Good morning, everybody. Thank you very much for being here. Welcome at this SDC conference. I would like also to thank you very much, Doug Pferdehirt , Chairman and CEO of TechnipFMC, to be here. It is a great honor to have you on the scene, Doug. Thank you very much. Maybe on a more personal way, I would say it's also a big pleasure to have you. Doug and I have been knowing each other for now 11 years, so it come back to 2016, 2017, the TechnipFMC merger. At that time, you were Chief Operating Officer of legacy FMC Technologies. Maybe at the time of the merger, were you asking yourself, like at some stage, Charles de Gaulle, A, how can I run a company in a country with as many as 246 different types of cheese? It's a good question.
Years after years, there have been ups and downs, but the vision became reality, and TechnipFMC started to massively outperform the sector starting in H2 2022. My, I would say, the skeleton of this discussion is going to be very simple. The past, in fact, the past, it will be a little bit of the present. The present and the future. Let's start. One point, if you want to raise some questions, there is a QR code, and all the questions should pop up on my iPad. This is the theory, but my friend and colleague, Bob Brackett, told me that it is working, so I think it is okay. Doug, thank you very much. Let's start by the past. When I'm saying the past, how do you view the current cycle compared to the previous ones, in plural?
How do you view it if you compare it to the 2005-2013 cycle? What are the differences? Are there some common features? What has most surprised you in this current upcycle?
Thank you. Thank you, Guillaume. Thanks to Bernstein for having TechnipFMC to be part of the conference. Thanks to the many familiar faces and some new faces in the audience here today. We appreciate you being here. To those on the webcast, thank you for dialing in. I got to go back to the de Gaulle quote. It's tough to follow a quote like that. I didn't know we were going to be talking about cheese. I'm not sure that de Gaulle would've been excited about the approach that we took. We took the 250 odd different cheeses and made them into a single configure-to-order product line. Our cheese manufacturing would've been very different in the end, and I'm not sure my French friends would've approved of it.
A very unique approach and somewhat of a fitting quote, considering the challenge that we had at the time. Let's talk about that cycle. You'll hear me say this a lot. What we are in the midst of is a structural change, and the thought of it being a cycle is becoming, I think, less and less obvious. I think more people are beginning to really realize there is a structural change going on. A structural change not just in power demand, but a structural change particularly in the offshore power generation, and that's what it is. It's really starting with the offshore, which is where we're seeing the benefit of that. If I compare the two, honestly, they couldn't be more different. There's far more differences than similarities between the two.
If I had to just pick a couple of examples, we could talk about the fact that in that cycle, 2005 to 2013, 2014, companies like ourselves were winning and our clients were losing. That is not sustainable. That is what leads to a cyclical business. We made a decision that was not obvious at the time, which was we were going to create an environment to which we could win whilst our customers could win simultaneously. Now, when you go back to the last cycle, the challenge of doing that was item number two. The industry had a fixed asset mentality.
A fixed asset mentality which meant supply and demand, which meant cyclicality. We induced the cyclicality because as thinking about our businesses as fixed asset businesses, we would raise prices, raise day rates, raise costs as a result of an improved environment, demand, when demand outstrips supply, and we would, quote, "take advantage of that scenario."
Well, I learned early on in my career, your customer is always smarter than you, and no customer is going to allow that to perpetuate very long. Very quickly they'll swing that around by reducing demand, which puts the pricing leverage back on their side of the table. Point number two, the structure of the business just was not able to deal with that. Then the third really fundamental change that's occurred between the last period of time, I don't like the word cycle, obviously, the last period of time and now is the competitive landscape. It is completely different. We didn't exist. We did not exist in the last cycle. Let me be clear, Technip as a standalone company existed, FMC Technologies as a standalone company existed, but TechnipFMC did not exist.
Think about that. Those are some really major changes that truly differentiate what we're experiencing today from the past. The fourth and final aspect that was a major change was the attractiveness of the capital for our customers to flow their capital to different areas. If I go back to that period of time, the challenge really wasn't the offshore environment. It was the fact that the U.S. shale was attracting the capital because the U.S. shale was presumed to have better economics and certainly had better predictability. In that past period, because of those kind of aspects that I just pointed out, offshore projects were high risk.
