For joining us today for the NewMed Energy third quarter results of 2024. All participants are in a listen mode. A brief question-and-answer session will be followed by a formal presentation. As a reminder, this is a conference call and is being recorded. I'm pleased to introduce Yossi Abu, CEO at NewMed Energy. Yossi, you may begin.
Thank you very much. Thank you, everybody, for joining us this afternoon to discuss the third quarter results of 2024. I'm very happy and proud to present those results. With me here, we have Tzachi Habusha, NewMed CFO, and Gil Bashan, our VP IR. Thank you both that you joined me. Basically, what we had in this quarter, we achieved a record quarter for production in Leviathan and a record quarter for NewMed Energy results, with almost 1.2 BCF a day of production in average. The third quarter earnings will go up to around $147 million net profit. It's 25% higher than the equivalent quarter last year, and the EBITDA will reach $221. We'll update on the operational side, the Third Gathering Line, and obviously the Ashdod-Ashkelon Looping, together with a huge activity around Leviathan Phase 1B that is underway. We are running quite fast with this activity.
We'll as well take you through our deleveraging and preparing to the new investment cycle in the debt side, and we announced a dividend of $65 million, so on the production summary, we end the third quarter with 3.1 BCM, 1.8 go to the Egyptian market, a bit higher sales to the Egyptian market due to some de-bottlenecking activity that we did in the Egyptian receiving terminal in the area of Sheikh Zuweid, area of El Arish, that take us from around 500, 530 million Scf a day that we deliver in the past to EMG to around 600 million Scf a day that we reached even before the Ashdod-Ashkelon looping, and this is basically the rate that we are able to flow today to EMG.
The Israeli markets go a little bit higher from 0.4 to 0.5, mainly due to Eshkol Power Plant that starts to consume gas from Leviathan during the third quarter. You can see Jordan stays stable around 0.8 BCM a quarter. From pricing perspective, we stay quite stable, and it's mainly Brent-related formula. I will remind you all, and certainly those days that Leviathan have a very unique formula that allows us to enjoy the upside of the Brent, but we have quite affected the downside of the Brent. You are familiar with this graph. As you can see, even in the worst days of Brent, we managed to secure a significant gap, a significant price for the gas, and we have a floor price that's in all our agreements. On the operational side, I would like to update on two things.
First, on the Third Gathering Line, as you can see here in green, we were supposed to finish this project by mid this year due to the situation. The ship that's supposed to lay the pipeline, we released it, and the ship should come back to Israel Q2 2025, and we will be able to complete the project by year-end. So practically around four to six months delay vis-à-vis the previous timetable. And that's more or less the same with respect to the Ashdod-Ashkelon Looping. I will touch that later on at the connecting pipeline slide. On Phase 1B, we are really progressing forward, and not only are we progressing the design, we are running with a lot of RFQs in the market. We are bidding for all the materials that we need, mainly the long lead items.
And we already engaged with several very, very important clients for this project. So we assume taking investment decisions for Phase 1B of Leviathan during Q2 2025. That will allow us to bring gas in the window of mid-2028 or late 2028 to mid-2029. That's more or less the window of delivering gas from second phase of Leviathan. And again, our target is to reach around 2.3-2.4 BCF a day at second phase, very meaningful upside for production and earnings. On the connectivity, so the first thing is Ashdod-Ashkelon looping. You can see this red pipeline at the south. So this project will end again by Q4 2025. This is the current assumption. Maybe we'll have some optionality or possibility to bring it earlier, but this is the current assumption.
That will enable us to increase the flow in EMG pipeline from the 600 to around 800 and more million Scf a day. On top of that, the further compression activity, the compression system in the north of Jordan are ongoing. This project already, we are in a mode of execution, and we believe that that will enable us by second half, sorry, by second quarter of 2026 to increase the capacity with around 400 million Scf a day through Jordan to Egypt. So that's addition to what we are flowing today. And as you're well aware, on the Nitsana project, we are running with INGL to try and develop this onshore connection, which will enable us another 6 BCM to deliver through the Israeli grid to Egypt. So we'll have EMG with 8 BCM. We'll have Nitsana with 6 BCM, at least 6 BCM.
