Michael Binnion.
Hello.
Okay. One minute after four, right? I think we can start. Well, welcome, and I think we have quite a few people that are watching online as well. I'm not sure where the camera is, but I'm... Oh, there it is. I'm trusting that it's working, and thank you very much for the audiovisual help. I've already introduced my wife, Maria, that's my biggest fan. Came here. I was a bit concerned, what if she didn't come, and I would be here without my biggest fan? My second and third biggest fans are here. My Chairman, Bjorn Inge Tonnessen, and Director, our Quebec, new Quebec Director, Quebec preferred share Director, Hans Jakob Holden. We have had quite a lot happen in the last... Thank you.
We've had quite a lot happen in the last few months, and so it's a lot to update you on, and it's nice to have the opportunity. I was just presenting at SB1, where you get eight minutes to do your presentation, so I'll be able to take a little bit more time and talk a little bit more about these things. I will just say, just an observation from the conference, that I think are really encouraging relative to the markets generally. One was just the... a recent financing for Panoro was successful with SB1, where we were just at the conference, and I think that was a good sign that there's some equity in the market again for small and medium-sized companies working internationally.
The other thing I thought was very interesting were the two people that were on the panel with me, who both had exploration model businesses, growing a business from the drill bit up by doing the seismic, the exploration, finding the oil and gas, turning it into a company. I commented there, I'll comment here, that we've been so immersed in shale in North America and at Questerre since 2005 and 2010, that it's been a long time since I've seen oil and gas that you have to use seismic to find. I thought about it and realized that our company looked a lot like that in 2005.
We have been a company that's discovered our own resource. We haven't bought production. Everything we have, we found with the drill bit and through exploration. We started Questerre, my Chairman, Bjorn Inge, likes to call it a high-risk, high-reward business plan that we started with. We had a goal to find a giant field, over 1 billion barrels, which we did in Quebec, many of you will be familiar with that. Of course, as I said, like I always thought that based on my history in oil and gas, that finding it was the hard part, you know? You know, 'cause you keep drilling dry holes, like Finding it is the hard part.
We found it, and we found out that producing it can be even harder. We've also now been able to integrate production on the oil shale side. We had a joint venture with Total that we tried field pilots of a earlier version of this technology, and we've now been able to buy an operating cash flow positive retort operation for oil shales, and I think that's a big change for us. W e've also were able to acquire 100%. Total has been bought out, the preferred shareholders are bought out, and we've now finalized and bought out all the other common shares of Red Leaf Resources for Questerre shares. I think what...
We're on good terms because it also brought in another $8 or $9 million of cash as came into the company along with that acquisition. It means we now have 100% control of the technology that we think is going to unlock giant resources in oil shales. That's. I think the other big thing that we did was to restructure the company for people who have been. From a management point of view as well, but people who've been focused on the Quebec discovery and the potential realization of either a settlement from the Quebec government relative to the fracking and gas ban that they've put in place over the last 15 years, or from a potential change in policy that allows us to go forward.
Either way, it allows people to have an investment in a tracking share that tracks that investment separately from the rest of our business, which is active oil and gas business. You know, so telling people that when I'm focused on Quebec, it's never about, is there rig availability? It's never about, can we get our drilling costs down? It's never the business of oil and gas. I think it makes sense from a management point of view that we've separated it out as well, but also for shareholders, to allow them to be like, I can tell you, I plan to be when we get the Quebec preferred shares listed. I plan to keep them.
I plan to keep all of my shares. It gives everybody the option to say: I want to keep this share and not that share, or both of them, or none of them. That's, I think a good step forward for shareholders to be able to invest in the part of the company that they most are interested in. Okay, here we are. We're a bit of a global company. In fact, this trip is from Oslo to Amman, to Montreal, to Brazil in one trip. O f course, it started in Calgary. We have production in the Montney, and we have production in Saskatchewan. Both of those were discovered by us by the drill bit.
They were exploration plays that we didn't buy that production. We drilled for that production, we continued to do it. It's a relatively small base of cash flow, it's been consistent and been profitable and has kept our company cash flow positive for some time. In Quebec, we of course have the discovery. Oh, it doesn't work there. In Quebec, we have the discovery. I'll talk a little bit about that. In Utah, we have licenses for a few 100 million barrels of oil shale. We own some land outright, which we probably will look to see if we can liquidate. The main thing we have there is that we...
Utah developed with Utah-based research people is a new technology for extracting oil from oil shale. I'll talk a little bit about that 'cause we think we now have a very realistic path to commercialize that. In Jordan, we have seven billion barrels plus of oil shale licenses that are talking to potential partner there about piloting that. In Western Canada, I mentioned the production, that really rounds it out, other than Brazil, where we now have a actual operating, and this is extremely rare. They're in Estonia, which has been happening since the 1920s, extracting oil from oil shale, making power and liquid fuels today. China very recently has started doing this in the last decade. They're now up to 100,000 barrels a day.
They're, I wouldn't say large scale, but they're getting to be large scale. Brazil has been doing it since the 1970s with the technology that Petrobras developed and commercialized into this operating mine that we've purchased. Okay, just quick recap of the results up to the last quarter. Positive cash flow, that's including that we had some reasonably significant legal and advisory fees in doing the PX transaction. It's across four jurisdictions. It was bonds from Norway. It was a vendor and a purchaser in Canada. There were finance, two financial deals out of the United States and of course, the operating assets in Brazil.