Offshore projects had a lot of uncertainty. Because of that, when our customers had an opportunity to flow their capital investment to another, what appeared to be more attractive investment for them, it flowed to the U.S. onshore. Around that period of time, we had a bit of a breakthrough moment where we realized our competitor was not another public company or a private company. Our competitor was simply the access to capital. We had to make offshore attractive again. We needed to make offshore economic again. We needed to make the offshore, put the confidence back in by bringing the certainty of the outcome back into the offshore. That led to several changes in the company, which we can get into if you would like.
Well, first of all, the creation of TechnipFMC, the investment, and changing the way of what we do and how we do it, which has allowed us now to be in a scenario where we attack cycle time every single day. We call it the relentless pursuit of cycle time. We have taken the offshore economics and improved them substantially by reducing cycle time. We have brought certainty back into the offshore projects, meaning delivering them on time, on budget. Now the economics offshore have improved dramatically while the economics in the U.S. unconventionals continue to be quite challenged. As a result of that, the capital flowing to the offshore, we're benefiting from that differentially because of what we have created is unique in a very different competitive landscape than we had during that last period.
That's just a little bit of the overarching story behind it, and then we can get into the elements if you would like.
Globally, maybe to put further color to what you just said, let's go back to June 2014, just before the oil price crashed. At that time, the break-even price for deepwater oil was circa $65, $70, probably more or less the same for U.S. shale oil. Basically, the break-even price for deepwater projects went from $65, $70 per barrel in June 2014 to below $35 now. The question which obviously comes to my mind is in this dramatic decline in this break-even price, a big part comes from yourself, possibly as well, from the fact that reservoir, deep offshore reservoir were very prolific. Is it possible maybe to strike a balance between generous Mother Nature and what you bring to your customer?
Sure. Let me start with, I'm a reservoir engineer. I love Mother Nature, and I love that Mother Nature put a lot of the hydrocarbon offshore. That's just a fact. The most prolific reservoirs other than the Middle East are offshore, period, full stop. By any definition, permeability, porosity, Darcy's law, you can follow anything you want to follow. Oil in place, barrels in place. It is just fundamentally better than other areas of investment for our clients. When you think about the equation dollars per barrel, it's never been about the denominator. It's never been about the barrels. Go back to what I said earlier. It's been about the cost of extracting those and the certainty of that investment.
Back in that period, in 2014, there was actually a report that was published that said offshore projects were being delivered on average one year late and on average of 100% above budgetary cost. That's not sustainable. As again, as I said earlier, our customers are always smarter than us. That's the right approach to take in business. They recognized that. We were in a period where their offshore project economics were deteriorating because of execution and performance, while the providers on the service side, things were great. They thought things were great because they were seeing backlog. They were seeing backlog growth, revenue growth, margin growth. In reality, they were setting themselves up to fail, and I was part of that. I'm taking responsibility for that. Somebody had to do something different. We chose to be that somebody.
There was no certainty that it was going to be successful, but we decided to radically change the way offshore would be developed in the future. That started by taking an equipment manufacturing company, FMC Technologies, and merging with an installation company, Technip. Had never been done before. Our customers always bought the equipment from someone and had someone else install that equipment, and they sat in between and managed that interface, which often led to most of the delays. These projects that were being delivered on average of a year late was largely due to that interface. There's a lot of synergies, and there is a lot of value between he or she who makes it and he or she who installs it, if they have aligned interests. In a non-integrated project, there is no aligned interest. It's actually the opposite.
You make more money by causing hardship and heartache on the other provider, which the client gets punished by in the form of variation orders. What we said is, "Look, let's be the adult in the room." Somebody needs to change the game. We created TechnipFMC with the idea that our clients could now, through a single contract, work with the architect because two years before that project ever is discussed publicly or sees FID, we're designing the architecture. You can work with one company to go from the architectural phase through the equipment manufacturing phase, through the installation commissioning on the seabed, and very importantly, through a life-of-field service contract, which is an OEM model that is typically a 20-30-year service contract. One provider. That's the decision we made. That's what led to the creation of TechnipFMC on the 17th January 2017.
