Hello. Thank you for joining PetroTal's Q1 results webcast. Your presenters today are Manolo Zúñiga, President and CEO, and Camilo McAllister, CFO. As usual, questions can be submitted via the platform during the webcast, and we'll do our best to answer them in the time available. Manolo, can I hand over to you? Thank you.
Thank you, Mark. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining PetroTal's Q1 2026 webcast, where we're going to discuss the financial and operational results we released overnight. My name is Manolo Zúñiga, and I am the President and CEO of PetroTal. I am joined today by Camilo McAllister, our Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. If you have clicked on the link in this morning's press release, you should hopefully see our slide presentation on your screen. Before I begin, I should mention that there are some disclaimers towards the end of the main presentation on our website, which I encourage you to read after our prepared remarks. On slide two, we have provided a summary of our key operational and financial metrics. Starting on the left-hand side, we highlight our recent production performance.
In the first quarter of 2026, PetroTal delivered average production of approximately 14,900 barrels of oil per day, modestly lower than the prior quarter. As we will discuss later in the presentation, we remain comfortable with our full year production guidance of approximately 12,000 barrels per day. Reflecting the recent strength in oil prices, we have increased our EBITDA guidance to a range of $10 million-$110 million, a significant increase from our prior outlook of $30 million-$40 million. There is no change in our capital expenditure budget at this time. While we invest $7.6 million in the first quarter, we expect activity to accelerate in the second half of the year as we resume our development drilling program.
Based on our updated outlook, using forward current oil prices, we plan to end the year with a cash balance roughly in line with current levels. On slide three, I would like to show our oil production and water injection capacity so far this year. The blue line shows the results of our recent water injection stimulation program, which we discussed in our press release this morning. Prior to the stimulation program, our water disposal capacity had been fixed at 170,000 barrels per day for quite some time. Following the stimulation program, our water injection capacity briefly spiked to almost 200,000 barrels per day before settling at around 180,000-185,000 barrels per day over the past week.
Our water injection capacity is important because the more water we are able to dispose, the more oil we can produce. Current water cuts in our field range from 90% to 96%, averaging around 93.6%. Every 10,000 barrels per day of increase in water disposal allows us to produce approximately 500 more barrels of oil per day. Of course, the new oil wells will bring down the average field water cut. Our medium-term goal is to reach 240,000 barrels per day, and eventually 320,000 barrels per day of injection capacity and beyond. We have already seen a small boost in our production as a result of the stimulation campaign, and we would expect to see additional bump when we complete pulling jobs on three wells in Q3 2026.
I would also like to point out that we have included our budget expectation in the red line in this chart. This is the same line we published with our Q3 2025 results back in November 2025, and I am pleased to report that we have been trending about 3% above expectations year to date in 2026. As we pointed out in our press release this morning, we have not made any changes to our production outlook at this point, but it's nice to be carrying a small buffer as we approach the midpoint of the year.
Thank you, Manolo. Turning to slide four, we have summarized the PetroTal's financial performance for the 1st quarter of 2026. As Manolo noted earlier, our average production during the quarter was 14,907 barrels of oil per day, which represents a modest decline relative to Q4 2025. Despite a slightly lower production, PetroTal generated an adjusted EBITDA of $35.1 million in Q1 2026, which is an increase of 90% compared to the prior quarter. Our business model is built to capitalize on higher oil prices, with the recent strength in Brent, a large portion of our price gains flow directly into our earnings. If you look past the one-off expenses from late last year, the underlying growth in our EBITDA is very clear. To see the resilience of our model, it is helpful to look back at Q1 2025.
Back then, we were producing over 23,000 barrels a day, even though Brent prices were similar to what they are today. Our net operating income only decreased by about $2 per barrel. Maintaining those margins despite lower production volumes really proves how well we've controlled our costs. While higher oil prices provide a great tailwind, they will not distract us from our commitment to cost discipline. Reducing costs remains a core pillar of our 2026 strategy. We are aggressively targeting lower spending in both operations and G&A, not just on a per barrel basis, but also in total dollars. This ensures that when we return to production growth next year in 2027, we'll be doing so from a much leaner and more profitable foundation.
Moving to slide five, we are providing an update to PetroTal's 2026 EBITDA guidance in light of the recent strength in crude oil prices. As a reminder, our original 2026 guidance issued in January was based on an assumed Brent oil price of $60 per barrel. Under that pricing scenario, PetroTal expected to generate approximately $30 million-$40 million of adjusted EBITDA for the year. As highlighted in this morning's result, PetroTal has already generated approximately $35 million of adjusted EBITDA during the first quarter of 2026, despite benefiting from elevated oil prices for only part of the quarter. Looking ahead, we know the market remains volatile. However, if we look at current price trends as a guide, and assuming an average Brent price of $83 per barrel for the rest of the year, PetroTal is positioned for a much stronger 2026.
