of our volumes are based on longer-dated indices. Equinor uses derivatives to change this price exposure towards spot and front-month pricing to obtain and match that of the rest of the portfolio. We don't report any realized gains or losses on the underlying gas volumes until the prior period when they are physically delivered. However, any mark-to-market gains or losses on the derivatives are reported every quarter. This is part of normal accounting.
The recent scale of movements in the gas markets make these unrealized gains of derivatives associated with future gas deliveries significant. At current market prices, you should expect these gains to be approximately matched to the loss on physical deliveries in MMP over the next two quarters. Excluding the effect of these gas derivatives, the results for MMP in the quarter would have been a little below the normal range of $250 million-$500 million, consistent with what we've said in the second quarter call. Overall, this has allowed us to capture current European gas prices. In the quarter, we have net reversals of impairments of around $500 million. The two largest factors are the reversal of impairment of almost $980 million on one of our assets on the Norwegian continental shelf, mainly due to increased short-term gas prices.
This is partially offset by an impairment of a refinery of $480 million due to the expected increased CO2 cost going forward. The group tax rate in the quarter will be 71.6%. This is up from 66% last quarter and due to strong earnings on the Norwegian continental shelf where the uplift deduction has less effect with higher prices. Now to more detailed comment on the earnings by segment. E&P Norway deliver another excellent quarter. We achieved high production efficiency and have optimized gas production, supporting stable supply and capturing the higher prices. In the quarter, you will see an increase in reported costs in U.S. dollars, which mainly reflects an increased non-cash removal cost from Gassled of around $200 million, as well as currency effects due to strengthened Norwegian kroner compared to the same period last year.
The underlying unit costs are stable. E&P International delivers solid cash flow and strong earnings of $556 million before tax. We have continued the optimization of the portfolio as announced in the Capital Markets Day, and it is reflected by the reduction in reported exploration costs in the quarter as well as continued cost focus. E&P USA delivers production on par with the third quarter last year, adjusting for divestment in Bakken. This despite the effects of Hurricane Ida, which for Equinor had the highest impact of any hurricane in Gulf of Mexico and impacted production by over 20,000 barrels per day. By now, volumes have effectively come back to normal levels. We also reap the benefit of long-term improvement efforts and cost focus.
These, in combination with higher prices, lower CapEx, continue generate strong cash flow from our U.S. business of $477 million and solid earnings of $285 million after tax. Our midstream and marketing segment delivers adjusted earnings of $2.2 billion before tax and $428 million after tax. As already mentioned, this record high result is largely due to the effect on mark-to-market gains on derivatives. At current prices, this will be followed by a loss on physical deliveries in MMP in later quarters. Our strong sales of gas volumes and trading in North America also contributes to the results and account for 25% of MMP's earnings after tax. Hammerfest LNG remains shut down with expected startup end of March.
In the renewables business, lower wind than seasonal average was partly offset by higher electricity prices, and earnings from assets in production totaled $15 million. High activity levels on development contributes to a negative result of -$28 million. As announced, we changed our policy of including gains and losses from sales in the adjusted earnings from the third quarter. This policy is now consistent with our other segments, where gains and losses from sales are included in the IFRS results, but not in adjusted earnings. We delivered solid operational performance with total production of 1,996,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Adjusting for the divestment of Bakken, production increased by around 3.5% compared to the third quarter last year.
We optimize our gas production, and in addition to Troll phase III, it's worth mentioning that about half of the production from Martin Linge is gas transported through the Frigg pipeline to the U.K. Increased volumes from Johan Sverdrup adds to the production in the quarter. In the U.S., the production in the Gulf of Mexico is returning to normal after the impact of Hurricane Ida. We delivered this production of 304 GWh, down from about 319 GWh in the same quarter last year. Our wind farm had good availability, but less wind than seasonal on average impacted production. We are on track with maturing our renewables portfolio and developing projects. For Empire Wind, we recently selected the preferred supplier for the 15 MW wind turbines.
These are turbines of size that one single rotation can meet the energy demand of households in New York for 1.5 days and further improve efficiency and cost for the project. In the U.K., we have started up the joint operation center for Sheringham Shoal and Dudgeon, an important step in the effort to capture synergies and increase in the efficiency in the industry. The cash flow from operations is very strong, with $10.8 billion in the quarter before tax and a total of $24 billion so far this year. Higher prices, solid operational performance, and strict capital discipline contribute positively to the cash flow. In the quarter, we had one tax payment for the Norwegian continental shelf of NOK 11.8 billion.
