Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for NewMed Energy 2024 first quarter webinar. All participants are in silent listen only mode. A brief question and answer session will follow a formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'm pleased to introduce Yossi Abu, CEO of NewMed Energy. Yossi, you may begin.
Thank you very much, Guil. Thank you everybody, for joining us this afternoon here in Israel. We would like to take you through our financial result of Q1 2024, and, and the key highlights from, and the status of the, of our activities. So without further ado, we'll go directly to the points. In the first quarter, basically, we achieve a little bit more than 1 BCF a day of sales, a total of 2.63 BCM. At the quarter, we, we finalize in a very stable way, $121 million net profit, EBITDA of a little bit shy of $180. We'll take you to a few operational updates.
First, we actually started this quarter, it was in the end of the quarter, but in Q1, we started the condensate sale into the Israeli market. We're talking about roughly 2,500 barrels a day. On top of that, we are on budget, on schedule, on the third gathering line, and as we update last week, we signed a new local market GSPA to Eshkol Energies, which is a IPP, new IPP in the market, part of the Dalia Group that already exists. I will take you as well to an update on Leviathan expansion and Aphrodite development plan, and we announce, as you saw, a $60 million dividend, remaining a very stable dividend stream through the last quarters.
So going back into the result of the Q1, as you can see, we sell 2.63 BCM vis-a-vis 2.8 in that equivalent quarter last year. The reason is a little bit of slowdown, mainly in the Israeli market, but we increased the export to Egypt from 1.5 BCM in the first quarter of last year to 1.8 in this quarter, so increase of around 20%. And Jordan remains a bit stable in the consumption. On the prices, we arrived to a bit higher price, $6.16 vis-a-vis $6.09 of that equivalent quarter.
Now, in this slide, and I show you from quarter to quarter, I'm basically show this slide, what you can see is that we are remaining in a very stable prices. And as you know, most of our gas contract GSPA are Brent linked with a floor price. But yet what you can see here is really we are really protected in the downside. So even if you go to June 2020, and you look on $30 barrel price, you would see that we maintain very stable gas prices on the lower side. So enjoying some of the upside of the Brent, but maintaining stable gas prices below this point.
Going, going on, you know, the Israeli market, when we are seeing a very, significant growth in, in, the natural gas demand in the Israeli market, what we are expecting to see is more contract. As we signed last week, the Eshkol contract, it's around 0.5 BCMA with additional, sales based on interruptible basis. But in the end, what we are seeing is two main drivers to a very significant increase in the demand in the Israeli market. One is a coal reduction, and currently the government target that by 2026, we'll not see, significant production from coal in the market. So vis-a-vis the around 20% of, our electricity, last year was from coal, we are expecting to go very close to zero by 2026.
The other one is a very big demand for electric car in the Israeli market. In the end, when we are looking on 2027, 2028, we are expecting natural gas to be at almost 80% of the electricity basket in the market, meaning natural gas in Israel, in the end, is fueling the electric cars. So that's, that's, that's then, and those are the main drivers to the demand on top of the usual drivers, which is basically the growth in population and the overall growth in the economy. On the operational side, as I mentioned, we start to flow, sorry, flow condensate to our customer in the south, and we are on timetable and on budget on the third gathering line.
What it's basically mean is that by mid next year, we'll be able to flow rather than the 12 BCM that we are flow, that we can do on a yearly basis to the market, we can reach 1.45, 1.4 BCF a day, which bring us to the area of 14-14.5 BCMs by mid next year. Now, on the expansion of Leviathan, we are running forward, and we are very close to entering into a full FEED. So we just approve a budget by Chevron and NewMed and Ratio of a $32 million just for the next weeks to try and take us to the full budget of the FEED, and we are expecting to enter into FEED very soon.
In parallel to that, we are continuing working on the connectivity to the Egyptian market, and as you can see, in this map, we are expecting the Ashdod-Ashkelon looping to be finalized somewhere the end of Q1 2025, some or early Q2 2025. On top of that, we are running forward with the Nitzana export route, and we increase the capacity in the Arab Gas Pipeline to flow more gas to Egypt, to Jordan. All of those may take us by 2027 to a total capacity to be able to flow to the Egyptian market of more than 21 BCMA. So basically, a full regional connectivity, enabling to really to take all the gas that will be available from the Israeli market to the Egyptian market.