And we'll have gas flowing through Jordan to Egypt in around seven to eight BCM. That will allow us to flow more than 20 BCM from the Israeli market to the Egyptian market by 2028. On the results, so obviously going to the bottom line, as you can see, the net profit is $147 million. That's really great news for us. That brought us 25% more than the equivalent quarter last year. And you can see as well, we go up in the EBITDA from $220 million. And obviously, the sales is the same. So really, record quarter mainly due to significant sales from Leviathan project, maintaining the prices that we basically assume. On the year target, we're definitely going to meet our targets to this year in terms of sales. And that's kind of the important thing for us this time.
Thank you, Yossi. Thank you all for being with us today. I'd like to share a few key points regarding our third quarter result. So let's drill down into the number. NewMed net profit for Q3 stands at approximately $147 million, about 25%. As I mentioned, higher than last year's profits of $118 million. The growth is mainly due to an increase in natural gas and condensate sales and reduced net financial expenses, which were offset by higher production costs and taxes. Here we can see in this slide the main affected our Q3 net profit compared to the same period last year. Our net revenue increased by $24 million, out of which $14 million due to a better average gas price per MMBtu and an increase of about $5 million due to a higher natural gas sales rising from approximately 2.9 BCM to 3.1 BCM this quarter.
We also received about $4.7 million from the sales of condensate, which started in March this year. Other factors affecting our net income include a $10 million increase in operating expenses and a decrease in net financial expenses of $20 million, mainly due to a reevaluation of Karish and Tanin royalties and the full repayment of Leviathan bond series 2023. Regarding the debt position, as we can see, a dramatic reduction in our debt position. By the end of June 2023, we repay the Leviathan bond series 2023 in the amount of $500 million. In addition, as of the report approval date, we bought approximately $91 million from Leviathan bond series 2025 as a part of our partnership buyback program. The reduction in 2021 is due to the repayment of Tamar bonds and Series A bonds. Regarding the balance sheet, two points.
First, our financial assets related to Karish and Tanin royalties. This asset was recognized following the sale of NewMed's interest in Karish and Tanin leases in 2016. As of the date of this financial statement, the fair value of these assets is approximately $284 million, which is presented in long-term assets and short-term receivables. Second, as of September 30, our total debt is around $1.7 billion consisting of Leviathan bonds with maturity dates in 2025, 2027, and 2030. These bonds with fixed interest rates place us in a very good and strong financial position and positively impact our financial costs. I think, Yossi, that concludes the key points regarding the third quarter financial statement. Thank you.
Thank you, Tzachi.
Yes.
Before we continue to the dividend and talk a little bit on some questions that we received, two other updates. With respect to our Aphrodite, we submitted an updated development plan to the Cyprus government, basically according to the guidelines that they instruct us. We are expecting those to be approved. We are going and discussing with them. Once it's approved, we'll commit ourselves to go to a FID and then obviously based on that to investment decision in the project. In parallel to that, on the license that we receive in Morocco, we basically gather all the 3D that have been done in the past in the license as well as 2D. We are right now starting a process of reprocessing those 3D packages.
It's a significant package, as you can see, from 2009 to 2014, then 2017, 2018, very massive 3D campaign, which we believe that contains potential, so based on those reprocessing, that reprocessing activity, we try to identify leads and prospects to be drilled, so that's from that perspective. On the dividend, I think one thing which is significant. Since the production start of the production of Leviathan early 2020, we deliver $1 billion as a dividend to our shareholders, and we'll continue to maintain this dividend policy in parallel to investment in our core assets, in, let's say, in natural growth of our core assets, as well working to create the next generation of investment for NewMed Energy, such as the Morocco activity, and all that with preserving a reasonable debt to NAV ratio, and this is where we are targeting.
From our debt perspective, and Tzachi touched that, we currently don't see ourselves coming back to the market to any new bond in the near few months. What we are seeing basically is we repay our next bullet from cash flow and from financing that we already have in place. But once we take investment decision on second phase of Leviathan, we come to the market with an update this year, which will take into consideration the significant upside of selling potentially 21 or more BCM a year. In parallel to, obviously, we hope to have a much quieter environment here in the conflict. And only then we're assuming that we'll come back to the market to top up the bond structure, the Leviathan bond structure that we already have. So potentially, you can see us in the market second half of 2025.
So please, any additional question, we are here to answer. If not, you always can call Gil Bashan. Day or night, any time is available to you guys.
Especially tonight, East Coast.
Exactly. So don't hesitate and obviously, directly to the cell phone. Don't try to open. Thank you very much. Thank you for joining us this afternoon. We really hope to see you in the next quarterly results. Obviously, we hope to see at least those results or better, so see you soon.