us today for our first quarter 2023 results call. I'm joined today with our President and Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Keith Hill, and our Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Pascal Nicodème . Keith and Pascal will present the quarter's highlights and the business outlook before we go into a Q&A session. I would like to remind everyone that remarks made during this session are subject to forward-looking statements which involve significant risk factors and assumptions and have been fully described in the company's continuous disclosure reports. The information discussed is made as of today's date and time, and Africa Oil assumes no obligation to update or revise this information to reflect new events or circumstances, except as required by law. The company's complete financial statements and related MD&A are available on the company's website and on SEDAR. Keith, we're ready for you. Please go ahead.
All right. Thanks everyone for dialing in. Been another good quarter for us. You know, we start these some things out saying good news and bad news. Fortunately, we haven't seen any bad news yet. It's been mostly good news. I think the most exciting thing is that we are now drilling in both Namibia and Nigeria. We don't have a lot of results from that drilling to report yet, but the fact that it's taken us some time to get up and drilling and we are now drilling, I think is a very good achievement. Obviously Venus well is now being watched not only by our shareholders, but by the whole world.
I think, you know, it's probably one of the top wells being drilled in the world this year. I think that's getting a lot of buzz around it. If people are calling in to try to find if we are going to give any updates on it that isn't in public domain, I'm afraid we may have to disappoint you. That's more for the operator and our partner to do than ourselves. We'll certainly talk about what we can and tell you why we're so interested. The OML 130 drilling infill program is something we've been working on for a long time to get up and running.
It took us about a year longer than we wanted, but it's now up and going and we're hoping to see by the end of the next quarter, see some results of that campaign. From a financial standpoint, we did declare and pay our dividend last quarter. This means in just over a year, we've returned more than $80 million to shareholders through dividends and share buybacks. We will be looking to continue that share buyback going forward, Blackout periods from Venus Drilling permitted. As far as where our balance sheet is, again, we're almost zero debt, consolidated net debt of only $3.5 million.
When you look at the cash we have in the bank of $158 million versus the net debt position we've got at prior of 161 million. Again, very good standing on the balance sheet. We are, of course the main difference between our money in the bank last quarter and this quarter is we have invested another $31 million in the Impact Drilling program. We're gonna be paying that in two tranches, and we'll ultimately increase our interest slightly to 31.1%. Venus is probably the most exciting well I've ever drilled.
I think if you read all of the things coming in from Upstream Magazine, Orange Basin probably stands just behind Guyana as the hottest exploration play on Earth. You know, again, I will leave it to the operator and to our partner Impact to disclose any details. I'll only talk about what's already in the press today. I think one of our biggest promoters is Patrick Pouyanné, CEO of Total, who has called this the Golden Block, kind of referencing to their Golden Block in Angola. I think everybody's very excited about this block. I think you don't find prospects this size very often.
We are drilling an appraisal well 12 km to the north, and we hope to see the results of that within the next about 30 to 60 days. That's being drilled by the Tungsten Explorer. We've got a second rig coming, the Deepsea Mira well. It should be in Namibia in the next few days, and it will undertake a testing program. I think it's still to be determined whether that test would be on the original well or this appraisal well, the 1A. I think that's one of the critical missing pieces is a test rate. You may have seen in Upstream Magazine there's some reports from the nearby Shell Graff well that the test rates there were quite high and we are hopeful from looking at the.
or engineering standpoint that we'd see some high tests on that. I think that's something we need to confirm. The Tungsten Explorer will move over to the Nara-1 well when they've completed operations in the Venus drilling program. That is the large westerly extension of Venus, which I think will also be a very big catalyst and a very important well for us to understand how this accumulation is developing. In Nigeria again, it took us about a year longer than we were hoping to get our rig on station, but we've got it on there now, and they're doing a drilling program of up to nine wells on Egina and Akpo. It's a combination of production wells and injection wells.
By next quarter, we should be able to report, you know, where we are on the drilling of those, as well as what the results of those are on the daily production. We're also shooting a 4D seismic program over Egina to get a better idea of how we've been draining the reservoir so far to guide us in the future production wells. So far the guidance looks good. We're within, I'd say within the upper part of the guidance range and, you know, we are quite confident that if the wells that we're drilling at Egina come in as expected, that we'll be able to stay within that guidance or possibly even the upper end of that guidance. We still are working on Preowei.
