At this time I would like to welcome everyone to this Vår Energi First Quarter Presentation of 2025. Today's call is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. All participants will be in a listen only mode throughout the presentation and afterwards there will be a question and answer session. I would now like to introduce Ida Marie Fjellheim , Ida, over to you.
Thank you. Good morning everyone and a warm welcome to Vår Energi's first quarter 2025 results. The presentation today will be given by our CEO Nick Walker and our CFO Carlo Santo Padre. Nick and Carlo will present the results.
Afterwards we will open up for questions.
Q and A. I will now give.
The word to Nick.
Thank you Ida and good morning to you all and a warm welcome to our first quarter 2025 results presentation. I'm pleased to report strong results in line with expectations and that we're on track to deliver transformative growth in 2025. We're once again in a more uncertain market environment and Vår Energi's resilience and flexibility will allow us to navigate successfully through the cycles, which I'll come onto during my remarks this morning. As a result of our resilience, we continue to provide attractive dividend distributions. Also today you'll see that we are launching a new company logo with a more modern feel and reflecting the rebranding of Eni, our major shareholder a year or so ago.
I think our rebranding highlights the significant benefits we get from being able to draw on the extensive capabilities and expertise of Eni that we do at multiple levels and which adds material value for shareholders. Now let us look at the highlights for the quarter. We delivered operational performance in line with expectations with production, as you can see, at 272,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in the first quarter, supported by continued strong performance at our operated assets. In March we saw the successful startups of Halten East and Johan Castberg projects which are now both ramping up. We continue to deliver strong financial results with CFFO post tax in the quarter of $1.3 billion. We maintain our strong focus on cost discipline with reduced operating cost of $11.60 per barrel in the quarter, which is within guidance.
Our gas sales strategy continues to create value and we've locked in around 20% of our gas volumes in the summer period at high prices. We increased liquidity through the recent issuance of EUR 1 billion senior notes which was significantly oversubscribed. We reduced net debt at the end of the quarter, with a leverage ratio of 0.8 times. Vår Energi is one of the fastest growing E&Ps globally and we're on track to deliver on our 2025 growth target and unlock future value. We'll add around 180,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day at peak from nine project startups in 2025. We're on track to deliver over 400,000 barrels per day in the fourth quarter this year. The Balder FPSO is now successfully moored at the field location and the Balder X project is on track to start up at the end of the second quarter.
Our leading exploration track record continues, highlighted by the recent Zagato discovery unlocking significant potential in the Goliat area. Lastly, we continue to provide attractive shareholder distributions. We confirm a dividend for the first quarter of approximately $0.12 per share in line with guidance, which is to be distributed in May. We are providing Q2 2025 dividend guidance of $300 million, the same as for Q1, which means we have paid stable or growing dividends for the last 13 quarters.
In the current uncertain market environment, Vår Energi's business remains resilient with a low free cash flow break even of around $40 per barrel averaged over the period 2025 to 2030 and generating between $5 billion and $9 billion of free cash flow over the same period at an oil price range of $65-$85 per barrel, inclusive of our planned investment program to sustain production long term and with around 70% of our future capital spend uncommitted. This provides us with flexibility to manage the business through the cycles, giving us the option to slow down spend if these lower prices persist, demonstrating the resilience and flexibility of our company. Now let us look at some of the detail. Vår Energi is one of the fastest growing E&Ps globally and we're the third largest oil and gas producer in Norway.
We have built a high quality, diversified asset base in all areas of the NCS, with interest in around 50% of all producing fields and infrastructure and as you can see, a large exploration footprint. We are also one of the largest exporters of gas from Norway, with gas making up a material share of our production mix, 35% in the first quarter. This provides a natural hedge to our financial outlook and this amazing portfolio, which provides lots of optionality, is driving our growth and sustaining production and we are stepping up the pace to realize this value. The mantra in the company is more faster and I believe we will also incrementally improve the outlook, increasing resources, reducing costs and you will see examples today where the business has already moved on from what we outlined at our CMU just a few months ago.
This incremental improvement will create significant value and we are firmly on track to deliver transformational production growth in 2025. From 280,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2024 we will grow to over 400,000 barrels per day in the fourth quarter this year. This is double 2023 levels. This is driven by nine project startups that will happen during the year, adding around 180,000 barrels BOE per day of new production at peak levels. We're also guiding approximately 400,000 barrels per day in 2026 and with our high quality portfolio with significant upside, we can organically sustain production at 350,000-400,000 barrels per day towards 2030. Looking now at how we will deliver this production growth in 2025, first quarter production came in at 272,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day which is in line with our expectations.
This was supported by excellent production efficiency from our operated assets. As you can see, 97% production efficiency in the quarter and the nine projects that will drive our production growth through the year are all on track to start up as scheduled with the key projects being firstly Halten East which started up in mid March. This will ramp up as new wells are brought on stream through the year and is expected to reach pre net production of around 20,000 barrels per day in the fourth quarter.
Johan Castberg started up at the end of March and is expected to ramp up to plateau levels of 66,000 barrels per day net during the second quarter, and the Balder X project where we're on track to commence production by the end of the second quarter and ramp up over a three to four month period to a peak rate of around 70,000 barrels per day net. In addition, we have a significant infill drilling program of more than 30 wells planned to come online during the year, which arrests the decline from existing production. Around one quarter of the wells were completed in the first quarter, and where we stand today, the company expects to reach the midpoint of the production guidance we've given of 330,000-360,000 barrels per day for the full year 2025.