With higher prices and solid results, we also updated the estimated tax payment for 2021. In the fourth quarter, we will pay a total of NOK 55.5 billion. In total, we expect to pay more than NOK 130 billion in taxes related to 2021 on the Norwegian continental shelf. The net debt ratio is 13.2%, and it's adjusted for half our tax payments paid on the first of October, which increases the ratio by around five percentage points. Let me briefly mention our guidance before we open for questions. We expect a production growth of around 2% for the current year. We are approaching year-end, and we see that our CapEx will come in somewhat lower. We therefore adjust our expectations for the year to around $8 billion in 2021.
The rest of the guidance remains firm, and we will revert to this at our next capital markets update that will be on the February 9th, 2022. With that, I hand back to you, Peter, and look forward to questions.
Thanks, Ulrica, and I immediately pass over to the operator to open up for the polling.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, at this time, we will begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star followed by one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star followed by two. If you're using speaker equipment today, please lift the handset before making your selections. Anyone who has a question may press star followed by one at this time. One moment for the first question, please. First question is from the line of Oswald Clint from Bernstein. Please go ahead.
Oh, good morning. Thank you very much, everyone. Two, please. The first one, just on natural gas and your business. Your invoice gas price in Europe was lower than the internal gas price, which is unusual. I know there's obviously a lot of stuff going on, so it's a little bit tricky to understand that. Perhaps you could explain that dynamic. Perhaps it is just a derivative. So what was happening to that in the quarter, and when might we expect that to revert to the mean and just get that margin that we're much more accustomed to coming through, please? And then second was
I think there's obviously still some COVID impacts here, scheduling delays, some cost pressures I think you're still pointing to, as you know, it's still happening potentially project execution, cost risk still out there, but obviously unpredictable. You know, I'm always cognizant of Equinor just announcing project delays and cost hikes with press releases. Ulrica, I just want to get a sense of is there anything you're looking at or worrying about here as you think about that particular comment, please? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Oswald. Let's start with the natural gas invoice price then. They are a little bit lower than the benchmarks, because we did talk to you in the last quarter about some strategic positions we had outstanding that were weighing us down a little bit in the last two quarters. We are out of that now, and what you're gonna see is probably a move towards the benchmark in the coming months. On the COVID impact. Yes, it has been impacting us, and it continues a little bit as well. We have come out with the impact, but it's clearly moving in the right direction.
What isn't moving in the right direction in general is of course the cost pressures in the supply chains in general, which we are watching very, very closely. This is something we haven't really seen direct impact of just yet in the business, but we are very much paying attention to. This is more the indirect supply constraints in some areas. As it stands at the moment, we are sort of quite confident in where we're at. As I said, it feels like there is some outstanding risk that might be coming our way. Steel and metal prices are trading flat. They might actually be easing further out going forward. We do see sort of on the rigging side, we see high and stable rig utilization rates.
You know, there is gonna be increased demand on the actual supply chain and where that will pop up and if there's gonna be any more bottlenecks, we remain to watch and see.
Mm-hmm. Very good. Thank you.
Next question is from the line of Biraj Borkhataria from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my question. Two please. The first one's on the announcement around Gina Krog. Very interesting that you're deciding to not reinject the gas, so you can sell more of it. Few questions on that. Are you looking to do that at other fields? And if so, could you talk about the potential, like incremental supply to the European gas market that come from activities like that? And then secondly, why did you decide to do that for a period of six months? Is that just the, you know, the market needs it through the winter or is there something else that drives that decision? And then the second question is on your CapEx guidance, which implies a reasonable step up into 2022.
Just going back to the prior question, does that step up reflect some contingency because of supply chain pressures or inflation or anything like that? Or is that an activity-led increase? Thank you.
Thank you very much, Biraj. Let's start on Gina Krog then. You know, this is a very big step, and we are looking to see across the portfolio what we can do in different ways. Yes, we will be looking across and seeing where there are similar things we can do elsewhere. But this is the one where we have really clearly taken clear actions for now. Why six months? This is a start. We want to make sure we know how this works, and we need to put this forward. And it's temporary for now, but we need to revisit the situation as we go along. On our CapEx, I mean, I think there's a couple of things here.