I've seen questions already about people asking about the license extension. You know, I think Preowei is, it's important to get the license extension, but we are moving forward on that as we speak. You may have seen reports in the paid press that most of the issues surrounding the extension have been agreed, which appears to be the case. Obviously, working in Africa, or should I say, working anywhere in the oil industry, until we have everything buttoned up, we're not in a position to say where we are on that license extension. I think we're confident that there's a very high chance that's gonna be done, possibly even before the end of this month.
On guidance, we're in the first quarter, we're in the upper end of that range. I think we're feeling pretty comfortable that both on the working interest and entitlement production, we will be able to stay there. It will require some of the wells that we're drilling in Egina to help us stay in that upper end of the range. I think, you know, particularly Agbami is performing very well this year, so I think we're fairly confident that we're gonna go be able to deliver as we've stated. I'll turn over to Pascal now and let him go through our oil sales. I think we've had a fairly revolutionary change since we put our triggering mechanism in place. I'll turn over to you, Pascal.
Thank you, Keith. No, indeed, I think it's been another good quarter in terms of average sale prices. This quarter we sold on average three cargoes at $81.5 per barrel, which is almost equal to the Brent average for the quarter. As Keith said, I mean, in the last three quarters, we've seen a significant improvement in the sales price we are getting, thanks to the new marketing strategy. Well, before Q2 2022, we were basically selling all our oil forward a few months before the actual cargo date. When the oil price was increasing, of course, the forward price we were securing was much lower than the actual Brent price. Which has changed since Q2 2022.
As you can see on this chart, the improvement is quite dramatic. We are now selling consistently at Brent or above Brent, thanks to the positive quality premium on Egina. Post-period, we've also sold two cargoes at $89 per barrel on average. 1 more cargo is due to be sold for Q2. Going forward, in the second half of the year, we have 6 cargoes planned for offtake, which are not sold yet, but they have this average trigger price of $66 per barrel. Unless the actual spot price goes below these triggers, these cargoes will be sold spot. Next slide is on the capital expenditures. We've incurred $10 million of capital expenditures our share, mainly at Prime level, of course.
We have a guidance between $80 million-$100 million for 2023, which reflects the activity we are incurring in Prime at the moment, this Egina drilling campaign. This is to be compared to $24 million last year. A pretty busy year in terms of capital expenditures, which is good news. In terms of financials, well, of course, you will see this red bar in Q4 2022, which was the actual impairment we took on Kenya. We had a one-off impairment of $170 million on our Kenya assets. Prime had also booked an impairment due to the Egina reserve downgrade of $14 million our share. Our quarter is positive.
We booked a $22 million net income, which is comparable to the other quarters, without impairments. Of course, the main contributor for this quarter profit is our share of profit coming from Prime, which was $37.5 million. We are ending up the quarter with a very strong cash on the balance sheet, $158 million. In terms of performance at Prime level, it's been affected by lower production and lower oil price secure, but we still have very strong EBITDAX and cash flow. EBITDAX at $113 million for the quarter, and almost $60 million of cash flow from operations.
Prime has ended up the quarter with almost $200 million of cash on the balance sheet net to us and $360 million of debt net to us as well. Translating this into a net debt position, I think it's important to see how this has improved over the past since we completed the acquisition of Prime in Q1 2021, where at that time, you will remember that we had $250 million of debt at Prime at Africa Oil level plus the Prime RBF. Since we've booked $300 million of bids at that Prime level, and but we have continued to repay consistently the RBF facility.
We are now since Q2 2022 at an almost zero consolidated net position, i.e., 50% of Prime plus Africa Oil's cash on the balance sheet. That's very good news. Of course, we are waiting for this license to be extended in
In Nigeria in order to complete the refinancing of both the Prime RBL facility and PXF and also the corporate facility we have at Africa Oil Corp., which is still ongoing at the moment. Keith, what about you?