Dependent on the startup timing and ramp up profile of the new fields coming online through the year and we're on track to produce over 400,000 barrels per day in the fourth quarter. Now looking at production costs. As you can see, we have a strong trend of reducing unit costs. Operating costs were $11.60 per barrel in the first quarter within the guided range. This is around 20% reduction since 2023 levels. Looking forward, we expect to reduce unit OPEX to around $10 per barrel in the fourth quarter this year. This is driven by the new fields coming on stream that have OPEX of around $4 per barrel and a continued high focus on realizing cost synergies and improvements and we expect to be able to sustain at this level long term.
I think this performance demonstrates strong cost discipline within the organization and is a good example of the incremental improvements I talked about earlier. Responsible operations are key to our license to operate and our ambition is to be the safest operator. Overall we have a good safety and environmental trend which is generally getting better. In the first quarter we had a good out turn with zero actual serious incidents. This performance takes strong focus every single day. Also we continue to position the company to adapt to the energy transition to ensure relevance and investability long term. We're top quartile in the industry globally on carbon emissions intensity and our methane emissions continues at the near zero level. We're already doing very well.
We want to go further and we're targeting becoming carbon neutral in our net equity operational emissions by 2030 and we'll achieve this through further investments in electrification of our key assets and direct investment in natural carbon capture projects to offset what we can't reduce. We have a plan in place to achieve this objective and I'm very pleased that we're getting recognition for our ESG leadership. Sustainalytics rank us as a top rated company. This puts us in the top 10% of the global oil and gas industry and we continue to be included on the Oslo Stock Exchange ESG index as the only oil and gas company. I think this is leveraging to how the company is viewed. Now looking at our three major projects.
Firstly, Halten East project in the Norwegian Sea which is started up in mid March on time and on budget. Halten East is the development of several smaller fields tied back to the Åsgard facilities. Initially the production project is developing 100 million barrels of gross reserves and achieving gross peak production of 80,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day and with significant unrisked upside in the area of 100-200 million barrels. The project is in the ramp up phase and production will grow through the year as new wells are brought on stream with the expectation of achieving peak production in the fourth quarter of around 20,000 barrels per day of Vår Energi next year. I think Halten East is a great example of leveraging the value of existing infrastructure to provide high value barrels with short time to market and low carbon emissions.
Johan Castberg, which started up at the end of March, marked the start of a new era for the Barents Sea region. The field is currently ramping up. Fifteen of the 30 planned development wells have been completed, which is sufficient to achieve plateau production levels, and the drilling program is scheduled to continue until the end of 2026. This initial phase is developing 450-650 million barrels gross. Plateau production levels of 220,000 barrels a day of oil are expected to be achieved within the second quarter, with Vår Energi's share being 66,000 barrels per day. This is an important catalyst for our growth target. The field will also be producing for more than 30 years, contributing to significant growth and value creation with an expected payback time of less than two years.
The Johan Castberg area is highly prospective and several new discoveries made in recent years are already being moved to development, including an extensive infill drilling program planned to be sanctioned this year. Johan Castberg Cluster one development consisting of two phases is targeting sanction of the first phase being the Isfjell discovery in the next year and in total there are between 250-550 million barrels of additional gross unrest recoverable resources identified in the area, which we anticipate will enable us to keep the facilities full towards 2030. After years of investments we see a bright future at Johan Castberg with significant upsides and long-term value creation ahead. Turning to the Balder X project which is nearing completion, you can see that the Jotun FPSO has successfully been moored on schedule in the Balder field.
All that remains is to hook up the FPSO to the subsea facilities and to complete final commissioning of the vessel before expected startup. At the end of the second quarter all 14 production wells are completed and we expect production will ramp up to peak levels of 80,000 barrels of oil per day gross within three to four months of production start. This project will secure production from the Balder area beyond 2045, unlocking gross 2P reserves around 150 million barrels. We have continued to grow our resource base through successful exploration in the area and are stepping up the pace, moving several tieback projects forward at speed to capitalize on the Jotun FPSO. This will sustain production longer term and includes the Balder phase IV planned to come on stream later this year.
Balder phase VI is expected to sanction in 2025, together adding a further 45-50 million barrels gross. Also, in the Greater Balder area, several new early phase projects are being progressed towards sanction, including Ringhorne North, Balder future phases, and the King discovery, targeting gross contingent resources of more than 70 million barrels. The Balder X project, with a payback time of around two years, including the sanction of the Balder phase V project, marks the startup of a new era in the North Sea. We see many years of value creation ahead. Vår Energi has an amazing portfolio with lots of optionality and growth opportunities. 2P reserves stand at 1.2 billion barrels. This is either in production or under development and underpins our growth to over 400,000 barrels a day in Q4.
We will stay there a few years but without investment would then decline. We are much more than that. We have 2C contingent resources of around 900 million barrels and we are moving forward around 30 early phase projects accounting for approximately 600 million barrels of resources. We also have an exciting exploration portfolio of over 1 billion barrels of net risk resources where we expect to drill out about 50% of this opportunity in the next four years. Putting this together, we have over 3 billion barrels of resource potential with 60% yet to be developed. That is how we will organically sustain production long term. We are working at pace to create value from this opportunity. We have a resilient and flexible portfolio of around 30 early phase projects that we are progressing towards development.