Under this scenario, we would expect to generate roughly $180 million in net operating income, which is double our original forecast. If these price levels hold for the remainder of the year, the resulting adjusted EBITDA would move into the $110 million-$120 million range. At that level, our operations would fully fund our $80 million-$90 million capital program, whilst also covering all the taxes and financing costs. To be clear, these figures reflect a change in the market, not a change in our operational plan. We're sticking to our production target of 11,500 to 12,500 barrels per day, and we'll continue to manage our cost structure aggressively. We will provide further updates as the year progresses and the price environment becomes more certain.
Wrapping up with slide six, I want to briefly touch on our crude oil marketing dynamics. Given the recent divergence between the spot and the future markets, we are often asked what pricing PetroTal is currently receiving for its crude sales. As we've discussed on our last quarterly webcast, pricing for the Brazil export route, which represents the vast majority of our sales volume, is linked to the ICE Brent month three price. Prior to the escalation of the geopolitical tensions earlier this year, the Brent curve was relatively flat, making our realized pricing fairly straightforward to estimate. However, over the past two months, the market has become a lot more volatile, and the Brent curve has moved into backwardation, meaning future delivery months are trading below the current month.
In fact, Brent month three pricing has recently traded approximately $5-$10 per barrel below the near month for extended periods. While we would obviously prefer to capture the highest possible realized price, it is important to note that even the third month of the Brent strip has at times exceeded $100 per barrel in recent weeks. Accordingly, when we reference realized oil prices in our guidance and cash flow sensitivities, those assumptions are based on a Brent month three pricing rather than current spot prices. With that, I will turn the call back over to Mark, and please let us know if you have any questions.
Thank you, Camilo. First question, given April was one of the highest priced months for oil in recent, history, can you expand on why you've chosen to conduct maintenance which has the effect of reducing production, albeit temporarily?
As I explained it in my remarks, we did not do maintenance. We, what we did is, work on the water disposal wells, to optimize the injectivity of those wells, which are allowing us to increase production. What we did is very quickly allow us to be able to produce more oil to take advantage of the prices.
Thank you. Thank you, Manolo Zúñiga. With the Iquitos refinery offline, it seems the Brazilian route accounted for 98% of Q1 volumes. Could you provide an update on the refinery status and timing for normalization?
Yeah, the reason we are not delivering oil from Bretaña to Iquitos is that Petroperú, unfortunately, the state oil company, is having financial issues, they're not paying on time. We cannot afford delivering oil and not getting paid. That's why the Bretaña oil nowadays is going to the Brazilian route. We do sell a little bit from the Los Angeles field, we try to manage very carefully how much Petroperú owes us.
Okay. Thank you. Next question. Given forecasts for a strong El Niño this year, is it fair to expect limited impact at current production levels?
We don't know yet. The El Niño have different patterns. Usually it rains a lot in the coast, in the northern coast of Peru, but sometimes it could either rain or be dry on the Andes, which feed the Amazon River. We don't know yet. It's too early. Right now the river levels are quite high, so we should be okay, I believe.
Okay. Thank you. onto the rig. Can you give us any general information on the jurisdiction the rig is in and the timeline for its export? Are the risk provisions of the contract in terms of getting a rig to our camp and commencing drilling typical for the oil and gas industry? Are there any provisions investors should be aware of?
Thank you. No, all provisions are typical. The rig is currently about to finish activities in Colombia, in the south of Colombia, in an area called Putumayo, which borders with Ecuador. When it's rigged down and prepared for transportation or logistics, it will go first by road across the border from Colombia to Ecuador to a port in Ecuador, and it will navigate through the Napo River all the way to, you know, to the Peruvian border and then to our field. This is about a 1,000 km journey and it's all on time to continue with our program of drilling in October.
Just to add in, Most of our production equipment we purchase from Ecuador, and we use exactly the same route, so we're very familiar with that.
Okay. Thank you both. If the oil pricing continues and EBITDA is as indicated for the year as per the presentation, will you issue a special dividend?
At this time, the company is not considering a special dividend. Let me remind everybody kind of our capital allocation framework. You know, first, obviously, we want to execute our capital program. Our focus is on resume drilling and continue to optimize our water fluid handling capacity. Second, we would first reduce debt. Third, we could evaluate some return of capital options. This is something we will not consider until we have stabilized our production at the levels that we want and that we are expecting to be in during 2027.
Thank you, Camilo. Can you please identify the source of cost savings of circa $2.5 m illion versus Q1 2025 and $9 million versus Q4 2025, and how sustainable these savings are?
There are two sources of savings. There are savings in G&A, and there are savings from our operating costs. The bigger variance that you just described against the fourth quarter of 2025 has to do with the pulling jobs and the workovers that we performed at the end of last year. We did not perform any of those during the first quarter. That is the main variance.
Okay. Thank you. At this stage, there are no further questions. Let's just give it a second, see whether any others come through. No. Okay. Can I hand it back, Manolo Zúñiga and Camilo McAllister, for any closing remarks?
Yes. Thank you so much, Mark, and I would like to thank all of our investors for their support. We're very excited about having a drilling rig back in Bretaña drilling and increasing production once again as we had it last year. Thank you so much.