Yeah, I think in combination with this, I think we're quite proud of the significant decrease in flaring we've had. I think if you look at this chart, maybe concentrate a little bit on the dark blue bars for a moment, or I think the dark gray is just fine. The, you know, that's the Egina field. You can see when before we bought it was flaring almost 100 million cubic feet a day. Since we bought it, we've actually been very vocal with the operator trying to bring this down, and I think we're finally seeing the results of that. You can see in between 2021 and 2022, there was a significant decrease.
In 2023, we've cut those flaring volumes at Agbami down to about a quarter of what they were. We did have a little flaring at Egina this year. This is not a normal thing that happens. It has to do with some of the LNG offtake requirements and associated with some of the drilling that we've been doing. We don't expect either Akpo or Egina to have recurring flaring. The one that's always been our troublesome one was Agbami. The operator, Chevron, has that under control now. I think again, we are a catalyst-risk company. The biggest catalyst we've got is Venus. You know, we will be putting results out alongside the operator.
I think the timing of those and the, and the amount of release is still to be determined. I think, I think we see a very catalyst-rich drilling environment on, in the Venus area, this summer with two rigs working full-time as of the end of this month. I think within that, the Nara is really the biggest one of those wells. That is the western extension of the Venus discovery, which has a chance to really increase the volume significantly if it's successful. We are still looking at doing strategic assets, you know, acquiring production assets. Very specific in what we're looking for. We're looking for producing assets that have current cash flow and will have...
take advantage of what we still think is a very buoyant oil market for the next 3 to 5 years. There still are a number of producing assets on the that are for sale, and we've been participating in some of these processes. We will be careful about making sure we pay the right price for those, but also that we compare these acquisitions with returning money to our shareholders, primarily in the form of buybacks. Again, OML 130, I think we're all feeling quite much more comfortable than we did, I'd say, a quarter ago, that we've got all the things resolved. Having been in this business for some years, until we actually have everything finished, I think I don't make any promises.
I think we're getting more and more confident that we'll have something done, hopefully by the end of this month. When that happens, then we'll be able to refinance the RBL and PXF facilities, both at the prime level and at the Africa Oil corporate level. We still are working. We're working on the farm out of Block 3B/4B. You also saw that we picked up two new blocks in Equatorial Guinea. We're out looking for partners on those as well. I think our goal is to have a partner secured on both of those blocks by the end of the year, with 3B/4B possibly coming first because there's obviously a lot of industry interest with everything that's been going on in the Orange Basin.
With that, I will leave you to carefully read the reader advisory and the forward-looking statements and just say thank you again for dialing in to express interest in the company. You know, I do feel we're in a very good spot right now, and I think it's gonna be a very interesting summer as we work through not only the Venus drilling, the farm outs, but also hopefully get license extension, which will free up a lot of cash at the Prime level.
Okay. Thank you, Keith. Nadia, if you could remind the participants, and we are ready for the Q&A session.
Thank you so much. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press *11 on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press *11 again. Alternatively, you can submit your questions via the webcast. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. This will take a few moments. Now we're going to take our first question. The question comes from line of James Hosie from Barclays. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Hi there. thanks for the call. I guess let's start with Namibia. I was wondering, what would you consider to be a high flow rate for Venus? Just what are the capacity constraints in the rig that will limit your testing capacity for that?
Yeah, that... James Hosie, always happy to talk to you. You always seem to be the first one on the line, so I appreciate your eagerness. Yeah, I think that's getting into that realm of I think that's something the operator should be talking about as opposed to myself. I mean, I think obviously the higher the flow rate, the better. You know, you'll see the descriptive thing of flowing like a freight train in Upstream Magazine on the Graff well. You know, I think we haven't seen any hard numbers out of that, but, you know, the flow rates will be very instrumental in the economics. Again, I think I would defer to the operator to talk about those, the upcoming program and the rates.
Okay. You can't even comment on what the testing capacity limits are in the rig?
I don't think it's my place. I think that's probably better for TotalEnergies.
Okay.
One very much for you guys then is the buyback and just what needs to happen to restart the buyback? I mean, you mentioned blackout periods linked to Venus drilling. I'm just wondering if that means you're gonna have blackout periods almost through the rest of this year with the drilling campaign continuing in Namibia?