These are all subsea tiebacks to existing infrastructure with low cost and short time to market. We are creating a subsea factory with standardization, pre-commitments, and contract alliances to reduce cost, improve predictability, and speed up time to first production. We have created real momentum here and are targeting sanction of up to 14 projects by the end of 2025, as indicated on the chart. This is a progression from what we detailed at our CMU. We will probably not meet all of these dates, but we are confident on achieving the eight project sanctions we guided for this year, with some examples being the Balder phase VI, Fram South project, and the EOA area subsea projects.
This portfolio has strong economics with average break evens of around $35 per barrel with good rates of return, and with 70% of our future capital uncommitted, we have the flexibility to slow down some activity if the lower price environment continues without impacting near-term production. This could also create the opportunity to drive down costs and make the projects even better. As we move forward, we will consider each project on a case-by-case basis. Now moving to exploration. As you know, Vår Energi has a leading NCS exploration track record with around 50% commercial success rate over the last six years. This performance continues into 2025 with the Zagato oil discovery as the third successful well in a row on the Goliat Ridge.
Estimated gross resources discovered on the trend are now up to 100 million barrels of oil with estimated discovered plus prospective resources increased to above 200 million barrels. This is potentially as big as the original Goliat project. The Goliat Ridge consists of a series of adjacent bounded prospects next to Goliat Field with the same good quality reservoirs as those producing at Goliat. The three wells drilled so far have successfully discovered oil in separate fault blocks which significantly de-risks the prospectivity in the undrilled areas. So far water has not been encountered in any of the wells. It is possible the whole area is filled with hydrocarbons.
To delineate this exciting discovery, we'll acquire new seismic this summer and drill two further appraisal wells commencing in the third quarter this year with the aim that we have all the subsurface data in our hands by the end of the year required to progress a development. You can see this is in close proximity to the existing infrastructure and this provides the opportunity for a fast track, low emissions, cost efficient development using the available capacity at the Goliat FPSO which adds high value barrels. This discovery is significant with the resources in the area to be developed being potentially upwards of 350 million barrels of oil equivalent gross as you can see on the chart, including upside in the Goliat Field, development of the gas resources and the resources on the Goliat Ridge with Vår Energi's 65% interest in the area.
If the full potential can be realized, this could add over 15% to the company's Book 2P reserves. This is a material opportunity and we will de-risk it at pace. As we previously announced, we've stepped up the pace of exploration with around 20 wells planned this year that will make us the second most active explorer on the NCS. There are some key wells to be drilled in the next two quarters and it is going to be exciting to see these results come in. That rounds off my operational update and I'll now hand over to Carlo to review the financials. Thank you.
Thank you Nick and good morning to all. I would like to start by summarizing the key financial highlights of the first quarter. We generated strong revenues and an operating cash flow after tax of $1.3 billion in Q1. We maintained a strong and resilient balance sheet with a leverage ratio at 0.8 net debt to EBITDAX and $2.7 billion in available liquidity. In the quarter we successfully issued EUR 1 billion of senior notes which was more than four times oversubscribed. We confirmed the first quarter dividend of $300 million and we are showing confidence in our business by planning to pay another $300 million for the second quarter of 2025. All in all we have a strong and resilient financial position and we are successfully progressing in what will be a transformational year for Vår Energi.
I will now get into more details of our first quarter financial performance. We continue to realize strong prices in the quarter. We generated more than $1.8 billion of revenue, up versus previous quarter mainly due to higher sales volumes and higher prices in the quarter. The realized oil price in the quarter was $76 per BOE, in line with the brent. The realized gas price was $87 per BOE, also in line with the reference spot prices. Going forward, we have used our flexible gas sales contracts to lock in high prices in the summer months. We have already executed fixed price transactions with customers resulting in approximately 20% of our gas production from Q2 and Q3 being sold at approximately $90 per BOE.
We continue to have a robust sales portfolio with access to several markets and we have flexibility in the contracts to decide the split between month ahead, day ahead and fixed contracts. I also would like to mention that our oil production is fully hedged on a post-tax basis for the remaining of 2025 with monthly put options at a strike price of $50 per barrel. On the back of a solid operational performance at stronger prices. We have high cash flow generation in the quarter compared to last quarter and the same quarter last year. Cash flow from operation after tax in the quarter was $1.3 billion, an increase from the previous quarter mainly due to lower tax payment, higher sold volumes and higher prices. Our CapEx for the quarter including exploration was $595 million while Balder X and Johan Castberg remained the largest contributor of the total spend.
The 2025 development CapEx guidance of $2.3 billion-$2.5 billion given at our CMU is maintained. Our resilient and strong liquidity position improved in the quarter. Here we see the development in our cash position from Q4 2024 to the end of Q1 2025. We generated approximately $1.5 billion CFFO before tax and working capital movements. Working capital contributed positively with around $50 million mainly as a result of a decrease in trade receivable. We paid one tax installment in the quarter amounting to $213 million, down from almost $800 million in the previous quarter. We further had a cash outflow of $628 million in investments in our high value growth projects. We distributed as planned $270 million in dividend related to the fourth quarter 2024. In summary, we have a solid liquidity position and a diversified long term capital structure aligned with our business needs.