Here we are, almost a decade later, as you pointed out earlier, still as the only integrated offshore provider, creating a very unique scenario for us. Probably the one statistic that I would ask you to remember that really creates the investment opportunity for you, which is 80% of our business is direct awarded to our company, never goes to a competitive tender. As I said earlier, we have created a scenario where our customer wins at the same time that we can win. We do that by that relentless pursuit of the reduction of cycle time. We have taken up to one year off of a three-year project for a big new development. For an existing development where we're just adding additional infrastructure, what used to take 26 months, we can do in 14 months. You can call us.
We can do the architecture design, we can manufacture, we can install, we can commission, and we can have it producing within 14 months on the seabed. That is a huge benefit to our clients because of the quality of the reserves, not only in terms of the production, but also in booking those reserves, which is important when they talk to you in the investment community as how they are sustaining the growth of their company by identifying and booking additional reserves. That's kind of how this has all played out. It's dramatically different than it had been in the past. As long as we continue to focus on the relentless pursuit of reduction of cycle time, as long as we continue to make those economics much more attractive offshore, the capital will continue to flow. We've seen that.
The one data point maybe that you didn't mention, Guillaume, is the break-even cost in the U.S. unconventionals has gone up.
Yeah.
Has almost done the opposite. It's gone from the 30s to the 70s, whereas we've gone from the 70s to the 30s. It is sustainable as long as a company like TechnipFMC continues to drive change, technology, and innovation that will continue to reduce cycle time. I am confident that we can continue to do so.
Thank you very much, Doug. Let's jump in the present. In the current environment, we understand that I would say the structural shift toward offshore continues and is going to continue. That's the structural element. However, given the increase of the price of the commodity. There is likely to be, I would say, a short-term upcycle in North America, probably over the next 12- 18 months. How would you view those two? First, the long, I know you do not like cycles, but the long structural trend toward offshore and the short-term likely increase in U.S. offshore.
It's a fair question, but let's just start with the facts. We have not seen that.
Yet.
Correct. There's been a phenomenal environment from a regulatory perspective. There's been a lot of incentive for that to occur, and it hasn't occurred. One must step back and say why. Now look, I'm not pro or anti anything. I obviously have a bias to the offshore, but we also operate and do work on land, and we do work in the Permian Basin and other places in North America. So it's not an us versus them. I just think we have to look at the facts. We have not seen that occur. There is something very telling there. If you step back and you look at the environment for investment and the fact that the investment did not follow, I think, one must ask themselves why.
Number two, I think you pointed out very clear, I think in the way you asked the question lies the answer. Yes, I think that the U.S. unconventional becomes that short cycle cyclical barrel. The structural change is the offshore and will remain the offshore. Again, that has to do with everything we've talked about thus far and the fact that if you're chasing reserves and if you're trying to add more proven undeveloped reserves to your balance sheet, those big barrels, thanks to Mother Nature, as you pointed out earlier, happen to be offshore and will continue to be offshore.
Let's continue with the present. At the beginning of the year, early 2026, the outlook for offshore was very constructive and was about to re-accelerate, probably in H2 2026. The question I would like to ask you mentioned during the previous earnings call that what you were saying in April 2026 was already true in February 2026. However, could we say to a certain extent that the conflict is nonetheless going to translate in a new re-acceleration, a stronger than previously expected re-acceleration and/or toward an even longer cycle, when we look over the next three to seven or eight years?
Yes and yes, but it's not a cycle.
That's right.
It's a structural change, it will continue to support that structural change. Yes and yes is the short answer. We had seen this transfer of capital flows from the U.S. onshore to the offshore some time ago. We had experienced that this buildup. We publish what's called the Subsea Opportunity Outlook. Every quarter, we publish that. It's a view of projects that are likely to reach FID or the final investment decision within the next 24 months. That list has grown quarter on quarter on quarter. That list has grown 30% over the last two years. It is at a record level in terms of the size of that subsea opportunity list, which is at $30 billion today, and continues to have a lot of support.