We believe. We're just coming out of our, obviously our quarterly blackout. We've been in blackout for the release of our financials, but we anticipate that we'll be going back into blackout as we start getting results out of Venus. We believe there will be breaks in that blackout because the, you know, as well results are announced, and as test results are announced, I think, there will be the ability to cleanse the market and we do look at, you know, taking advantage of that and trying to recommence the buybacks. We bought about half of the shares back that we can under the 10% program, and we still have significant budget to continue that.
I think we're being selective of when we do that, and we're being constrained by when we can restart the process with the blackout conditions.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Dear participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question over the phone, please press *11 on your telephone keypad. Now we're going to take our next question. The question comes from line of Teodor Sveen-Nilsen from SpareBank 1 Markets. Your line is open. Please ask your question.
Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thanks for taking my questions. I have two questions. The first one is just on the 3B/4B farm down process. Did you say that you expected to conclude that during the year? What kind of structure will that... Should we expect the farm down to be only carry or carry plus cash? Any more information there would be useful. On the outlook for dividend from Prime. I noticed there hasn't been any dividend there for first quarter. Do you have any kind of expectations for the level of dividends received from Prime the next two quarters? My last question that is on potentially new investments in Africa Energy and Eco Atlantic.
When do you expect to inject more equity into those entities? Thanks.
Okay. Well, maybe, taking them in order of the in reverse order, I would say the equity requirements of both Africa Energy and Eco Atlantic are fairly small this year. I think, we will be standing our corner in both of those companies to make sure that they continue on. Obviously, patience has been required in Africa Energy. We really like the asset. We think the Brulpadda and Luiperd discoveries will be monetized at some point, and I think we want to be part of that process. You may also have heard from the Africa Energy presentation that there...
We think, still think there's a lot of exploration potential in the eastern part of that block as well, which I think won't be addressed until we actually find a way to monetize the existing discoveries. You know, we do like the block a lot. Of course, Eco, you know, that has not only a nice portfolio that's with us in 3B/4B, they also have some blocks in northern Namibia, which seems to be heating up. There's a, you know, good chance NNPC will be drilling a well there shortly, which could change the dynamic up there. Of course, they've got blocks on either side of the Golden Trend in Guyana. I think we're quite happy to support those companies and move forward with them.
As far as the dividend from Prime, I think that's all. A lot of that is tied into the license extension. You know, as you can see from Pascal's presentation, it's throwing off a lot of cash, and the real question is, do we use that cash to pay dividends, or do we use that cash to pay down debt? I mean, neither one of them is a bad thing, but I think giving dividends is our preference. I think once license extension is obtained and we refinance the RBL at the Prime level, we'll have a lot more cash to free up in dividends.
I think right now we're kind of keeping cash close to our vest to make sure that we can meet our obligations for our debt repayment, in the event we don't get license extension right now. The first one was?
It was on three B four B farm out timing.
Yeah. I think, again, the reason I say that may happen faster than the Equatorial Guinea farm out is just because of all the catalysts that are coming out. I think, you know, with the Shell results kind of partially coming out, but hopefully coming out in more detail, not only in the Graff but the Jonker well. With our results coming out on Venus, you may have seen the press that our friends at Galp have contracted already to come drill to the north of us. I think, you know, this is becoming the hottest space besides probably Guyana on Earth. I think the...
From the activity we've had in the data room, I think there's a lot of super majors and mid-sized companies that don't want to be shut out of that process. I believe we will have a deal to be done in 3B/4B. I think we're fairly confident we can close that by the middle, I'd say, the end of the summer.
Teodor also had an extension of that question, whether it's gonna be carry only or carry versus cash. Obviously, it's. Will be. You can't comment on that?
We'll take the best deal we can get, but what we've asked partners is to actually essentially pay back our back costs in cash, but more importantly, to carry us forward on, one to two exploration wells.
Okay. Thank you. Just on 3B, 4B again. How much do you expect to farm down, and do you also want to give away the operatorship?
Again, we're talking with several different companies that have different objectives. Obviously, super majors love to operate and, you know, for the right price and the right deal, we would be willing to give up operatorship. I think as far as giving up interest, I think it's pretty much proportional. We're not that interested in giving up too much interest. We've only got 20%, so I don't think we would go below 15%. I think our two partners have, you know, other criteria, particularly Ricocure, the largest interest holder, I think, you know, looking to give up, you know, a bigger number. I think if we end up as a group giving up plus or minus 50%, proportionally shared between us, I think that's kind of the goal.