At the end of the quarter we have a cash balance of $660 million and an overall available liquidity of around $2.7 billion. During the quarter we have reduced our net debt by approximately $180 million with a leverage ratio net interest bearing debt on EBITDAX at 0.8. This is stable from the previous quarter and continues to be well below our over the cycle target of below 1.3. In the quarter we successfully issued EUR 1 billion in new notes, attractively priced with being more than four times oversubscribed. Our debt portfolio is well diversified with a weighted average time to maturity of 5 years when excluding the 60 years hybrid bond. This is supporting the execution of our growth strategy towards 2030 and beyond.
We have a Baa3 rating from Moody's and a triple B rating from Standard & Poor's, both with a stable outlook and we are committed to maintain our investment grade rating. Our strong financial position and our resilient and flexible project portfolio lay a solid foundation for continued material shareholder distribution and growth and this is a unique investment proposition that Vår Energi offers. Now let's look at the tax guidance for this year. In the first quarter we paid NOK 2.4 billion in cash taxes and for the next quarter we have two tax installments amounting to around NOK 5 billion. These are all related to 2024 results. At media we will update the tax estimate for 2025 and tax payments in the second half of this year will be based on 2025 estimated profits.
Half of the taxes are paid this year and half will be paid the next year. We have included a tax sensitivity for the second half of 2025 which is giving the cash tax estimate at different price scenarios. The middle case is giving around $1.6 billion in total payments for the second half of the year while the sensitivity is between $1.1 billion-$2.1 billion according to the indicated price ranges. Note that from the second half of this year we will move from paying 6 installments per year to 10 installments per year. Vår Energi has a strong track record of delivering value to our shareholders. Since the IPO we have returned more than $3.5 billion in dividend, maintaining stable payments over the last 13 quarters.
With a strong financial performance in the first quarter of 2025, a solid operational outlook and a resilient and flexible project portfolio, we can continue to support attractive and predictable dividends going forward. We confirm $300 million in dividend for the first quarter which is equivalent to $0.12 per share to be paid at the end of May. The dividend guidance for the second quarter is $300 million supported by the planned production growth. Looking forward, our dividend policy remains unchanged with 25%-30% of the CFFO after tax allocated to shareholder distribution over the cycle. We will continue guiding on a quarterly basis considering the macro environment and operational performance. 2025 will be a transformative year for the company in stage of production growth, resulting in a significant profit and cash flow. Generation ample took over the guided dividends for the year.
Finally, I will summarize our full year 2025 long term guidance. For 2025 our production guidance is 330,000-360,000 barrels per day, reaching more than 400,000 barrels per day by Q4 2025. We will maintain approximately 400,000 barrels per day in 2026 and further we will sustain 350,000-400,000 barrels per day until 2030. Production cost will be $11-$12 per barrel, down to around $10 per barrel by Q4. As we ramp up production, CapEx will be $2.3 billion-$2.5 billion in 2025, going down to $2 billion-$2.5 billion thereafter. Exploration expenses and OpEx will be in the range of $200 million-$300 million and $150 million respectively. For this year we plan to invest around $350 million in exploration activities.
We are guiding on $300 million in dividends for Q2 2025 and we are maintaining the dividend guidance at 25-30% of the CFFO post tax for the longer term. With that, handing back to Nick for the concluding remarks. Thank you.
Thank you Carlo and I have just one final slide to summarize the first quarter results. We achieved strong financial results and performance in the quarter and this is supported by operational performance in line with expectations. We are once again in a more volatile price environment and our resilient business with low cash flow breakeven and capital flexibility will allow us to navigate successfully through the cycles. As you have heard, we have reduced net debt and have high available liquidity. We are on track with our major projects to deliver transformational growth to over 400,000 barrels per day in the fourth quarter this year. We are delivering on our strategy for growth and value creation. As a result of our strong performance and resilience, we continue to provide attractive dividend distributions. These are our first quarter 2024 results and are the reasons to be invested in Vår Energi.
Thank you for your time and we'd now like to open up the call for your questions.
If you do wish to ask a question, you will need to press five star on your telephone. To withdraw your question, press five star again. There will be a brief pause while questions are being registered. Our first question comes from the line of Lydia Rainforth from Barclays. Please go ahead, your line will be unmuted.
Thank you and good morning and thank you as ever, for the presentation and the results. Two questions, if I could. The first one, just in terms of the production side of the build during Q4 of this year, in terms of production, what takes you to the top of the production guidance range now? Or is this really kind of a case if we can just consolidate around the middle of the range? Secondly, on the dividend side, clearly the yield is high at the moment and quite a lot of the questions that I've had this morning is like, how sustainable is the dividend as we get into basically the end of this year and next year? If you could just kind of reflect a little bit on the dividend sustainability, that would be really helpful. Thank you.
Good, good, Lydia, good morning and good questions. You know, in terms of, in terms of the production guidance, you know, we guided at the capital markets day 330-360 and we guided that we'd be over 400,000 barrels a day in Q4. This is a progression through the year and, you know, first quarter came in within line with our expectations. We've now brought on the Halten East and Johan Castberg projects. The other major project is the Balder project to come online at the end of Q2, but we have another six projects, obviously smaller and it's the timing, the exact timing of the startup of all of these and the ramp up that provides and the pace of ramp up that provides the range. We still believe that we can deliver within the range that we've set out regarding the midpoint.