We have definitely seen that, and that was all pre the war, the wars actually, and certainly pre the Middle East conflict that we're now experiencing. If I answer the question slightly differently, what has been the reaction to that? Yes, clients are looking at ways to accelerate their production, particularly in regions that are less impacted. Let me use that word, less impacted. Again, if you can take an offshore development and call us and have us do the architectural phase, the manufacturing phase, the installation phase, commissioning, producing on the seabed in 14 months, that's pretty attractive and can be some pretty substantial reserves that can be booked to the balance sheet as well as production that can be converted into revenue for our clients.
We're seeing quite a bit of that, and that normally occurs in the more mature regions where there's already a lot of infrastructure and a lot of subsea development. We're also seeing more and more conversations around, let's just say, rebalancing their risk profile. Just as you and your companies have a chief investment officer that looks at the risks of the portfolio, we have enterprise risk management and we look at risk within the investments we make as a company. Our customers do the same thing. They now have to say, if we're going to invest that capital in a region that may be less stable than we had rated it historically, versus where we are today, that may shift some of that to other regions.
Again, just because of where that energy source is, which is offshore as we've indicated here a few times, you could see that accelerating developments in the offshore areas, outside of the areas that are in conflict today.
The transition is obvious among those new regions. I think there is a region which really starts to be on the spotlight. It is Africa. Namibia is probably accelerating as I think TotalEnergies now wants to move quite quickly with the Mopane project. Maybe we've talked about history, let's talk a little bit about geography. What should we know or what are, I would say, the interesting moving parts according to you in Africa as of today?
Okay. I got to give a shout-out to my friends in South America first, because I think it's warranted and will continue to be a major driver, and then we'll move to Africa if you don't mind.
Okay.
Really the last decade's been about South America. What has occurred in Brazil, not just by Petrobras, but by Petrobras and the IOCs is actually quite phenomenal, and we can talk more about that. It's been a very interesting market for us. It's supported a lot of growth in the offshore. Again, it's Petrobras, but it's also companies like Equinor, Shell, Karoon Energy and others who are really driving the developments in Brazil. When you look at the rest of South America, you cannot ignore the phenomenal success that ExxonMobil has had in Guyana. It is a story that will be talked about for years to come. It's substantial. It continues to just perform at an exemplary level. We're honored and humbled to be their exclusive partner.
We do 100% of Exxon's work for the subsea in Guyana. They continue to move forward at just a record pace, with greenfield development after greenfield development. A shout-out to Suriname, TotalEnergies, what used to be Block 58, now called GranMorgu. We'll be doing that project as well. Again, that's another iEPCI 2.0 project. Very excited for the country of Suriname. It will be incredibly important for the people of Suriname and for the country of Suriname as they start to convert that into revenue, as we have seen occurring in Guyana. In addition, you have Colombia, you have Mexico, and you potentially have Venezuela. That is going to continue to make South America very, very attractive in the portfolio of the offshore world. If I do say, what is the next big frontier? I would agree, Africa.
It's important when we say that offshore subsea developments have been occurring in West Africa for many, many years. It's actually a very mature basin. When you think about places like Ghana, not Guyana, but Ghana, and when you talk about places like Nigeria, Angola, this has been a very mature basin, and for quite some time. What we're seeing now is we're seeing customers go back and re-look at their portfolios in Angola, Nigeria, and Ghana and saying, "Okay, there's already existing infrastructure. Can we do some of these 14-month projects," as I mentioned earlier. "What can we really do here differently than how we've approached in the past?" The national oil companies are being very constructive in their conversations with our clients as far as attracting investment back into those countries.