Okay. Understood. Thanks.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this moment over the phone. I would like now to hand the conference over to Mr. Amini for any written questions.
Yeah. Thank you very much, Nadia. Yes, we do have a number of questions through the webcast facility. I think it's time to turn the attention to Pascal. One question is actually kind of a general. A lot of banks are pulling out of oil and gas space. What are your views, and what are the implications for Prime and the current syndicate?
Well, it's clear that a few European banks have announced that they were reducing their exposure to oil and gas to refocus on the energy transition. The fact is that Prime has successfully refinanced their existing facility subject to license renewal, of course, and we did the same. Most banks have stayed in the syndicate. Even some banks who announced that they would reduce their exposure. I think it's an endorsement on the quality of the assets of Prime and the business model. Equally for us, we managed to double the size of our corporate facility, which restricted at the moment it's still not on. All our banks except one have decided to increase their exposure to the company.
I think it's a matter of selecting the right banks going forward, but there is still very stronger appetite, especially from South African banks and African players for continued, I guess.
I think just as a general comment, we should highlight that Pascal, you were a reserve-based lender-.
Thank you.
-yourself for many years, so-
Which helps to know the people, yeah.
Yes.
The right people to talk to.
That's extremely. It's been very successful for us. I'm thinking of the BTG loan refinancing.
Yes.
That was very, very good to have that know-how and networks. There's just following on from the RBL. There's also one about if we do get the license renewal for 130, can you make any comments about what the refinancing could look like in terms of quantum or any particular features?
The refinancing will simply refinance the existing RBL facility and the bankset. In total, it will be around $1 billion at Prime level. $500 million net to us. That will be a simple RBL refinancing, very similar to the existing one except of course that the maturity date, end date will be pushed back for 5 years again.
Okay. There's one question on Impact which I'm gonna put to you as well, Pascal, as you're a director. I know you can't answer this question, but perhaps you can use it.
Thank you for asking me.
No, because I want to use that as a launchpad into just getting your views about the recent Impact fundraising. The question is that the Africa Oil has obviously slightly increased its interest, so some shareholders didn't participate. The question is, who didn't participate? Now, I don't know whether you can answer that.
Well, of course I can't.
Yeah.
Name any shareholder, you can imagine that the impact around shareholding is made of large institutions like ourselves and then other large investors. It's also made by individuals who are former managers and so on. Not everyone could stand their corner in the race. That's why we were able to get a few more shares into the equity raise.
More broadly, any comments on the success of the fundraising and the support from the major shareholders?
Yeah. All the major shareholders stood their ground.
Yeah. It got away very well.
Yes.
Excellent. Keith, we've come back to you on some technical questions. There's a number on OML 130 infill drilling, which you've already touched on. I suppose people go into a lot of detail, and as you've said, some of this we've got to defer to the operator, TotalEnergies. In terms of, I mean, we keep talking about OML 130. Any comments on OML 127? We have the Agbami field.
Yeah. Agbami has actually been producing quite well. It's been above expectations. Again, what I'm really happy about is the reliability of the facilities has gone up from like mid-80s to mid-90s. I think Chevron has done a very good job of kind of turning around some operational issues they had with it and turning around the flaring. You know, the flaring, like last week there was almost no flaring. I think there's been a few initiatives that they've done to help that. Again, Agbami, we look to be drilling some infill wells. We need to shoot some 4D seismic again and see where the oil is being drained before we position those wells. I think it was...
It's being considered on the budget for late 2024 or early 2025, but we really need to shoot and get the results of that 4D seismic first. Right now I think we're quite happy with Agbami and the way it's performing.
We actually get this question on every call, quarterly call about our current thinking on the portfolio companies.
Yep.
You've kind of addressed that through the question I think George asked. In terms of looking at the, the Africa Oil organization, in the past, you've mentioned that we may be looking at options to streamline. Do you have any comments on that?