It's a relatively complicated transaction and difficult to structure and complete, but we've certainly done the vast majority of that work now. We show a working capital deficit now. I think it's important to say, though, that the debt and deficit in the PX transaction is ring-fenced in Brazil. The Canadian company actually has closer to positive CAD 20 million of working capital and cash. We also have an undrawn credit facility of CAD 16 million. No short-term plans to that we need that facility for, but we are happy to have it to back up our operations in Canada. On a consolidated basis, working capital deficit of CAD 40 million, but as I said, a lot of that's ring-fenced in Brazil.
452 million shares now and 120... Market cap, but we're now getting up to about $250 million enterprise value. This is the, and the reason we're so excited about this, I think the potential for us to take an asset that we think we can make very interesting acquisition just from a cash flow positive point of view, but the fact that it can also be a platform for us to commercialize oil shales both in Brazil, Jordan, Utah, or anywhere in the world. First of all, oil shale, it's a, it's, for most people, it's an idea so old you haven't heard of it, right?
It was in the 1700s, Scotland, people in Scotland used to heat this organic material in rocks. They used to heat the rock, and oil and gas would come out. They would capture the kerosene for kerosene lamps. What it is it's the organic material in this immature source rock is basically Type III kerogen. Type I kerogen is peat moss, Type II kerogen is coal, and Type III kerogen is the type of organic material that sits in source rocks. In Norway, we're all familiar with source rocks that are heated deep in the earth and over time, slowly generate oil and gas, which migrates into reservoirs, which you're drilling and producing from today.
Of course, in America and Canada with the shale revolution, we started drilling straight into the source rocks, horizontally with new, big frack completions, that we're now extracting the oil and gas straight out of mature source rock. That same source rock, if it's at surface, is not hot. It's ambient temperature, and that organic material just still sits there as it has for millions of years. If you take that rock and heat it, as they did in Scotland in the 1700s or as we're doing in Brazil today, oil, it is basically a refining process. The oil and gas comes out, it comes out as a distillation. As you heat it, the first thing that comes out is hydrogen, then methane, then ethane, then propane, ultimately, what we produce...
I'll say this a little bit more on the PX slide, at the end of the day, what we're producing is refined products. We sell fuel oil, we sell naphtha, we sell LPG as cooking gas, and we sell natural gas. The key to our strategy is: Can we use this platform, cash flowing platform in Brazil, to commercialize our technology? I'll just give you the path that we had before, was that we had tens of millions of dollars. Total put in over CAD 100 million. We had tens of millions of dollars to this technology, but our commercialization path was we needed to do a new field demonstration, which we'd already done one, but we used that to develop a second one.
We had to do a new field demonstration, CAD 20 million-CAD 50 million for 200-500 barrels a day, but it isn't a big enough scale to operate commercially. It's just an engineering exercise. It's to show you, it's just engineering information for a commercial project. The next step after that on success would be to do a CAD 1 billion commercial project. Relative for Questerre, our path to commercialization was, we think we could maybe do the demonstration project. We have people interested to partner with us on that, but we didn't know where we were gonna get CAD 1 billion. It was really just hoping for the market to improve and another company like Total comes in and commercializes it for us. That was the plan. Today, with the PX Refinery, we have...
The first step is CAD 2 million to put the existing patented process, put our patented process inside the existing facilities that are commercial-sized there already. That CAD 2 million, instead of being just an engineering exercise, we think will demonstrate that our process is far more efficient and will create 10% more oil. It becomes a six-month payout project and cash flow positive. Dramatically different than CAD 20 million+ for engineering information. We now are CAD 2 million for demonstration of our process and incremental cash flow. The next step, because a lot of the costs to commercialize it are things like opening a mine, which is CAD 100 billion or so. It's bringing in services, roads, water, power, natural gas, and all of that exists already at PX with laboratories and workers and knowledgeable operators.
Now we think we could add 3,000 barrels a day there for maybe $250 million, that would throw up $60 million-$70 million of cash flow. Now all of a sudden, our path goes from $2 million for incremental cash flow, not $1 billion, only $250 million, again, for a good incremental cash flow asset. At the end of that, we've now, if on success, proven that we can reduce the cost of extraction of oil from oil shale by over 50% and under $30 a barrel. If we can do that, our 8 billion barrels of resource suddenly becomes worth money. There, as I said, it's a simple four-point plan.
Buy a shale mine, make it profitable, demonstrate your technology, finance 3,000 barrels a day, and now we're you know, we're several billion barrels. Am I going backwards? No. Okay, just to talk a little bit about the existing operation, and as I said in that plan, step one was to buy it. That's been nine months. Step two is to make it profitable. When we were in due diligence, it was basically breaking even at $71 Brent. Maybe losing a bit, maybe making a bit, but it was basically break even at $71. Our goal is to make that profitable this year at $55 and next year at $45. As I mentioned before, our main product is fuel oil.
