Hi, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for the NewMed Energy Q1 webinar. At this time, all the participants are in listen-only mode. A brief question and answer session will be followed by the formal presentation. As a reminder, this conference is being recorded. I'm pleased to introduce Yossi Abu, the CEO of NewMed Energy. Yossi, you may begin. Good luck.
Thank you very much. Thank you, Noa. Thank you, everybody, for joining us for this call to review the financial result of the Q1 of 2023. With your permission, we should start. Basically, what we'll try to discuss today is we'll take you to a status of the non-binding offer received by ADNOC and BP. We'll discuss the first few average production. It was a really great quarter for us with 2.86 BCM production in that quarter. highest record quarter earning. Record quarter earning for us for Q1 with $194 with EBITDA and $121 net profit.
We'll share with you the status of the Leviathan expansion and as well the Aphrodite-A-three well, which we start to drill just recently. As well this quarter, we basically repay $280 million out of the $500 million bond due June this year, so we are basically use fund in place to have early payment. We just announced this morning a $50 million dividend as part of our dividend policy. As you know, we are at a $50 million-$60 million dividend at the last few quarters, and continuing with that. Sorry for jumping. Sorry, let's start with the production summary. Sorry, let's start with the BP-ADNOC status update.
We are working in three parallel work stream. There's a due diligence work, a very extensive due diligence that BP and ADNOC are doing. I have to say this is after a very intensive work, look like we are on the way to finish it and kind of the last mile there. In parallel, as you know, because the offer is to buy out the free float, our, there's an independent committee that established, and they are basically took and engage with an advisor, legal, economic, and financial advisor in order to do two things. One is to make sure that this is basically the best offer that they can get from ADNOC and BP, and it's a fair offer.
Second is to make sure that there isn't any other better offer in the market. The independent committee is understanding the timetable, and they are having the whole flexibility to do the work. They are extremely engaged. They are working, you know. They already had a lot of meetings, and this is another work stream that working.
There's a third work stream on the shareholder agreement, and basically on how we are going to run this vehicle, assuming closing of this deal, path forward that as well intensively work together. Everybody is engaged and everybody would like to see this deal close, practically working there. This is the work stream. For us as the NewMed, we start the discussion as well with the relevant regulators.
Formally, we can submit to the regulators only when there's a basically binding deal on the table. Informally, we started the engagement with the regulators. We are explaining what is this deal, and we are not seeing any showstopper from regulatory perspective to the deal.
This is something which already work. For the production summary of the Q1, we basically saw around 4% hike vis-a-vis the Q1 of 2022. We reached 2.8 BCM, out of it 1.5 go to the Egyptian market, 0.7 to the Jordanian market, and 0.6 to Israel. Basically, we see very high demand, obviously from the Egyptian market.
We are every available molecule that not consume in Israel and Jordan, we are doing our best to deliver to the Jordanian market. As you can see from price perspective, our average prices are $6.1 per MBTU vis-a-vis $5.8 that was in the Q1 of 2022. It's mainly Brent related. You know this slide of the average price of Leviathan vis-a-vis the Brent. We are presenting that quarter after quarter, and you can see the correlation.
One of our main benefit is, we have, you know, a floor price in all our agreement, thus we basically can enjoy the upside of the Brent up to a point, but we are very protected on the downside. Really enjoy this from cash flow perspective. Our main focus is really create more connectivity and infrastructure to the Egyptian market.
What basically we are seeing a potential for more sales to Egypt, thus we did few things. On the immediate term, as you know, the EMG pipeline as a pipeline can deliver 8, 9 BCM to the Egyptian market. The bottleneck was basically sitting with the Israeli grid, the enter to the EMG pipeline from the Israeli grid was basically to around 5 BCM a year.
Thus we took investment decision to build this offshore pipeline between Ashdod and Ashkelon, and this should bring us to around 8 and maybe more BCM vis-a-vis the current 5 in the EMG pipeline. On the immediate and the long term, we are working on two other projects that we are pushing forward. Nitzana project, so a new connection between the Israeli grid and the Egyptian grid onshore, the dotted line that you see in the map, that basically can deliver around additional 6 BCM from Israel to the Egyptian market.
We had the Israeli government publish to a hearing the regulation around this pipeline, and we are pushing forward this project in order to see this pipeline in operation as soon as practical and before we are finishing to build our second, full second phase of Leviathan. Another project which we are pushing, we are seeing a lot of gas going today to Egypt, to Jordan, and we are seeing a potential for more. This pipeline in Jordan, the Arab Gas Pipeline is a pipeline that can deliver 1, even 1.2 BCF a day. Around 400, 500 stay in the Jordanian market, and the rest can flow to Egypt.
Today it's capped to around 300 million scuff a day because of pressure. What we want to do, we want to install a compression system in Aqaba in order to push more gas into the Egyptian market from Jordan. Between EMG 8 BCM and around 6 BCM of Nitzana and around 6 BCM potentially in Fajr, we are practically getting to the area of potential infrastructure allow 20 BCM export from Israel to Egypt by around 2025-2027 timeframe, and this is really for us a key aspect in the activity.
From upstream perspective, the third gathering line of Leviathan practically on the way. Up until now, we approve around $200 million out of $562 million budget. That should add another 200 million scuff a day to the capacity of Leviathan, so taking us from 12 BCM a year to 14 BCM a year. This project should be online by mid-2025. In parallel to that, we are very pushing the pre-FEED of the Floating LNG.
As you know, the Leviathan partners, we approved a budget of almost $100 million to move forward with this floating project. There's really a fleet of engineers working on this project very intensively, and we are very committed to the project. On Cyprus, we start to appraisal the A-three well in Aphrodite. The idea of that well, that well will be a production well.