You have the rest of Africa, which is really the emerging part of Africa, which let's start on the east side. What is happening in Mozambique is profound. People forget we're already producing offshore gas in Mozambique. That's through Eni, who has now launched their second, with their ongoing with their second project and talking about a third. TotalEnergies with the Mozambique LNG project, again, an iEPCI project for us, which is that iEPCI are these integrated projects that we can do uniquely. You move over and you look at places like Namibia and the Orange Basin, including South Africa, and as you mentioned, very exciting not only for TotalEnergies, but also for others. I think the opportunities there could be very rich as we continue to move forward.
Indeed, Africa is an area that is very attractive, in terms of offshore investment. We've been there a long time. We have well-established infrastructure in Ghana, Nigeria, Angola. We're launching and have launched infrastructure in Namibia. We're active in Mozambique today. Again, we've done the majority of the work in Mozambique. It's very interesting and there's other areas that we could see add to that portfolio, and it's interesting because it's a balance of oil and gas. You've got parts that is very heavily on oil and others that are very heavy on gas. It actually is a unique balance too if you look at it from the continent's point of view.
The gas tends to be on the eastern side, which tends to be closer to the end user, assuming that gas is going to be converted to LNG, excuse me, and make its way to the Asian market.
Thank you very much. Before moving to the future, i.e., what TechnipFMC can do even better in the coming years, and in order to try to be intellectually consistent, I'm going to read a question from the audience. Thank you for the writer of this question. I'm quoting. It's always good to quote the good author. "In a structural upcycle for offshore, do you and the industry have sufficient capacity to deliver without significant oil service inflation and potential quality issue? Are there any potential bottlenecks?
That's a great question. I think it's part of the story that I had left out, so I thank you to whoever asked that question, because it's an important part of the story. I said we fundamentally changed what we do, and then I said, and how we do it, and I didn't really touch on the how. This gives me the opportunity to touch on the how. That question is 100% accurate historically. That question is 100% accurate for anybody else who's working offshore, because that's exactly what they're experiencing today. Their capital costs are going to go up. They're going to add roof line. They're going to add vessels. They're going to add capacity.
That'll challenge the way that they do business, the quality of how they perform, because we know in growth modes, that tends to negatively impact the quality of the work that's done, which then will deteriorate the offshore project economics. Everything that I said at the beginning we're trying to avoid. We had to change how we did business as well. We have fundamentally changed the way that we operate our company, and by utilizing, first of all, the investment in technology, where we have gone from an engineer-to-order. We were a bespoke manufacturing company. Our customers set the specifications for the equipment, new and different every single time, and then we engineered and built that equipment. That very much would lead to an inflationary environment. Because when that's the situation, there is no economies of scale. There is no leverage.
You just take those requirements, you work on it, you make some mistakes. That's called waste in the lean world. You redo it, you try again, you deliver late, you deliver over budget. Repeat. To avoid that, we invested heavily, and this is well over a decade ago, from about 2013 to 2017, in changing our architecture. When I talk about that, think about it, we're building small cities on the seabed. We looked at that architecture and we said, "How could we do it differently?" We actually worked with the Lean Enterprise Institute and with Toyota, and we adopted the lean principles of industrialization. We said we have to go from an engineer-to-order to a configure-to-order.
When you buy an automobile today, from whomever your provider is, at least I want to believe they're building that vehicle just for me, and they've got a bunch of engineers doing drawings just for me. The reality of it is, even though they make you feel good because of those drop-down menus, they're doing zero engineering. The engineering was done at the sub-component level. They dictated the outcome by being able to take that thousands and tens of thousands of parts in a car, put those into these manageable elements, call them sub-components, and then make those part of an ordering system that allowed you to feel good about that you had choices, but it had no negative impact on them in terms of their delivery. We did the same thing for subsea equipment.
It took a long time, as I said, from about 2014 to 2017, and then we had to convince the customers to move in that direction. We call that Subsea 2.0. It is a configure-to-order subsea architecture. You can go onto your iPad, as our customers do, and order subsea equipment today from your iPad, series of drop-down menus. It's just profound difference. When that order is placed, it goes straight into assembly and test. We take out nine to 12 months of engineering, because every project was different in the past, every product was different in the past. That required nine to 12 months of engineering before we could start to manufacture. We've eliminated that. Remember I said we cut a year out of the schedule earlier? That's the secret. Hard to do. Easy to say, hard to do.