We sell the fuel oil at Brent plus $10. It's a refined product. It's a light fuel oil. We're currently competing with heavy fuel oil, you know, we're. We compete on the basis of lower sulfur, lower viscosity, lower ash, lower water, we think a premium fuel oil product compared to the competition. As I said, we sell it as a, at a premium to Brent. Well, if Brent today is $70, then we're selling that for $71. It's 4,500 barrels a day. We financed it. We financed it almost all with debt, by assuming the existing debt.
This year we've implemented CAD 8 million of cost cutting, on CAD 100 million of revenue, CAD 100 million of costs, we've instituted CAD 8 million of savings that were already implemented, this year we're expecting to have reduced that by 8%. We also are looking to do additional cost cutting in 2027 to take that down to a further CAD 8 million. That's really the main source of the profitability. There's some increase in production, some increase in revenue as well. The other main thing we did is reduce financing charges.
There's our 2026 goals, are growth in production, which has been implemented by one project, debottlenecking project, that's already on stream, and then another one comes on at the end of March. We think we'll get that 10% growth in production from those two projects, which gives us an increase in revenue, a decrease in costs. The one thing I would say that we have two different, there's internal fuel use under IFRS accounting is neither a revenue nor an expense, but I can tell you operating the refinery, internal fuel is a big expense. When we say under CAD 55, that's including internal fuel, CAD 46 is without the internal fuel. That's the number in the presentation is an IFRS number.
Our goal for this year is generate $20 million in cash flow, $15 million-$20 million in cash flow, and reduce the working capital deficit in PX from $20 million to something very manageable. A lot of opportunities that we think for the following years. I said we wanna get additional revenue, additional cost reductions. One of our big costs right now is our shale is, we have two layers of shale with a limestone in between it. We currently mine that limestone, we truck break it up, take it in trucks, take it away, take out the shale, put the limestone back. It's a big part of our mining costs, and there's an opportunity for us to sell that limestone as a fertilizer input.
It goes from an expense to a revenue. It's gonna make, we think, CAD 250,000-CAD 500,000 a month difference in costs and revenues. The other one, oil sludge or recycled oil. Our project, the process of taking the oil out of the shale generates a lot of heat. It's about 81% heat efficient, and we have a lot of waste heat. In fact, we use water to cool because there's this excess heat that comes off the system. One of the advantages of our new technology, which is more like 95% efficient, is that we don't have as much waste heat, but we currently use that waste heat to recycle oil.
We bring in residual or tank bottoms or residual oils, and we use the heat to help to separate the oil and water. We have presses that take out the sediments, and so on and so forth. A good percentage of our product is actually oil recycled, recycling of oil, been quite positive, both from a profitability point of view, but also from an ESG point of view. Our facilities are able to deal with water with oil contamination because our process processes that, so we can bring in water with oil contamination and deal with it the same way we deal with our own water. We also can deal with all the sediments.
All the oily sediments we put back in the mine with our spent shale rock, so we already can deal with that. We're already dealing with that. In addition, the other thing we did, way to deal with the town, we actually become the landfill. We bury the waste from the town, and basically it turns into a composting of the city waste. We've become, in effect, a waste disposal site as well for oily organic materials and oily wastes, and that's been a big part of our part of recycling.
Gives us lower carbon intensity, it gives us recycling in terms of like a lot of that recycled oil has a zero carbon zero carbon for the production of it. Finally, we have a very advanced reforestation product or forestation project. It's very, we're reclaiming the mine as we go. We're open-pit mining, but we're not building up a huge reclamation project, because once there's a valley that we've dug out with the shale, on one side, we're digging it out, and on the other side, we're planting trees. We have a huge nursery. I, as I said, we said, Hans Jacob, Bjorn Inge, and I, we've never planted a tree, but there's a lot of trees being planted there, but my wife planted a tree.
It's a big plant. That, that's turned into a permanent forest reserve. The next thing we wanna do is to see if we can't get biodiversity and carbon credits, creating taking land that's currently private and turning it into forest reserve. That's those are other opportunities, we think there's a lot of opportunities for joint ventures with fuel distributors, we currently have relationships with Vibra, which is the new... They run all the Petrobras gas stations in Brazil, which was privatized from Petrobras, also Rodoil, which has 1,000 gasoline stations, and we're looking at opportunities to work closer with them. The next step basically for us is hit our budget this year.
We're just really laser focused on hit budget, be positive cash flow. Two, next year is to focus really on the plant turnaround. We wanna do a turnaround of the plant to create some, we think, much more efficiencies and a reduction in maintenance costs. We wanna further reduce costs and hit the plant turnaround next year. During that time, we want it to implement the first demonstration of our technology. Years three and four, or maybe four and five, would be let's start building the next 3,000 barrels a day. I'll just take a moment to explain a little bit more about the technology. Of the three existing, there's Estonia, Petrosix in Brazil, and ATP in China. Those are the three technologies in the world.