This is a well that in the end will be the first production well of Aphrodite, but that well will help us basically to have a better understanding of the reservoir, maybe the flow within the reservoir, to make sure that we are designing the next wells properly, and we are targeting to develop Aphrodite to existing infrastructure in Cyprus.
We are seeing really progress in this project, and we are very happy with the progress that we are seeing lately around this project. Great support from all governments, Cypriot and the Egyptian government to this project. I will provide the torch to Tzachi Habusha, our CFO, to basically take you through the financial result of the Q1.
Thank you, Yossi. I'm really happy to be here with you. Let's go to the next slide. I think it's a better slide to understand our result. Here is an interesting slide reflecting the net profit changes compared to the Q1 of last year. The net profit in the previous quarter was $84 million compared to $121 million this quarter. A growth in the net revenues after royalties of $29 million, out of which $5 million is contributed to the increase in average gas price as was mentioned before, and $24 million which is contributed to increase in volume of sales.
The other main factor that affected the net income was a decrease in operating expenses of $11 million, mainly due to amortization of a new Ofek project in the same period, last period, last year. I would like to emphasize a few topics related to the financial statements. In addition, to the cash and the cash equivalent, the short-term investment and the deposit of approximately $400 million are intended to serve the current maturity of the June 2023 series of Leviathan bond. It should be noted that as of today, we purchased around $109 million of the 2023 series under the buyback plans.
On May 1st, we repaid the $280 million of this series. The long-term bond represent the remaining Leviathan bond series with the maturities in 2025, 2027, and 2030, as disclosed in the financial statement, which have fixed rate coupons and are not impacted by the world interest rate environment. Viewing this slide, we can see the financial debt. The partnership has a dramatic reduction in the financial debt compared to the past. This is mainly due to the full repayment of Tamar bonds and Series A bonds in the end of 2021, the buyback plans, and the repayment of 23 bonds as was mentioned.
This will put us, I think so, and I'm sure in a very good position in this respect. Needless to say that this will reduce our future finance costs. Taking a look again at the P&L report. At the bottom line is the dramatic increase in the net income from $84 million - $121 million, a 44% increase. About the dividend, the distribution. A profit distribution of $50 million was declared by the partnership for the Q1, in addition to the $210 million distribution relating to the year 2022. That's it for now.
Thank you very much, Tzachi. We'll open up for questions. Please don't hesitate to ask anything. You have the Q&A box. You can ask the question through the Q&A box. I think that the issue of ADNOC BP is not really the question on the binding offer. We are seeing BP and ADNOC are highly committed to the process. It's basically in order to have binding offer, they need to have the shareholder agreement in place, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not assuming a binding offer. I assuming that we'll sign shareholder agreement and shares, a sales agreement based on their offer, and this is the two work stream that I explained.
The committee, the independent committee, mainly on the shareholder share sales agreement, and the shareholder agreement is mainly with Delek Group and us down the road. We are working on those binding agreements. Yeah. Each of our agreement.
I don't see the question, so-.
Yeah, sorry. Yeah. There's a question with respect to floor price in all our agreements. Basically, our agreements, whether it's to the local market or export market, they all have a floor price. Practically, the way that it work, it's practically an S-curve formula. There is a floor when Brent hits certain point and then it's not go down. If it's if the Brent go higher than that point, we start to enjoy price hike, and this is in all our agreement.
We can show you, I think, in the slide that we show the Brent price.
Yeah.
You can see here more or less, the blended price, even in periods when Brent prices were extremely low at around $30, you can see the blended price that Yume creates that basically represent more or less the floor.
Exactly. That's a good, a good understanding, not on , but on real life on what is the floor. Question about Aphrodite and the development plan. As you probably know, in the past, we submit to the Cypriot government development plan, which basically say we'll bring a new FPSO, our new build FPSO, around 800 million scuff a day, NBCMA year, and we will have a pipeline to the Egyptian market.
After that, due to some development in the Egyptian market, we saw some existing facilities in Egypt sitting idle, and we basically analyzed the ability not to use a new build FPSO, but to optimize infrastructure. It's much better from ESG perspective, environmental perspective.
It's much better from CapEx and OpEx perspective, practically to connect wells from Aphrodite to existing facilities in Egypt. This is what we analyze, we are working on two specific alternatives, both of them are valid, we are working to have, you know, term sheet in place with one of them in order to take it forward, this is really work in progress. Yeah.
The guidance for this year, it's similar to last year. Actually, last year I will start, we had a guidance of 10.6 BCM early in the year. We updated to 11.2, we finished the year with 11.4. We, you know, we were coming basically higher from the guidance significantly.
This year, our guidance is 11.2, and basically up until now, we are definitely in the guidance. That's for the question. For other BP deal, there's a question about the share, like, the ADNOC and BP side, whether it's 50/50 or something else, I cannot. You know, obviously I know what it is, but I cannot comment. We'll let them announce what they are doing when they ready.
With regards to any guidance about sales, CapEx, et cetera, we should say that there is a full DCF expected discounted free cash flow that is available on our website and our yearly financial report when you can easily find the company expectation to all cash flow items for 2023 and onwards with regards to Leviathan, of course.
Thank you. Again, on timetable of the deal, we estimate when we announce the deal around eight weeks to get to a shareholder agreement and the work. I think that, we are around that timetable. After that, we'll submit for approval for the regulators. Usually, those processes taking you know an additional 2,3 months. That's kind of the targeted timetable, and I think everybody is very committed to that, and we are doing our best to bring it on board.
Great. I think with that, we've finished the questions for today.
Thank you very much for joining us, and looking forward to see you again at least additional one quarter. After that, I'm not sure about it. Thank you again for being with us.
Thank you. Thank you.