There are some delays from this year because of, as we've talked about before. We've also got some positive news. We have got many projects that have been, you know, in cooperation across the, you know, different portfolios and the different parts of our business are coming in with better costs. There is a combination of the delays and the better costs. What we're looking at in the next year is mainly that, sorry, rather than an update from, you know, inflation and then a contingency around inflation. Of course, we're gonna continue to review all of that, as I said before.
Okay. Thank you.
Next question is from the line of Teodor Sveen-Nilsen from SB1 Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions and also congrats on very strong results. Two questions from me, if I may. Ulrica, as you highlighted, you have very strong cash flow now and you have lower net debt to capital employed than you previously reported. Going into next year, you probably will have net cash given the current oil price or oil and gas prices. So I just wonder, should we expect Equinor to be run as a net cash positive company going forward? That's my first question. Second question is just on these technical effects around the hedging gains and hedging losses. I understand that some of the gains you booked in N-MMP for third quarter will be reversed.
Just with regards to the timing, should we expect that to happen in Q4 or Q1? Also, will the size of those potential losses roughly match the gains in the third quarter? Thanks.
Thank you very much, Teodor Sveen-Nilsen. Let's start on the first question there on the net cash position, whether you could expect that. We have stated what our net debt ratio long-term guidance is, and that is 15%-30%. That remains the case. We are where we are, and we are looking every quarter, as you know, around our sort of overall level of investments or our overall level of other uses of cash, but also our overall capital return to shareholders by looking at, you know, our three guiding lights that we have put out there at the Capital Markets Day.
We are looking at our financial strength and net debt ratio, the outlook on commodity prices, and we said, you know, $50-$60, you'd expect a $1.2 billion share buyback, and, you know, you're looking at the general economic environment. We continue to live by those general guidelines, and we'll take every quarter when they come. On the technical effect in MMP, yes, there is a big gain in the third quarter. As I mentioned, you can expect that to be reversed, and that will be in quarter four and in quarter one.
Okay, thank you.
Next question is from the line of Mehdi Ennebati from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, good morning, everyone, and thanks for taking my questions. Two questions on my side. I just would like to come back on the tax installment that you explained, please related to 2021 earnings. You revised up this tax installment due to higher earnings than previously expected. Please, can you just confirm that you will pay around $8.8 billion tax in Norway in the first half of 2022? Did I understand well? Should I then just consider that the tax installment is up from around $1.4 billion earlier to something like $2.9 billion?
The second question is about the law proposal regarding a change in Norwegian taxation that was in the beginning of September. Since then, the government you know has changed. I just would like to know, if this is voted, is it fair to consider that the tax payment will come down the first year compared to if the new tax proposal is not voted? Because you know, in my model, I have an $8 billion positive impact if you know that new taxation law is voted from 2022- 2025. Just wanted to know if you can give us some color there. Thank you.
Thank you very much for your question. NOK 67 billion for H1 2022, I can confirm at present prices, and that's in line with what we've been communicating before. On the tax question, I don't really like to speculate on what's going on, but I'll hand over for some further comments to Svein here.
Yeah. There is a proposal out there that was proposed by the government. We are now in the phase of the hearing on that one, giving them feedback on it. The proposal as it is is that there will be done direct expensing towards the special tax in the Norwegian continental shelf, six-year for the ordinary tax there. There are also some of the rules in the transition phase that is being looked at as it is. Then on the overall, more than related to the direct expensing against it currently.
Of course, this needs also then to go to the parliament and expect it then to be voted on during the first half of 2022. That's the current status. It's a hearing round, which is ongoing now.
The principles there are.
Thank you.
Very clear and we understand where they are and the impact. Thank you for the question.
All right. Thank you very much. Bye-bye.
Next question is from the line of Yoann Charenton from Société Générale . Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone. I will use this opportunity to ask again about this transition phase basically, as for the move to the new tax system. I understand that it's difficult for you to quantify at this stage, so I'm just willing to understand if you are happy to share with us some estimates of tax balances for undepreciated or basically for uplift and CapEx that have yet to be offset against tax payments. What is the portion of this that sits outside of the temporary tax scheme, if that is possible? On the second question, which is more let's say a broader question with a perspective on your capital allocation, it looks like the excess cash buildup is set to continue when looking at your balance sheets.
At the same time, you continue to underspend versus guidance in oil and gas. I'm just wondering basically if this signal potential for higher distribution in the midterm, or is that more, let's say, a signal for increased flexibility for further investment in low-carbon solution and renewable? That would be great if you could provide some color on this.