The Petrobras Petrosix and ATP are both gravity down feeds, and the Estonian is a horizontal feed. What they all have in common is that you're having continuous, it's been approached as if it was a mining problem, which I guess in some sense it is. The goal is: how do we process the rock? Is the mental problem that you're solving. The answer they've chosen, that most mines have, which is continuous plants with continuous process of rock moving through a machine, whether you're taking out copper or gold or whatever oil, it's a sort of similar thing. How do you process the rock? We did it, or what our, you know, founders did, that's that...
or the technical people behind this HCCO technology is, we looked at it instead as a refining problem, as opposed to a mining problem. How do you refine the material in the rock? Refineries work on batch processing, and they put a oil into a, into a column, they heat it, they separate out all the oil, separate the oil into its component parts, and it's a batch process. What we've taken here in the top right there is, we've modified coker drums, which are at many refineries, to process heavy ends of the oil, and you put it into the coker drum, heat it, and you separate that heavy oil into light oil and coke, then coke ends up being a valuable product you can sell.
What we're doing is putting rock into what is functionally a coker drum, and we heat it or coke it, and we take out all the oil and gas, and we leave the coke. Some of it gets burnt in the process or oxidized in the process for heat, but the rest of it ends up on the rock, which we then bury back in the mine. The effect of all that is there's no moving parts. At Petrosix, I mean, you know, I get more and more into the process, and you realize it's more and more quite complicated.
You're trying to move rock through a machine with no oxygen able to get in, and it has to go through at the right time and pace. There's constant agitation that they use to move the rock through the machine. It's a I forget how many thermocouples, hundreds of thermocouples, Siemens automated system to run the whole thing. It's expensive. It's why it was costing them $60 some, $61 a barrel for operating costs. We think we can get it down to $55 and $45. With this system, no moving parts, we think we can get that down to well below $30 as an operating cost, and we think the CapEx is maybe gonna be $10, 'cause the CapEx is also much less because you're not again, no moving parts.
The main moving parts are the is the mine. It's the machine, it's the trucks and the excavators and the conveyors and the rock crushers. That's where all your moving parts are in the system. Dramatic change, and it just as I'd looked at it from a different prospect, what we spent most of the time and money on was perfecting the heat flow inside the capsule, and it is a low-temperature oxy-fuel process that has down-flow heating, which is sort of non-intuitive, but we have the heat moving down, and what happens is it basically just follows the fuel. You retort the top, and then after that, the oxidization process follows the fuel down the capsule until all of the rock has been converted into oil or gas.
That's the main thing for us. We still have in Western Canada, we're in the Montney. We have non-operated interests here with two different companies. It's interesting because as the Permian starts to become mature, we're seeing U.S. money coming to Canada in the Duvernay and Montney. I think this is an asset that potentially can be sold, and as we see interest coming back to Canada, and we see interest looking for the next Permian, and some people think that's the Montney and Duvernay are way underdeveloped compared to the Permian.
We have got cash flow there, 22,000 barrels a day or so, and then we've got another close to 500 barrels, pardon me, 300-400 barrels a day in Saskatchewan, which is actually where we plan to try to grow production with the drill bit. Now St. Lawrence Lowlands, which is its own, its own share now. If you, if you have preferred shares, then this asset now is represented by those shares. It is a giant discovery confirmed by 30 wells, this is not based on geology, this, you know, geological mapping. This is by the drill bit, 7 TCF, risk contingent resources of 1.6 and prospective at 5.4.
That's all gas that's within a mile and a half of an existing. We've got another 11 to 13 TCF of gas by geological mapping, which you'd call undiscovered. It's basically all the fairway between the wells, but far away from the wells, right? We think very largely de-risked, but still undiscovered gas. A total of 18 plus TCF of gas or 3 billion BOEs of equivalent oil. We have also done a carbon capture pilot. We've done this, a lot of geology and exploration around setting up the potential for carbon capture that we're hoping will help to help sell the project as a transition fuel and as a social acceptability on the basis that we have emissions reductions.
The government, of course, is trying to revoke the licenses, which we're objecting to. I guess what we're objecting to even more, but even if we were being paid full value, we still wouldn't like that, but we're objecting even more that we're not being offered a fair market value. What's changed in Quebec? They, five or six years ago, joined the Beyond Petroleum with Denmark, Holland, Costa Rica, and Quebec, were the four groups that did this Beyond Petroleum group. I imagine you saw that just two days ago, Denmark said, "Well, Beyond Petroleum might be beyond 2030 as well. We're gonna move that idea out to 2050 or later." I guess Denmark's gone back to coal electricity to meet their electricity demand.
This has happened in Quebec, too. They went all in on renewables, and it turned out the windmills didn't generate the power that they hoped, and they are now having electricity shortages. They're now looking for, "How do we solve that?" What's become a bit of an energy crisis. Their gas is mostly imported from the United States. The Trump effect has also been a part of the political change in Quebec, is that why are we running out of electricity, talking about increasing prices for consumers when people are struggling with affordability and paying the rent and buying groceries, while we are relying on United States and Donald Trump for our natural gas, which we continue to use?
We had, at the Montreal Board of Trade, just last week, the CEO of the National Bank, which is the sixth biggest bank in Canada, the biggest bank with a headquarter in Quebec, he said, "Look, we have to focus on the economy, and one of the things we need to do is produce our own gas in Quebec." That is a big change for a public figure to say publicly or to an institutional figure to say publicly that Quebec should be producing its own gas. As I said before, back in 2012 or 2013, telling people in Quebec that you thought natural gas and fracking would be a good thing for Quebec, would be a little bit like being at a Norwegian cocktail party telling people you thought Trump was a great president. Today that's changed.