There is an upside case that we do better than that. Where we stand now at the end of April, we're in a good place to deliver all of this. I think on the dividend outlook, you know, maybe I'll provide my reflections and then if Carlo wants to add something, you know, we will grow to production of over 400,000 barrels a day this year. We've set out that we can, we've also guided production next year of 400,000 and we've guided 350,000-400,000 out towards 2030. What drives that is a continuous investment into the subsurface opportunity near to our fields. You know what I said is, and what we've set out on numerous occasions is that we're moving forward a portfolio of projects. These are now around 30 subsea projects that develop around 600 million barrels.
We continue to explore and we're having success which will create new projects and it's that stream of projects that we're investing into that will sustain our production long term. The investment metrics of these are $35 breakeven and 25% rate of return or more. These create a lot of value over time. We believe we can sustain our production long term at 350-400, maybe even grow longer term. If we deliver on that program, we deliver sustainable cash flow over a long period of time. As we set out at our capital markets day, we generate free cash flow of between $5 billion and $9 billion between now and 2030 at an oil price range of $65-$85 per barrel and a gas price range that steps down over time.
When you put that together in the context of paying just over $1 billion of dividend per year, you can see that we can easily sustain this long term. I think that is the message. To believe that, you have to believe that we're going to deliver the major projects this year to over 400,000 barrels a day. We're in a good place to do that. You have to believe that we're going to sanction all of these new projects and we're going to sanction quite a number of them. As I said, we gave a guidance of eight sanctions this year. Actually, we're working on 14 potential sanctions this year. I think we may not get them all, but they'll come very soon. That's half of the portfolio.
I believe that we're going to be able to deliver this and that's how we can sustain dividends long term. Hopefully that covers.
That's super helpful.
Thank you.
That's perfect.
Thank you very much, Nick.
Thank you, Lydia. The next question will be from the line of Teodor Sveen-Nilsen from SB1 Markets. Please go ahead, your line will be unmuted.
Good morning, Nick and Carlo. Thanks for taking my questions. A few questions for me. First on Nick, you talked about Balder, the phase V and VI. Are those two phases sufficient to arrest decline or should we still expect some decline along the entire Balder area when those two come on stream? Second question, that is on Castberg. Could there comment on the performance on Castberg by the first few weeks of production? Finally, just following up on the dividend question. Now in the short term, of course, there is highly uncertain macro environment now. Demand estimates for oil will probably come down over the next few months. Just wonder in the short term, dividend for Q3 and Q4, how much lower oil price could we see? Will you still maintain the $300 million dividend per quarter? Thank you.
Okay, thanks Teodor and good morning. Good questions. Balder phase V, you know, this is a series of six infill wells using the remaining slots. These already started drilling and start producing the end of this year and come online during next year. Phase VI, actually we intend to sanction around the middle of the year and we expect that to start producing at the end of next year. That shows the speed and that we're moving forward. We also, as I mentioned in my remarks, that's about 45-50 million barrels, those two projects. We have a series of other projects, Ringhorn North, a King development and also further infill or sort of phases of Balder, which added around another 70 million barrels. We're working to move those forward.
We have not set it out so far, but actually we can see keeping flat production in here towards 2030. That is what we are working towards. We have a series of projects to be able to make that happen. That is sort of how we see it. We just have to deliver this a bit quicker than had been contemplated. That is what we are doing. Moving on to Johan Castberg. It only started up a few weeks ago and in the early phase you bring on some wells and then they have to get the gas compression system working and they are in because we cannot flare large amounts of gas. Until the gas compression system is running stably, you cannot ramp up many more wells. At the moment there are a few wells producing and it is at low rate and that gas compression commissioning is ongoing.
I expect once that's sort of stable operations, that we'll see the ramp up going very quickly. As we say, we're expecting to achieve plateau production within Q2 there. On the dividend question, I'll ask Carlo to answer that. Sure.
When it comes to dividends, clearly we're now seeing a lot of volatility up and down in the price. Our dividend guidance for the quarter and our plan for 2025 is really related to the production growth and the plan which is going as per expectation. This is where we are confident about the sustainability of the dividend level because it's really based on our production growth and production ramp up. What we see in the macro is really moving very fast up and down. Technically and operationally speaking we are moving in the right direction. Yeah, we maintain confidence about sustainability of the dividend even in the short term, considering our portfolio production performance and the flexibility in our portfolio.
Okay, understood. Thank you.
Thank you, Teodor. The next question will be from Mark Wilson from Jefferies. You'll now be unmuted.
Okay, thank you for taking my question. I'd like to ask a bit more about the Goliat potential, please, Nick. Excellent to see the exploration success there, but can we just get an idea of what sort of spare capacity we're looking at across that facility? I imagine there is quite some spare oil capacity. What is it producing now versus what it could be? I think the discoveries to date have mainly been gas. I see Goliat Gas as one of your potential 14 sanctions this year. What would you be envisaging, a potential gas development there? Thank you.
Yeah, it's a good question, Mark. I mean, you know, Goliat was on plateau for a short period of time, few years and then its decline. And we're producing around 30,000 barrels a day gross there. Actually we've got, we're about a third full, so we've got lots of spare capacity. It's a fantastic facility, very high uptime. I think it was close to 100% in the first quarter. It's a great facility. What you'll see is that this Goliat Ridge discovery is just a few kilometers away. Actually the Countach is 15 km, Gato 7, Goliat North is almost on the same edge of the field. This is in real tieback, quick pace and bring it on. This Goliat Ridge is on oil. What we're quoting here is the oil resources. There are some gas here as well.