Very good. On the proposed tax system, I mean, what we're clear on is that, you know, we will get no benefit from the uplift in the overall tax rate. We'll move towards the overall 78%. Some more color in that, again, I'll hand over to Svein to give.
Yeah. As it is working is that since they are taking the proposal that might be taking away the uplift part of it, that means that the reported tax rate, when we have full effect for it will go towards 78%. Remember, there is also the temporary changes in the tax system which we now have. That is relevant for 2020, 2021, but also for all projects that has a final investment decision prior to the end of 2022. Meaning that if we deliver a plan for a development, those will come under the temporary tax system, which are beneficial.
That means that tax rates will then be reported lower. It will have an impact on the cash taxes that you have more deductions upfront. Following when all projects are then delivered under the temporary tax regime, the reported tax rate will go up towards the 78%, but that's into the latter part of the decades. The cash tax and the deferred tax will be different from what it was earlier, meaning more direct expensing early compared to what it was prior to the temporary tax regime.
Where the direct expensing will help us in the shorter.
Yes.
On the capital allocation, yeah, I'll come back to what I said before. We will continue using the guided, if you like, the methodology that we follow that we launched in June when we're looking at it, and I went through it before. We will look at the net debt ratio, we will look at the outlook on commodity prices, and we will look at the general environment we're in, and we'll stick to that, and we'll do that every quarter and, as we have now become accustomed to, and we will look at the overall situation in Q4 again therefore.
Yes. Thank you, Ulrica and Svein.
Next question is from the line of Michele Della Vigna from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Thank you, Ulrica and Peter. I had two questions, if I may. The first one is related to your buyback, and congratulations for tripling the pace of buybacks there. At this pace, you're buying back about 5% of outstanding shares. I was wondering, when does this start to feed into your dividend policy? 'Cause clearly reducing outstanding shares by 5% per annum could allow you to grow the dividend per annum faster than probably what you would have previously assumed. Then my second question, and sorry if it is a little bit too specific. When I think about your North American offshore wind development, I was wondering if you are starting to see some issues in terms of tightness there, not just on the equipment side, but more on the vessel side for construction.
I believe there are some restrictions under the Jones Act which could make it a bit more difficult to get the right vessels to do the installation there, especially as more projects will start to compete in the future. Thank you.
Thank you very much for your question. I'll start with the North America wind development. We don't yet see any of this, but it's a little bit comes back to the comment I made earlier, which is we don't yet see it, but that doesn't mean that there is some supply crunch out there, which we are all worrying and seeing about. We are seeing the uneven deliveries and shortages coming up in areas where you can't quite predict and that's the same across the whole world. That also applies to the North America wind development. On the dividend and versus the share buyback conversation, we are not needing to directly consider that in the short term.
We will, as I said, take this on a quarter-by-quarter basis and cross that bridge if we get to that. We are in a comfortable place where we are at the moment.
Thank you.
Next question is from the line of Peter Low from Redburn Atlantic. Please go ahead.
I just had a couple of questions on the mechanics of the buyback. The first tranche has been completed, but only $100 million has been bought back with the remaining $200 million to be redeemed from the Norwegian government. How does that work? Is it a cash payment to them? And when will that be executed? Then as a follow-up, just for the next $1 billion tranche, presumably in the same fashion, you'll complete a 1/3 of it in the market by the end of January, I think. Then again, when will the government portion be executed? Thanks.
Yes. The 2/3 of it will be settled, and that will be past the AGM in June, July, and that's at 200 million shares at the market price. That will go for the. That's around 9.5. That goes for both this tranche and when we get to the next tranche.
Okay, thank you.
Next question is from the line of Anders Holte from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions. I have two questions if I may. First one is related to, not surprisingly, natural gas. I know you canceled Tanzania LNG quite a while back. I'm just curious to
Check with you if you are now seeing interest again from counterparties willing to sign longer-term LNG contracts. If that is the case, does that facilitate a potential reopening of the Tanzania LNG project? Second is on offshore wind. It's almost related to the previous question, but I guess it's a little bit broader. It's just you did take down your expected future return for offshore wind during your last CMD in June. Now raw material prices have somewhat stabilized, but still there seems to be quite a fierce competition on offshore wind as we see in the Scotland round. So I'm just curious to see if you are seeing a continuous margin pressure on offshore wind or if that was eased off a little bit. Thank you.