The other thing is, the leader for the running for the CAQ has suggested energy security is important, and so I think that's another potential change in emphasis than from what we saw five years ago. In terms of the legal case development, which continues on, is I think we try to be very clear that our focus is a business and political solution. We would like to see our discovery developed, and we'd like to be part of developing it. We are going to protect our shareholders' rights. We have...
It's our shareholders' money that paid to find this discovery, and we deserve to be recognized for that in terms of if you don't want to develop it, then, by all means, just pay the value of it, and you get the benefit of that gas however you decide to use it. We have been pursuing our legal rights to get just compensation, and the most recent development is that the Superior Court justice has agreed to let Questerre's case be a test case. There's about 9 other litigants, 9, 10 other litigants, and their cases will now be suspended. Why is this a good thing? It's going to be a lot faster to have one or 2. I guess it's actually 2 cases with Utica.
It's two test cases will go much, much faster than trying to get 10 litigants through, especially 'cause a lot of them are small companies, and they just have not got the internal capacity to do the damages, the reports, to do the expert witnesses, to find the expert witnesses. They're just simply not ready to be heard, but Questerre is. We're ready to be heard now, and we're seeking a trial date now. Okay, what are we working on?
We continue to work to create awareness of the Questerre natural gas discovery in Quebec as a solution to economic affordability and energy crisis problems in Quebec, to make sure that as many people as we can in Quebec are aware that that is a viable alternative solution, we will continue to protect our shareholders' rights and continue to pursue the claim. As I said, that's not our ideal or preferred solution, it's the solution and the alternate. What's up for us right now? What's up for us? You know, my career has been nothing but startups and turnarounds, a lot of startups are a lot like turnarounds 'cause you're out of money the whole time.
It's to apply that in Brazil at PX to turn that asset into an asset that's making CAD 20 million this year, but CAD 30 million and CAD 40 million in the future. We want to continue to fund some drilling, depending on oil prices in Saskatchewan with our, you know, our operating cash flow from Canada, as I said, which is ring-fence from Brazil, and we have the credit facility to back us up there. We don't know that we'll need it this year. We are pursuing a listing for the preferred shares, and, you know, as I said at the beginning, is listening to the people with public companies and exploration models, which I haven't seen for years, so it's a, to me, a sign the market's changing.
You know, we're at the point now with Questerre that we're, you know, we can see a plan that took the resource that we discovered 15 years ago we've now can see a path to commercializing and to achieve that dream of being a company that created 1 billion barrels. I'm happy to take questions if there are some. I think my chairman's been getting them from online, and if there's any in the room, we're happy to take those, too.
We start in the room. Okay. Okay. Does it work?
Yes.
The other second, yes.
Okay, very good. there is one I think it's very good for my care also, being kind of very engaged in politics in Alberta. Do you think that it will be a positive effect on Quebec's reluctance to develop their gas if or when Alberta gains its independence?
Well, there's a loaded question. Yeah, well, I mean, first of all, I'm not sure that will have anything to do with anything in Quebec, to be honest, but it's an interesting question outside of the company. Yeah, I've been, I think it's almost certain that Alberta will end up having a referendum on independence. Contemporaneously, it looks like the separatist party in Quebec, the Parti Québécois, is the leading party, at least as of now, to be the next government in Quebec. There is some possibility that both Quebec and Alberta will have referendums on independence.
My, my view is that in Alberta, that there is not a plurality of Albertans that are looking to have a rupture with the rest of Canada. I think there is a plurality of Albertans that would like to see amendments to the, you know, to the federal terms and Constitution, some of which can be done within the existing Constitution, some of which require constitutional change. I don't think we'll see Alberta separating. It's a good 30%-35% of Albertans that likely would vote for it. It's substantial. As I've heard from a number of people, you know, Brexit started, there was only about 30% in favor, and they won.
The last time Quebec had a referendum, they started at about 35%, and they got to 49.5 on the actual, on the actual vote. It's not, it's not nothing that Alberta is talking that way, but I don't know that it'll change Quebecers' minds one way or other. I think Quebecers will be making up their own mind about their own future.
You know, the second part of the question, but I didn't say was, you know, it's caused all these cash going from Alberta to Quebec will it end? That's probably the consequences of it, the question.
Right. I will say, and this is, it does get brought up from time to time that, you know, it how does Quebec justify being in the beyond petroleum while its budget is balanced by funds that come from petroleum? People do make that kind of a point, like...
I do think there are some observers in Quebec that say: "You know, we should probably be developing our own gas, and, you know, as opposed to just only as opposed to getting significant fiscal transfers and benefits from parts of the country that do develop their gas and their oil." I do think that's an interesting criticism that for me, the bigger issue there is that the system, and this is certainly no fault of anybody in Quebec. The federal transfer system in Canada, just by the way it's designed, has a disincentive to develop your economy.