I think what you can see here, quarter -on- quarter, we are seeing a very, very stable net profit, and we are very happy that that's, you know, that give us the ability to work on the three different, I would say, pillars of our activities. So basically, continue invest in internal growth, so second phase of Leviathan, development of Aphrodite, in parallel to maintaining a balance on our debt to NAV ratio, and on top of that, continue with very clear dividend streams to the quarter on quarter. So to go into more details with P&L, I will ask Tzachi Habusha, our CFO, to take it from this point.
Thank you, Yossi, and thank you all for being with us today. Let's start. I'd like to share a few key points regarding our performance in the first quarter. As you can see, our net profit stands at approximately $121 million, slightly higher than the same period last year. Moreover, the partnership's total debt has significantly decreased, as I will discuss in more detail later. Here is a very good slide illustrates the main changes affecting our net profit compared to Q1 of last year. We saw a reduction in natural gas revenues after royalties, amounting to $14 million.
This included a $18 million decrease due to a lower selling of natural gas quantities, as Yossi mentioned, from previous level of approximately 2.8 BCM-2.6 BCM this quarter. However, this was offset by a $2.3 million increase due to a higher average gas price per MMBtu, and $1.8 million from the sale of condensate, which began on March 7 to the Ashdod Refinery via the EAPC pipeline. Here I'd like to emphasize that the condensate sale will increase our total income and the net profit from here on.
Other factors affecting our net income include a $0.6 million increase in operating expenses and a $50 million decrease in net financial expenses, mainly due to our buyback program, the full repayment of Leviathan bonds Series June 2023, and our reevaluation of Karish and Tanin royalties. Regarding our balance sheet, we have seen a dramatic reduction in our debt position. On June 30, we repaid Leviathan bond Series 2023 in amount of $500 million. Here in this slide, this slide shows us the reduction in our debt compared to the previous periods.
In addition to the repayment of Leviathan bonds, June 2023, we also repaid our Tamar bonds and Series A bonds at the end of 2021. As of March 31, our total debt is approximately $1.75 billion, consisting of Leviathan bonds with a maturity date, say, in 2025, 2027, and 2030. These bonds, which have fixed interest rates, place us in a strong financial position.
... and positively impact our financial cost this quarter, and will continue to do so in the near future. Finally, as Yossi mentioned, the partnership declared a $60 million profit distribution. This was in addition to a $60 million declaration in last March, that was paid in last April. This include the key points regarding the Q1 financial statement. Thank you, Yossi, and thank you all.
Thank you very much. We will, we'll see if we have any questions, and obviously we'll take those, so few minutes. Well, great, we didn't see any meaningful questions. Yeah, just one pop up.
Basically, we already have a significant cash flow.
That's actually the question, so.
Sorry. Yeah.
So the question is, how, how will... How do we intend to address the next bond maturity of $600 million due to be paid in mid-2025?
So as you know, practically we have a very, very strong cash flow, so most of the payment will come from the cash flow. I think that we have as well $100 million, actually $150 million, which is basically open to us to withdraw if we need it. But currently we are not looking on a new bond or something significant. It will be mainly from the cash flow.
The second question is with regards to the Nitzana line and the potential other potential route to Egypt, if you can give a brief a brief update on the connectivity that you mentioned to-
Yeah. So basically, our analysis is basically a very simple analysis between a direct pipeline from Leviathan platform to, doesn't matter, it could be Port Said or even Suez, if it's shorter route, and vis-a-vis the Nitzana route. Currently we are working with INGL and the government on the Nitzana route, but always we analyze that vis-a-vis a totally owned by us pipeline to overcome the Israeli grid cost, and that's really a commercial decision to take between the two alternatives. Thank you very much. Ah, there's another question.
So I think the last question that we'll take with regards to Aphrodite and where the Aphrodite development stands currently.
Well, basically, very, very... We are in advanced discussion with the Cypriot government and Cypriot minister on what is the best development plan to enter into a FEED. We are very keen to develop Aphrodite. Aphrodite, I think, is a very important asset in the East Med, and we are working with the Cypriot minister on refining and running into a FEED. And we are expecting to close soon the timetable and the project FEED design.
Great, that will be all. We want to thank you for joining us. Any last remarks?
Thank you very much. Thank you.
Thank you. If you have any additional questions or any follow-ups, please feel free to reach out to me. Thank you.