Thank you very much. On your first question, I won't comment on that. That will be commenting on activity in the market that we normally don't comment on. On the offshore wind comment, I think we could say it's about the same as to where it was. It's a tight market. It's a lot of activity going on, and I would probably characterize it as the same.
Thank you.
Next question is from the line of Martijn Rats from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yeah, hi. Hello. Quite a few things have already been asked, but I was actually quite interested in the impairment on the refinery of $500 million. It seems a sort of fairly chunky amount for such an asset. I was wondering if you could sort of walk us through what the sort of key moving parts is and why it is such a big number.
Yeah, thank you, Martijn. On the refinery, I mean, the driver of this is updated CO₂ prices. Of course, estimating that into the future and then taking that into the value of the asset is basically the one big driver on the back of that. CO2 projections in, you know, internationally and in Norway are going up, and that's the straightforward answer.
There is no sort of CapEx project that you could do that would be less than $500 million to sort of compensate those for this, I take it, right?
We continuously look for strategies as to the long-term, sort of robustness and viability of all our assets.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Next question is from the line of John Olaisen from ABG Sundal Collier. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. I got questions regarding some of your offshore wind projects. It's mentioned the U.S. situation, but I also understand that the Empire Wind that you have applied to regulators to have a later startup of the Empire Wind Project. Also you recently announced that Dudgeon extension and U.K. Sheringham Shoal are postponed or delayed. Could you just explain a little bit more what's going on on these three projects in particular, please? What are the reasons for these delays, please?
The Empire Wind is not really a delay. It's a combination of the project so that we can coordinate and get the synergies out of the projects rather than delaying it. That's a benefit that we will reap the benefits of later on. On Dudgeon, I'll hand over to Svein to give you a heads up on that one.
Yeah, no. Things are progressing. We are looking into it, then also optimizations and going forward there as we are moving along. No big updates on this one. We are progressing the portfolio in the different parts of it and see how we are being able to mature it and build according to what we said at the Capital Markets Day in June.
Thank you.
Okay. There's no, like, structural change in these projects? Because, I mean, like, optimizing the project, I presume you try to optimize the synergies in the with Empire Wind initially as well. It must be something that has changed. I mean, otherwise, the deadline is extended, I mean.
On Empire, it's about them, as Ulrica said, looking at one common development for Empire one and two.
Yeah.
All right. It's unitized. All right. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your touch tone telephone. Next question is from the line of Andre Klotz from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks. Back with my question. A very small one for me, actually. On the Kalundborg refinery sale, you mentioned Q4 closing. Any more details? Are we talking sort of now-ish, end of Q4? Any details would be very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. It is a short question and no more details on that. Thank you.
Thanks.
Next question is from the line of Lucas Herrmann from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Yes. Ulrica, thanks very much for the opportunity. A couple of follow-ups, if I might, just on comments you've already made. Just going back to CapEx, you indicated that there were two features that had driven the reduction this year. Part was efficiencies and savings, and part of it was delay. Do you mind quantifying the extent to which the benefit this year is savings, so we might get a better view perhaps on next year. Another follow-up, just the carbon price you've used to determine the impairment in the refining business. Thirdly follow-up: Can you give us any indication as to, you know, how the MMP excess will spread over Q4 and Q1? I.e. will it be 50/50, 60/40, or is it impossible for you to say given where gas prices reside today? Thanks very much.
Thank you very much. I'll start with the MMP question, and I'll hand over to Ørjan on the disclosure of the CO₂ to price, and then I'll hand over to you, Svein. I'll start with the MMP Q4, Q1. It's impossible to say. It's basically.
Um
... completely depend on the underlying market and where that moves. Of course, the underlying delivery will be dependent on that, but also the size and the direction of the derivative will also move in accordance both in Q4 and Q1. If we take it from the back up, so I'll start with you then, Ørjan, on the CO₂ price assumption.
Yeah. On the refinery side, we see that we have increase in the CO₂ price. We assume around $58 per ton in 2022, and we move it upwards towards $100 per ton. This is one part of it, but we also see a decrease of CO₂ quotas into the calculation because that is also part of the expectation to how the market will run for the refineries.
Very good. Thank you.
Yeah. Regarding the CapEx there and the exact impact year- by- year that as Ulrica said, some delays there. We're also seeing some positive contribution in the overall part of it. It's a combination that we are seeing, and we are seeing it both in the Norwegian portfolio, but also we are seeing impact in the international part of it. Then as we normally do, we will come back to further update on further outlook at capital market update in February on that front. Without going into exact details on the amount.