Actually, there is a lot of upside here and it is a very exciting prospect. I would, you know, we call these different names but actually it is one discovery. It is an appraisal program in my view. The question is actually how big is it, is it 100 million barrels, is it somewhere over 200, and we will find that out during this year. That is one component to this. The other aspect around Goliat is we inject all the gas into the reservoir and there is 100 million barrels of BOE of gas resources here. At some point we have to develop this and the discussion we have is that we would develop this into Snøhvit and receive revenue from this, you know, when Snøhvit has capacity available.
It may be some time before we see it, but it's an enabler project. It's relatively low cost because it's a short time from the facility to the Snøhvit gas pipeline. That's part of it. We also have further. We continue to drill infill wells at Goliat. You know, the recovery factor here is about 35%. Our ambition is to get it to 45%-50%. Sorry. We're using, we're sidetracking existing wells but we've run out of well slots on the subsea templates. There's another 40-50 million barrels of upside resources here which we're looking to develop oil reserves. You know, as part of this overall development of the area we're looking at putting more facilities in there too. That's why I say there's upwards of 350 million barrels potential here.
It is something that we are going to spend the effort to de-risk very quickly over the next six months or so to be in a place that we can start to think about moving forward a development in the early part of next year. Hopefully that answers your question.
Mark.
Okay, to summarize, you're looking to divert the existing gas you're injecting to Snøhvit, but the discoveries would be oil tiebacks. Granted that you need more slots.
Yeah, so oil tiebacks with some pipelines. Goliat North is just a few kilometers from the FPSO, but Countach is 15 kilometers. These are short tiebacks. We would be putting in place subsea templates tied into the facility. You know, the question is how many templates and how many wells? That is the question we need to answer.
Great. Okay, thank you very much. I'll hand it over.
Thank you, Mark. The next question will be from the line of Matthew Smith from Bank of America. You'll now be unmuted.
Hi there. Morning, Nick. Morning, Carlo. Thanks for taking my question. Just had one really, I think touching on similar themes around sort of capital allocation, dividend sustainability. And it's really because, you know, we talked a lot about doing more faster investing in new projects, new FIDs to sort of sustain levels of production after you grow it this year. I suppose today you're also keen to have highlights the flexibility that you have in your CapEx budget, the amount of uncommitted CapEx that you have. I guess I just really wanted to test what oil prices do you think you need to see before you start to actually utilize some of that CapEx flexibility and perhaps I could sort of attach to that. To what end are you really managing the sort of investment grade credit rating here?
Is this about the debt maturities or is it about protecting the dividend itself? Thank you.
No, it's a good question and it covers quite a few things, Matt. You know, long term we want to, we intend to maintain investment grade credit rating. We intend to maintain resilience and flexibility. I think those are three things that we want to maintain as a company long term. I think this resilience and flexibility, I mean before even the oil price came down, we've been highlighting the resilience and flexibility of the company. What I know is in this business it goes through cycles and you need to be prepared for the good times and the bad times. That's what we are. As a company.
This resilience, flexibility and we will use it, we set out at capital markets day, that $2.3 billion-$2.5 billion of capital on investments in developments this year and a range of $2 billion-$2.5 billion out to 2030 per annum and that range still stands. As I mentioned, we have the choices here. Our big projects have come to an end and what we have is a whole series of subsea tieback projects into existing infrastructure and a series of infill drilling opportunities. The infill drilling opportunities come at $30 break even, subsea tiebacks at an average of about $35 break even. These projects make money, good returns even at $65. They are good things to invest into. We will also take the opportunity to potentially use the flexibility here.
You know, for example, a project that we might invest subsea tie that development that we might invest into and commit to this year might not start production till 2028 or 2029. Spend now does not have an impact on production for some years. In some cases, delaying that six months or a year does not really make a lot of difference in the outlook for the company in terms of production. It does have an impact in reducing our capital usage. We will make, as I pointed out in my speaking notes, that we will look at each of these commitments on a case-by-case basis and make a judgment as to how critical it is to move that forward, what the time criticality is, what the other constraints are, with a thought in our mind about if this price level continues.
Perhaps we want to take down the capital, spend a bit and slow down the pace. We are going to drive as fast as we can to get these projects going and then we will make that decision. You know, the message is keep going fast and then we will make a decision on a case by case basis. I think, you know, I have been through these cycles before and I think this creates opportunity. It makes opportunity for us to make some of these projects better, maybe more efficient, maybe take down the costs and we need to use that opportunity. It also creates acquisition opportunity potentially in the market for strong companies like us. You know, your question is multifaceted. The answer is multifaceted. It is about maintaining that resilience, that flexibility and using it to optimize the company continuously.
If I Yes.
I just wanted to compliment on what Nick was mentioning during the CMU. We indicated a free cash flow generation of $5 billion-$9 billion between $65 and $85 per barrel. That was based on spending our full CapEx plan without touching, as you mentioned, the flexibility that we have. This gives a bit also the sense of the possibility and opportunity we have in our portfolio as well as the resilience of our balance sheet when it comes to finance our projects through the CFFO and not really touching our leverage. I believe also this gives you the sense of the strength of our financials, balance sheet, and the flexibility we have in adapting quickly to a possible low macro environment lower than what we might imagine.
Hopefully that's happy to pass it up.
Thank you, Matt. The next question will be from the line of Victoria McCulloch from RBC. You are unmuted.