At the last quarterly call, we talked about the option of maybe spinning out some of the exploration assets into a separate vehicle. We have other options that we're considering now, so I don't think anything has been decided. I think we do realize that most people have a difficult time trying to value our investment in these portfolio companies. I think I can say a couple of things. We're not going to be doing portfolio company investment again. I think anything we do on exploration going forward will be a direct investment. I think it was a thing that we did at the time because it was the only quick way we could get into some plays we thought were pretty hot. I think that it actually worked pretty well. We were able to get ourselves into the Venus project.
We were able to get ourselves in the 3B/4B project through Eco Atlantic. We were able to get into Guyana. Unfortunately, we drilled five wells in Guyana. We found two nice accumulations. They turned out to be a little heavier than we'd like, but we still think there's a lot of potential in Guyana. You can't be right next to 15 billion barrels of oil in essentially the same petroleum system and not have prospectivity. We are working with our partners and with the operators to try to come up with a plan to rejuvenate those 2 blocks. The point's taken, and I think, you know, I would say by the end of next quarter, we hope to have a resolution to that. Nothing has been decided yet.
Yes, thank you. Here's a question for you, Keith. This is very close to your heart. Your views on short-term and long-term, well, medium-term oil price.
Well, short term is hard because it's driven by market sentiment. You can see, you know, when two U.S. banks fell, you know, the market gets into panic and oil price suffers. You know, when you look at inflation rates and people get nervous about demand, it suffers. Those are both a little short term blips, in my opinion. You look at the long-term supply and demand function, and you look at how long this transition is going to take us, you know, we are going to be at or around 100 million barrels a day of demand in 2040. There's just physically no way around it. Right now it's very hard to envision that we've got the supply to meet that demand. You know, the shale industry in the United States is really falling off.
You know, the big boys are still playing in the Permian, but a lot of the production of the littler guys, you can't finance it anymore, and, I mean, some of these basins are getting old and tired. I am still the ultimate oil bull. I think in the next five to 10 years, we're in good, very good runway. I think in the next three to five years, there's zero chance we can't be at $100 oil for significant amounts of time. That's why we're, you know, we're still looking at producing assets.
We actually see this little downturn right now as kind of an opportunity to go buy things because some of the prices that we looked at last year when oil ran up to $128 after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, those aren't there anymore, so maybe people's expectations aren't quite so high. I haven't changed. I'm still the most optimistic guy in the room on... when it comes to the oil price and the longevity of the oil market.
Okay, well, that's the geologist perspective. Can we have the banker's perspective from Pascal?
I think we need to prepare, of course, for difficult scenarios, but I think we are well equipped going forward. Whatever the actual realization of the oil price is, I think, yeah, we will be in a good position. I'm not concerned about the future oil price.
Very good. One question back to Venus, Keith. Do you still expect to sell Impact after this current campaign in 2023?
I think. Yeah, I think that's an Impact question, but I think Impact's been very forthcoming with the market that they are keen to move forward with a sale at some point when they think they've realized enough value. I think the timing and the process, I will leave to Impact to comment. You know, we do see that, you know, keeping up with a multi-billion dollar deepwater development might be hard for people the size of Africa Oil and Impact. You know, we've had good examples in the past. I think Kenya was one example where we maybe stayed a little longer than we should have.
I think, if a good offer comes up, I think we would be supportive of Impact selling sooner than later.
Very good. I don't know, Pascal, if you have any comments on that question or-
No. Nothing.
That's good. Very good. There are a bunch of questions on Kenya. Anything you can say?
No. I mean, we're still working hard to get a partner. We had a little setback, which, one of the two partners that we thought we were pretty close with has pulled out. You know, the operator, Tullow, is very actively engaged in replacing that. You know, we still think it's a great project. You know, we still think it's going to solve a lot of energy supply problems for Kenya and East Africa. I think, you know, it's a challenging prospect project. You know, we've been here for 13 years and, you know, we still think it's a good project. I can tell you, our old dear, the CEO of Tullow, is very focused on getting a solution to this project, to bring it to monetization.
It's really all about getting a strategic partner. You know, until we have a strategic partner, we really can't move forward. That's the real focus. We are doing things in the background. We've done a lot of work on the land, water, fiscal regimes, all of those things I think we're making progress on. You know, until we get a strategic partner lined up, I'm not sure that we can move forward on it.