You can't quantify the amount that you've realized from savings? How much of the reduction is about saving? How much of the reduction is just delay?
It's a combination of those two. We are seeing good savings. For example, we have seen that on projects that have been put on stream on the Snorre as we did. We did it on the Troll, but going into details on that one on the exact numbers that we are not giving.
Okay. Thank you.
Next question is from the line of Alastair Syme from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Thanks. I just wanted to follow up on the question about the new Norwegian tax proposal. You know, you've already answered the question on it, but it sort of strikes me after so many years of fiscal stability, you know, we saw tax incentives introduced last year and now this year we seem to be going a bit the other way, given that the effective rate's gonna go up over time. Can I just get a sense from you about, you know, what you think is behind the motivation from the government in making this change? Thank you.
What I have said is that we had the Norwegian tax system. We had the temporary tax system, where there has been some debate on the valuation of the uplift, where the government has used lower discount rates than the companies in a way. That might be one of the reasons behind it. Being argued and then taking out the uplift and then having direct expenses as
That could be one of the reason that they have used that there are difference in how those are being valued with lower discount rates than from the States and more higher discount rates than for the company. That has been one of the reasons I have used. Hello. Uplift.
Thank you. You're suggesting simplification of the tax process?
No.
Can I say, is it true that you think the effective rate, you know, if you sort of roll forward five years to 10 years time, the effective rate's gonna be higher than it would have been under the old system? Is that fair?
The reported rate will go up since you don't have then the effect of the uplift anymore on the special tax. Remember, cash-wise, you will have much more on the direct expensing towards the special tax. Cash-wise, you get the when you get the direct expensing there, that is benefiting you on a cash flow and also then on a break-even part of it. In some in nominal terms, there will be then increase and then we will then report the 78% tax rate or if the proposal goes through. It's also fair to say it's a proposal, it's out now in hearing, and it needs to be voted in the parliament.
That means that the reported tax rate is there, and that means that you will then have the cash tax and the deferred tax, which will then change compared to how it traditionally was. More direct expensing, more deduction early for us as investors.
Thank you, sir. Thank you.
Next question is from the line of Jason Kenney from Banco Santander. Please go ahead.
Oh, thanks. Just to follow up on an earlier question. How confident are you in fully unwinding the MMP gain over the next two quarters? Or, is there a chance that it's only a partial unwinding over the next two quarters?
Thank you, Jason. We'll say we're confident fully on this. This is a very sort of hedged position, and it's only a small I mean, the majority of it is completely matched by with the underlying. There's a small but very high confidence in the matching here.
Great. Thanks.
Next question is from the line of Jon Rigby from UBS. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Hi, Ulrica. Can I ask, you announced or you highlighted the good news around the Humber project, and the low carbon initiatives you have around that, zero carbon initiatives around about that. Can you just maybe sort of update when you expect to start real activity, spending money, et cetera? And how will that be structured? Will it be a little like a traditional renewables project where you start to invest directly and get to critical mass, and then maybe project finance it or separately finance it? Or what's the sort of thought process around that? Because I'm sort of of the view that it's quite a lot of capital, I guess, ultimately that's gonna go into that. If you can update me on that'd be great.
Well, this is very early days, and in our sort of real activity is on its way. I think it takes a long time to work on all of these developments. We need to develop new market and we need, you know, understand the market risk and the technologies that we need to deploy here. There's basically a lot more work to do before we mature this project and can go in and be very specific on the outcomes, on exact timings and exact technologies and enablers. It's very exciting for us. It's where we've got the most technologies.
It's where we're building the biggest capabilities, and I think it's good for the company and for the UK.
Would it be fair if I sort of took the UK government's aspiration? I think they put some 2030 numbers out there and sort of back up from there and sort of assume that probably by 2024-ish activity should be really starting to get into the swing.
I would just say it's really early days to give more detailed guidance on the materiality of the portfolio, in this area. All I can say, it's an exciting project and it really establishes a foothold for us here.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you very much.
There are no further questions at this time, and I would like to hand back to Ulrica for any closing comments. Please go ahead.
Well, thank you all for all your great questions and for your time today. We're looking forward to seeing you again. Next time will be the ninth of February, as I mentioned before, 2022, which is our full year results but also our capital market update. Looking forward to speaking to you then and thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now concluded, and you may disconnect your telephone.