Because if you develop natural gas in Quebec, for example, 50% of the fiscal benefit that you get from developing the gas gets repaid to the federal government by reduced transfers. To my mind, there's something fundamentally wrong with the federal transfer program when it's discouraging provinces from developing their economy because it will reduce their transfers. There needs to be some amendment to that. Well, it feels like there should be some amendment to that. It's not just Quebec, it's applicable to New Brunswick or Nova Scotia or other provinces, too. I don't think ultimately, that's actually even helping those provinces.
Very good. Let's stick to Quebec and those as there are several questions on this. One of the questions is, you know, on timeline, can you say more about specific, you know, what is the expectations of when things could happen, the trial, et cetera?
Yeah. We're asking for a trial. We're asking, basically, we're saying to the court: "We are ready to be heard." We've done the examinations. We don't need to do more examinations of witnesses. We have done our expert reports. We have our expert witnesses. We are ready to be heard. We are requesting a trial date. The government has not completed its damages report, they are likely to delay things as they work to finish that report. It's not clear to me that the government is as anxious to be heard as we are, but that's sort of the outstanding issue. I think once that's done, then we should be able to get a trial, a date.
I know that's not a precise answer, but the answer is because in the legal system, you know, there's a judge who decides, and that judge has to decide based out of fairness, and that judge has to decide to what extent are we willing to wait longer for the government and its expert witness reports.
Very good. Let's continue on Quebec. As you know, which is, question several has here as well, is, of course, on the listing of the preferred shares. When will it be possible to trade? Will it be within a year or, you know, anything on timeline there as well?
Yeah. We would like them to be trading as soon as possible, we'll be talking to the exchange about that, we'll be making an effort to get them listed as soon as possible. That will be, in the end, the gatekeeper on that will be the process of putting together the listing application, plus the ultimate decision and approval of the stock exchange. What I can say for sure is that our Board of Directors, who's represented here, and me, we're, you know, we are motivated and focused on getting them listed.
If we then go move over to Brazil, you say that you guided that PX can be profitable at $0.55 with $8 million cuts in 2026 and another $8 million in 2027. Which items are already executed, which are in flight, and what is the monthly run rate benefit as of today?
Right. Yeah, those are good questions because as is often the case when you're doing cost cutting, it's not often just one thing. "Oh, I'll just cut that," and there's $8 million. It's usually a saving a small amount of money on 100 things is what adds up to $8 million. There's no one single silver bullet answer to that. Some of the bigger things have been just to administer and manage existing contracts and to enforce them. We have found, within the sales contracts, within the purchasing contracts with our major suppliers and major customers, we've just found that there were, you know, seven-figure opportunities within there.
The production increase, based on the two projects I talked about, is another larger item. Another larger item in terms of impact, a 10% increase in production. Then I would say after that, it's a lot of, it's a lot of small things like instead of having two external suppliers for doing equipment maintenance, we're gonna consolidate into one, which eliminates two busing programs, eliminates two overheads, eliminates a lot of duplication of expense. There's another fairly large item that we're doing. What I can say is, when we took it over, as I said, it was not making money, but we think it's made money in, on our first quarter running it, and we think that it's improved the...
Let's just say we think we're on budget, you know, for the first month of this year.
Very good. I see many of these questions, they were put on the question list before you made a presentation. I think some of the questions have been answered as well. I will pick up a few more. Well, I think you have confirmed, like Brazil is ahead of Jordan, trying to make the, you know, the test on the new technology. I think you confirmed that and also made the reasons why. There are a question also: How does the if Brazil hosts the demo, how does that de-risk Jordan?
If we can demonstrate that our technology performs as the engine. We have independent engineering, so we, this is not our internal assessment. This is Hatch Engineering has done, you know, their class, whatever estimate of what it'll cost to build and how it'll operate and so on and so forth. We now need to confirm those external engineering estimates of our technology, that it really will have operating costs of, you know, under $30, maybe close to $20 U.S. a barrel, and that the ultimate CapEx per barrel over the project is maybe, you know, even less than that.
If we can demonstrate that, in Jordan, we would be producing out of that shale, which we've tested, we would produce middle distillates that we think we can sell as diesel or jet fuel, and Brent plus CAD 20. Brent plus CAD 20, with costs of CAD 30 to CAD 40, that's how we de-risk Jordan, is by proving that the technology will deliver the oil at those kinds of costs, which is I think, you know, better than average margins for most oil projects.
To continue a little with Jordan, you know, which is, you know, okay, we say you're gonna produce. I'm gonna rephrase that there were several questions on it. With Jordan, Knowing that Brazil has, you know, the off-take, there are arrangements, et cetera, how will that take place for this project in Jordan? Is there negotiation, permitting, off-take, et cetera?
Right. Okay, I guess the two big things to understand about Jordan is it's a greenfield site. There's a major mine that has to be opened there. There's like 20, 30 meters of overburden to get to a 40-meter layer of very rich shale. It's a very significant upfront cost, and so the de-risking that you're not spending any money... You're not gonna spend any money opening a mine in Jordan until you know that your process has been de-risked, and you know that it works, and it's gonna deliver the product at the cost that we're projecting.