Hi, thanks very much. Just a quick follow on from that previous question. Could you give us an idea of how much CapEx is committed for 2026 relative to the projects sanctioned and then, you know, maybe a bigger picture on the portfolio of projects. What are the biggest challenges in accelerating these towards FID between now and over the next couple of years? Is it the geology they need better understanding on or are there more complexities in adding these tiebacks? Just a final one I might have missed. What's the ramp up or the expected ramp up for Halten East? That'd be great. Thanks very much.
I'll capture Halten East to start with. And you know, that is a series of fields developed into Åsgard and these are subsea tiebacks. It started up. Currently two wells are producing and it's going to step up to 80,000 barrels a day, BOEs per day gross by Q4. I think there are eight wells to come online. It does not need eight to get there. It will step up to the peak rate in Q4. We should expect it to gradually step up through the year. We're producing just a little over half actually our peak rate at the moment. In terms of committed capital.
Yeah, sure, committed capital. As you mentioned, we have over the plan of 2026-2030, 70% roughly, specifically from 2026, if we got your question right, this is a bit less than 70%. It's probably closer to 50-60% because clearly speaking, the commitment goes unwinding through the time. As soon as we move projects forward, we are already moving projects forward. Yes, this is the range you can consider for 2026, specifically over the 70% average for the longer period.
Victoria, does that capture your questions?
Yeah, and it was just. You know, maybe the bigger picture. What's the biggest challenge in accelerating the project? You know, not specifically one project, but, you know, broadly.
You know, I would say the challenge is getting the momentum into this and we now have it. The challenge is sort of behind us. It's about now delivering on this. You know, we've got the people, we've got the projects and you know, each one of these is a bit, you know, they're all different. The complexity associated with them. There's commercial activity, there's subsurface work to do, there's engineering work. You have to time the top side element with other activities. Each of these is a little complex, but I mean, they're fundamentally the same type of projects. We're trying to move these forward as a subsea project factory with substandardization of equipment and engineering design, which would shorten the time cycle. I think we're in a good place to do this.
I mean, we sanctioned Balder Phase V in October last year. It's going to come online first wells in Q4 this year. We are going to sanction Balder Phase VI in the middle of this year and it should start up at the end of next year. We have got a similar momentum through many of our other projects. You know, I feel in a good place. I mean, we highlighted eight projects at a capital markets update and now we are saying we potentially have 14 projects for sanction this year. I think that gives you a sense that we are moving this forward at pace.
Great. Thanks very much for your time.
Thank you, Victoria. The next question will be from the line of Sasikanth Chilukuru from Morgan Stanley. Your line will be unmuted.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I have two left actually. The first one was on the Balder X startup, which was reiterated by end of 2Q. Now with the U2 and FPSO now moved at the field location, I was just wondering if there are any other milestones that we can actually look for or monitor before the startup. Anything that would provide the market more confidence on the startup timeline. Also, if you could talk about any contingencies that you have already have in the startup, that would be helpful. The second was on near term working capital and the underlift positions. We've seen an underlift position in sales, I suppose this quarter and even previous quarter in 1Q and as well as 4Q. Just wondering if that is any potential to reverse up front. Also on working capital, we've seen working capital inflow this year, this quarter.
Would that be, is there any potential for that to reverse over the next couple of quarters?
Okay, I'll capture the first question on Balder and then Carlo will do the second. You know, we set out a revised schedule for Balder. I think it was last September, October time and we've met every date that we set out in that. First of all was a sail away in March, which achieved I think the 15th of March, the vessel is now moored, fully moored in the field, long term, successfully done on time. We're currently in the process of what's left to do now, which is to hook up the vessel to the subsea facility, so pull in the risers, and we're in the process of doing that. Then it's to tie in the risers into the vessel and the critical path runs through that activity. Actually, the other activities running in parallel is to finally commission the vessel.
We have a flotel connected with a significant number of beds. I think 275 people working on the vessel every day. We are front end loading that activity. I would say there are not any real milestones that you can pin on except for first oil, which we are saying is going to be in the end of June. You know, we have taken a lot of the risk out the time as we have met the schedule that we set out and we have obviously taken a lot of risk out with that. It is just about meeting those activities that we need to complete before we get to first oil. I would say we are in a good place and hopefully we can come back. I am expecting that we come back and say in June that we have achieved it.
Carlo, you're going to cover working capital.
Working capital and lift. We start from the working capital. As you mentioned, we had an overall positive movement in working capital of $49 million. This is a mix, of course, of small, small movements when it comes from the payables and the receivable, although nothing is really unusual. More specifically, when it comes to the under overlifting position, we have over lifted oil in Q1 and if you recall, during Q4 2024, we actually were in a higher under lifting position. We are recovering the under lifting position. It's not yet fully recovered, but it's unwinding at the same time. We will build up a bit of underlifting position for NGL, but also this will wind starting from April. All in all, I would say really operational movement, nothing unusual. Hope they answer your question.
Thank you.
Indeed.
Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Thank you. Sasikanth. The next question will be from the line of John Olaisen from ABG. Please go ahead. Your line will be unmuted.
Good morning everybody and thanks for taking my question. I'm sorry about another question about the dividend and the sustainability. I get a lot of questions about the free cash flow that's referred to $5 billion-$9 billion over the six year period on average. Sorry. In total or the average over the 2025 to 2030 period assuming, as you mentioned, $65-$85 oil price. If you assume a midpoint, which is oil price of $75 in that guidance range and $7 billion in free cash flow per year, and if you divide that by six years, you get about $1.1 billion, which is slightly below your current dividend run rate on a dividend of $1.2 billion.