Okay. Thank you for that. Right. Here's a question. I, with all due respect to the person who's put it to us, the question is, when are you gonna get more producing assets? It's taking a long time. I actually think that question should be changed. When are you gonna get the rights to producing assets? That is quite important. We've been very disciplined looking at the opportunities out there.
Yeah, I think that's exactly right. I mean, there are things we could have bought, I think we would have paid too much money for them. I think there is not that much competition, there is competition. There is people. You know, we are focused pretty much on West Africa and pretty much offshore. I think there are other people out there that are focusing on the same thing. I think our opportunities will come. I think we've come very close on a couple of opportunities, but we're not going to overpay. I said before, we are always going to look and see if buying our own shares is a better bargain than buying a producing asset. Trust me, this is laser-focused. If you...
I think it's in our information circular, how much of our compensation is focused on going out and getting a new asset and buying things. The, the board and management are very focused on this, but we're not gonna go out and just buy the wrong thing just to grow production levels for its own sake.
Yes. Pascal, there's a question on Egina and Akpo differentials and what was it before? I think it's not right to kind of give numbers out because There hasn't been a lot of movements. Right? I don't know if you have any views on that. My understanding is Egina is still doing well. It's kind of at a premium, and Akpo in line with Brent. Do you think in terms of long-term, those are the right assumptions if you were looking to update the models?
Yeah. I think we've seen a significant improvement in the in the premium for Egina.
Yeah.
I think there's a lot of appetite on the market for Egina, which is good. I think we can expect the premium to stay stable going forward. Yeah, Akpo is historically has been around the same. That's. Yeah, I'm expecting the Egina premium to continue in the long term.
Yeah. I think we have oil to record last year that was phenomenal.
Yes.
It was, what? 10, 11 Totals, if I recall right.
Yes. Yes.
That was kind of shouldn't see that as the norm.
We've seen a big range on Egina. I mean, I think as low as two, but as high as 11. You know, averaging in that 4-5 range, I would say.
The reason on the chart that we're showing on the oil sales price, the reason why in Q2 and so in Q3 and Q4 last year, we were able to secure an average oil price larger than the reference is because of the Egina premium.
On a lighter note, there's one comment that it would be good to have a video fit for the Q&A session. My response, personal response is I'm putting on a lot of weight and I'm losing hair. If it was up to me, there would be no video fit for this presentation. We'll bear that in mind. Maybe for future events we can have this, have a video fit of the Pascal and Keith as well. Oh, this is a good question. Would AOI consider acquiring all of Impact?
No comment.
No comment. Okay. Here's a question about our share structure saying, well, your number of issued and outstanding shares has actually gone up. Is this because insiders are increasing their holdings? I suppose with the PSU, well, all of the directors, again, that's from my understanding, and the executive team have decided to basically take stock. You know, you have the option of taking cash or stock, but everyone's just wants the equity upside, right?
Yeah. I would say in general, the appetite for equity upside is much greater than just taking cash. you know, there is a tax consequence of getting these. I think I would say the normal thing that people do is exercise enough of the options that they can pay their tax bill. I think, you know, in my particular case, I've been trying to get as many shares as I can, you know.
Same for me.
You know, if you look at my holdings over the last three years, you'll see a pretty marked increase.
Very good. look, there's other questions I'm seeing here. There's quite a few of them are just repetitions of others. I think this is a good time, a good point to wrap this up. I don't know, Keith, if you have any final comments. Pascal?
I think, obviously this is gonna be a very exciting summer. These are some of the best wells we've ever drilled in Venus. You know, I'm feeling pretty good that we're gonna get some farm outs done and we're gonna get license extension, that's gonna free up a lot of cash to pay dividends to us and hopefully ultimately end up in the shareholders' pockets through either buyback or increased dividends due to other projects we may get into. I think we're in a very good shape, and I do think, I'm still bullish about our market. You know, I realize the transition is moving forward, but we are part of that.
If you look at our metrics, we are one of the best performing oil companies, in terms of transition metrics, but we're also very dedicated to a net zero and a carbon neutral strategy moving forward.
Pascal?
Nothing more. I just think that, second half of 2023 will be very exciting to us and looking forward to.
It is. Well, I'm very excited, that's for sure. Well, thank you both. Nadia, over to you to, wrap this session up.
Thank you so much. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now all disconnect. DS speakers, please stand by.