The next thing is, as I mentioned about what we're doing in Brazil, we don't produce crude oil, we produce refined products, so it's fuel oil and natural gas and LPG. In Jordan, it'll be similar. We'll end up with a marketable fuel. We won't be producing oil that gets sold to a refinery. We'll be producing fuel that gets sold to somebody who, you know, for diesel trucks or for jet planes. We'll be marketing it direct to customers. That's what we're doing in Brazil. We market our product through a distributor, we are the refinery. We distribute our fuel direct to customers.
Very good. There are some more detailed questions on cost and some technical question. I think that's too early to state anything about, I know. With that, there are no more questions online, so more questions in the audience?
I would like to know more about this process. What's the time-frame of this 300-500 barrels you were talking about?
Oh, yeah. what's the time-
Time-frame on this process there? Is it... You talked about this last year as well. I was here last year as well, and so I was just wondering, is it this year?
Yeah.
Is it?
Yeah, okay. There now becomes two parts to that. One is the. Our technology, I'm not sure if I'll go out of camera range if I go over here, but the, this diagram or character of the process, for us, it's really two major patented components of it. One is what's happening inside the capsule, which is this downflow heating, and what it's doing is, using very control...
the controlled oxygen mixture to have a very precise, you know, millimeter by millimeter control over the oxidization process that's going on inside the capsule, and also to have it at a low temperature, which results in a complete oxidization, so not no incomplete combustion, and also the lower temperature results in a higher quality product. That's an essential part of what's been worked on for a decade to try to make that understand how to make that work. That's the part that we can demonstrate inside the commercial-sized capsule at PX Energy, that some of that internal process. The external part, which is the in...
What I call more the engineering part, how do you build coke drums and loading and unloading and conveyor belts and process control and the pre-heat between the capsules and so on and so forth, that engineering part is the part that you'd wanna to go to 3,000 barrels a day, you may want to say, "Let's build 200 barrels a day first, just to prove the engineering." That part, we're still interested to look at, could we do that in Jordan? I'm not sure which one you were asking a question about.
Yeah.
I decided to answer both.
Will you do that in Brazil now that you have this cooperation with them?
We would be happy to do it in Brazil or Jordan, and the only reason to do it anywhere different than Brazil would be if we have a partner in Jordan that wanted to contribute to it, then that becomes a compelling reason to do it in Jordan. It also becomes helpful with the government of Jordan to show that we're doing real things to maintain our license position. The answer, I think we still have an interest. The critical nature of it, because the way we were before, that was gonna prove both things. Now it's gonna just prove the engineering, if we can prove the process at the Petrosix's technology. As far as timing goes, I've learned in my, I guess, sort of four months since we've closed and the couple...
Some months before that in due diligence, but the permitting in Brazil is not a fast thing. I would say that the actual project to test the technology there is probably just a few months to do that, but I have just no handle on, is the permitting gonna be three months or one year? Our goal is to say, "Let's make that a this year's project with results next year," is a goal. In all honesty, it's against the backdrop of not understanding the permitting process and now being made very aware that the permitting process is very important, and, don't take it for granted.
Yeah, I was just hoping it was speeding up, after this with Brazil-
Yeah
and everything, but-
Yeah, I think.
Yeah
I think that for sure will be much faster than-
Yeah.
I think the idea of building a demonstration, like a full demonstration of the technology, but at small scale, that's gonna be at least a two-year project.
Final, about Quebec and this test case. When I read it doesn't ring very well in the ear that that is a test case. As you explained, it's a good thing.
Yeah.
Yeah, well, sometimes when you're explaining things.
Is there election-
You sort of assume that.
in Canada this year?
What's that? Yeah, well, we're gonna ask. I mean, we are trying to get a trial date set for in this calendar year. It's out of our control. We certainly are going to ask for it.
Is there an election?
The election is in October.
Do you think they are waiting for after the election to, in case there are some public opinion change?
I do not believe that the court system is. I don't believe that they're... I don't wanna say there's zero influence, but I don't think they're large, very influenced by that. The attorney general might be, and the attorney general's client, being the government, might be very attuned to, "We don't want this heard before the election," or "We don't want heard that... We want this..." Like, for sure, they might be influenced by election timing, but I don't think the court is. What I would say the real thing for us, given our primary objective of a political and business solution in Quebec, is the fact there's gonna be probably 2 new premiers.
One, when the leadership is decided of the Coalition Avenir Québec to replace the current premier, François Legault. I think that's one opportunity that we might see a change as the new leader is looking to rebuild the party and hopefully be re-elected. The next change will be at the election. They'll good, you know, either will be a re-elected or a new, another new premier. Those, to me, seem like two windows for a possible change. I'm not trying to suggest that any one of them have told us they wanna do anything.
I understand your comment. Sorry, yeah.
I just think they're just two changes where there's an opportunity for people to rethink things.
Okay. Thank you.
Yeah. Then I think just relative to the more of the detailed questions on cost, I think we're really in a position here where we're saying, "Listen, we took over something. We think that we can turn it around to positive cash flow." Ultimately, the proof points are going to be when the year-end financial statements come out, what was the cash flow and profits for the Q4? Then when our Q1 comes out, you know, how is that doing relative to trying to do CAD 15-20 million of cash flow? you know, if we can generate, you know, CAD 3-4 million of cash flow in the first quarter, that would be. You know, I think that would be a good validation that what we're our goals are being met.