I presume from that free cash flow of $5 billion-$9 billion that you're the guy that the range that you're indicating, I presume you have to also have to use that to lower the debt level, isn't that correct? Two questions. Is that like a fair calculation that you need $75 oil price roughly to keep the current dividend flat over the next six years, assuming that your CapEx span, of course. How about the debt level? Is that assuming basically it looks like you need $75 oil price to sustain the current dividend without reducing debt. Is that completely off or is that the right calculation? Is that how we should look at it?
I think, I mean maybe Carlo can answer in a second, but I mean the way to look at this is that first of all we're investing through this period for long term. I want to, we only show production out to 2030 and we're investing now for many of the investments that come online towards 2029, 2030 and obviously provide value beyond that period of time. I think you need to look at it longer term than that. We're not guiding longer than that, but much of our investment in this period of time is to provide cash flow outside of that period of time. The point being is that we can continue to sustain debt long term as a company and it gets down to the fact that we've only got 1.2 billion barrels of 3 billion barrels developed.
That is what the value opportunity is and we are continuing to invest into it. Secondly, you think you need to look at our dividend guidance of 25%-30% of CFFO. There's two aspects here. One is it's a formula which is based on CFFO which obviously has the potential to adjust over time depending on what cash flow is, which has a lot of aspects that drive it. We also have a track record of trying to sustain and maintain sustaining dividend over the period. For the last 13 quarters, sustained or grown the dividend level. We feel that with all the factors that we've got to play and the opportunities to optimize the portfolio that we can continue to maintain dividend payments in the longer term.
There is a lot of flexibility in the portfolio to adjust and optimize as we go. I think we have a track record of doing that and I think we can continue to do that.
I guess just pure math, the low end of the free cash flow, 5 to 95 divided by 6 years is $800 million per year as compared to run rate of $1.2 billion at $65, it seems like, seems like you need $65 is not enough just from that math. You refer to that math. So I'm just saying.
Yeah, yeah. I think there's a number of aspects in here. First of all, if we continue at $65, the cost base is going to go down. We do not do that. If we continue at $65, maybe we'll spend less money on exploration, maybe we'll slow down some of the developments and the cost of doing things will reduce. None of that is reflected in the basis on which we show the cash flow outlook. We just take the same cost base that we had when the oil price was $80 and we run forward with a lower oil price. I think if you want to get, if you want to look at a $65 case, we have to take down the cost long term. We have to take down the costs and we perhaps have to take down the activity levels.
We also assume in our cash flow outlook that we spend a lot of money on exploration with zero success. That is in the basis of what we've said. We're not going to continue to spend $350 million a year on exploration with zero success year after year. The reality is we are having success, so it's creating more projects and value. I think you have to look at our cash flow outlooks in a slightly more sophisticated way than just running them at different oil prices and assuming, and unfortunately it's not that easy for us to demonstrate it in a different way because working out what the optimizations are, if you have a period of lower prices, are not that easy to do and flexibility. The reality is we're not hooked into spending a lot of capital over a long period of time.
We have a sort of series of small decisions to make that we can optimize and if we're doing projects that break even at $35 and infill wells at $30, we're going to make a lot of money out of doing it. We've shown that we're reducing our cost base over time. Last year we showed a free cash flow break even of $45 on the portfolio. Now it's down at $40. We continue to invest in better projects, we continue to drive down operating costs and as I said, I think we can progressively make the company better over time. We feel when we look at this in a range of different scenarios that we can, we can continue to support long term dividend payments.
Finally, just a housekeeping question. You write that the Snowit field will be shut down for three months. Sorry, it will have a three month turnaround. I just wonder, will the production complete be shut down for three months? For Snowit now in Q2
it will be. Yeah.
Right. Thanks a lot for taking my question.
Thank you.
Thank you, John. As no one else has lined up for questions in this call, I'll now hand it over to Ida for any written questions.
Thank you. We have a couple of questions towards the end here. One question from Vidar Lingvær at Danske Bank regarding the 70% uncommitted CapEx. Can you please provide a split between operated and non-operated share of this uncommitted CapEx? Yes, we can consider that it's roughly 60% non-operated and 40% operated.
I think it's also worth noting that we have some control over a lot of the operated spend. Our vote is mostly required to move most of it forward. It's not like we're sort of pushed into doing things.
Last question on capital distribution, is share buyback something that Vår Energi could consider doing in the future?
You know we get this question quite a lot and you know, I think the pushback here is that, you know, we only have, we have a big shareholder in Eni with 63% and there's a relatively low free float for the company and 37%. You know, I think we have to demonstrate, you know, I think our job as leadership is to demonstrate to the market that we're undervalued and to continue to pay strong dividends and deliver on the growth and sustainment strategy. I think that will drive through to the share price and you know, in a year or two we're still struggling to demonstrate that. I think, I think maybe we have to think about it slightly differently. The challenge we have is with such a small free float.
A lot of bigger investors we meet say we like the story, but actually there's not enough flexibility for us to come into liquidity, to come in to be an investor, and that puts people off. I struggle with the notion of buying back shares, actually. I think the strategy we've got is good, and then we just need to keep just delivering on it, and people will see what a great opportunity is to invest into something that yields 17%.
Great. Thank you very much. That concludes the Q and A session and the Q1 2025 presentation. Thank you all for dialing in. We wish you a good rest of the day.