Mike, maybe you can comment that it was run previously by Petrobras, and they have a total different operation, rather than a small company like Questerre.
I mean, this was a Petrobras operation for 40 years. It was taken over by a mining company in Toronto, who to get it up and running, hired a lot of people from Petrobras, which I think was largely the right thing to do because they came with a safety culture, they came with experience of operating and engineering the process. I don't think it was wrong to do that. That brought a Petrobras culture in terms of the way. I think it was net good for the operation and safety, and so on and so forth. It was maybe not net good for commercial, administration, and bureaucracy.
That's where we think there's opportunities to streamline the operation, but where the more obvious opportunities are, is to be entrepreneurial, private sector mentality relative to the commercial aspects of the business. I mean, I've been very clear with people down there, "We've got to get rid of the Petrobras culture." I said, "You know, I'm all for that, but I don't wanna get rid of the safety culture. We wanna keep that. And I don't wanna get rid of the excellence, a sense of pride and excellence in the uptime and operation, and, you know, in both environmental and, you know, human and environmental safety.
I don't wanna get rid of that part of the culture at all.
A couple of more questions on the online coming in, and, one is on Quebec and First Nations. Why are not First Nations more on the ball regarding pushing the development in Quebec?
That's an interesting question at two levels, maybe three. Okay, the starting point is, in Quebec, the, that land was colonized by France, the main source of treaty rights comes from England and King George in 1763, who made a declaration that no lands reserved for Indians can be taken without a treaty approved by the king or by the parliament. That's, let's say, right? That does not apply in France in the same way it applies in other parts of Canada. Where we are is in those lands that were colonized in 1608, not 1763. That's there's just a bit of a constitutional difference in terms of First Nations rights.
It gets a bit more complicated because there's now people saying, "Well, international law says we should get those same rights," or, "These treaty rights are actually a common law thing." There's some people arguing that even though they were colonized before treaty rights became a right, that they might still have some rights like that. Part one is, it's a bit of a complicated situation. Part two is that there's internal. It's not uncommon in politics anywhere in the world, probably including in Norway, but there's internal division and political difference of political points of view by the First Nations in our territory. The answer is, we've got some that very much support the idea of this going forward, and we've got others that don't.
Great. Very good. There is more back to Utah, actually. Okay, it's a long question, but, you know, the question boils down to: Is there potential rare earth minerals in the Utah Green River?
Yeah. Yeah, there is. We've got a layer of a thin layer, but very rich, very high in heavy rare earths, and not likely worth developing as a mine on its own. Definitely, if there was to be an oil shale mine developed there, it's definitely something that would be a by-product that would create, bring in additional revenues, and, of course, has some strategic value as well. Anyways, the answer is yes. Yes, we've already analyzed it, yes, we've already tested, and yes, we've already assessed, you know, what the total resource is.
Now we're back to Brazil. With PX Energy now forming the operational backbone of the company, are you considering bringing in a strategic partner or joint venture participant to accelerate growth and de-risk capital requirements? Or do you believe retaining full control creates a greater long-term value for shareholders?
Yeah, we are actively looking for a partner on the fertilizer. We're looking for partners on some electricity generation. We're looking for partners on fuel distribution for... The answer is yes. We're absolutely very interested in finding good relationships, whether they're just business or customer relationships or actual joint venture relationships. Those are ongoing discussions.
... but not on the full scale, like we did not. The question is probably referring to Nima Fast has left-
Yeah
It does seem.
I think that anything that we do, we have to be sure does not impact on our ability to commercialize our technology.
Very good. There is one final question, kind of personal to Mr. Binnion again, that is, "Mike, how about learning Portuguese? You learned French.
Yeah. Well, I, you know what? It's hard to find the time, but if I could, I would do what I did in Quebec, and I would find a, you know, a 10-day window to do an immersion course in Portuguese and hope that the fact that I now know French will be helpful to learn another Latin language. The answer is, I'm interested. What I can tell you is that our Vice President, Filippo Segneri, he's Italian, he spoke Italian. He's our engineer, our refining engineer. He went down there starting at the beginning of October, and he is now fluent in Portuguese, and he now translates for me. We've at least got one Questerre employee who's taken up that challenge.
The final question from me: do you intend to learn Norwegian?
Right. You know what? You know what? I... It's so embarrassing, right? The Norwegians are just... You're too nice, right? It's... I find it so funny because I've had experiences like, I'm in a washroom, and somebody starts talking to me. Yeah, 'cause I look like I could be Norwegian, right?
Hold, hold, hold.
A little bit, maybe. Anyways, people start talking to me in Norwegian. I say, "Oh, I'm sorry, I speak English." I say, "No, I speak English." The guy's, "Oh, I'm sorry?" I say, "You're sorry about speaking to me in Norwegian in Norway." Norwegians are very, very polite this way. It's actually quite incredible. Plus, they, especially in Oslo, the level of English is exceptional, and people are so good. I'm embarrassed that people here are so gracious about not about being nice to people from outside of Oslo or outside of Norway, that it's made it very easy for me to not have to learn Norwegian. A great question. Tusen takk.
You're welcome. That was the final question. Any more from the audience?