Today, Subsea 2.0 represents the majority of our orders. We have never had a customer that has experienced Subsea 2.0 that has ever gone back to the old way of doing business. We are the only subsea provider of Subsea 2.0. Remember that other statistic. 80% of our work is direct awarded, never goes out to a competitive tender. These are the reasons why. We had to change the how and the way we work. Now, since we're talking about the future, I also want to touch on the fact that there's a lot left in the tank. When we did all of that, what I just described as Subsea 2.0 today, we did that before the merger with Technip. We did that from 2014 to 2017. We merged in 2017 and created TechnipFMC. When we originally worked, we only operated on the seabed.
FMC Technologies only operated on the seabed. We've done the Subsea 2.0 configure-to-order on the seabed, but now all of the umbilicals and the risers and the pipelines, everything that comes back up to the top of the water column, which is an enormous amount of additional opportunity for us, is still able to be converted to configure-to-order from engineer-to-order. Today as we sit here, it is still engineer-to-order. We're working on that now, and that is the big opportunity for us going forward, is we will make that entire system configure-to-order, including the installation. We've done the seabed, then there's the water column, then there's the installation. What we've said is we're only one third of the way there. We have 2/3 left, which will allow us to continue to what?
Relentless pursuit a reduction of cycle time, drive down cycle time, improve our economics while our customer benefits because they're seeing shorter cycle time, which drives their project economics. It's not a pricing thing. It's not a pricing thing. That's where fixed asset companies want to talk about pricing. It's not a pricing thing. We can benefit. Our customer benefits because of the relentless pursuit of reduction of cycle time. We still have 2/3 of the way to go. We're very excited.
When you envisage those next to come 2/3 , you seem to be quite confident, meaning that you have identified the potential bottlenecks, the potential limitation. You have found technical or organizational answers to that?
You're trying to get me to give away the secret. Look, what I can say. Well, let me start by saying I am 100% confident that the impact of the remainder will be as great as what we have already achieved. Again, if you look at what we've done and where we've come as a company, we're humbled and I think it's recognized, but there is a lot left to be done. Again, this will continue to make offshore investment even more attractive, continue to grow the overall size of the market, continue to grow our inbound, our backlog, our revenue, and continue to allow us to have margin expansion as a result of that. We have that visibility. We're a unique company that we have that visibility because we're sitting on approximately about a two-year backlog as well.
We see the quality of that backlog continue to improve as a result of this. Where we are in actually the technical solutions, I'm going to be careful here because there's a lot of work that's being done, but I am confident that we have some very viable technological solutions that are truly revolutionary in the way that work will be done in the offshore going forward with the delivery of a reduction in cycle time without capital investment. This is the key. You start to look at indicators like ROIC, ROCE, you look at our balance sheet, you look at our net cash position, you start to say, Wow.
We have all understood that the strategy which has been followed by TechnipFMC had been essentially, I would say, improving our internal processes, focusing on internal integration. Now comes the question which is always hated by all CEOs, is that some of your competitors, but are they still competitors, question mark, are rather following a consolidation kind of strategy. Could you provide us some colors? Of course, you are convinced, and I think most of the audience is convinced that integration. Oops. Yes. Oh, no. Is it still working? Yeah. That integration is probably better, but how do you view this next to come potential merger? Could you provide us with some colors about it?
Sure. No, it's a fair question. I don't hate the question. I think, in life, be it for your family or for your company, you have to make decisions. The lack of making decisions, you're losing ground. You're falling backwards. You have to make those decisions. You're not always going to make the right decision, I think that's where you have to be humble and you have to just do what you believe is best. Again, if you go back to the way we made the decisions we made, we put the customer first. If you put the customer first, the customer will reward you. We just talked about customers where we do 100% of their business. We have customers, large IOCs, where we have done 100% of their business for over 30 years.
We talked about the fact that 80% of our business is direct awarded and never goes out to a competitive tender. We put the customer first. Now, that wasn't easy to do because again, back in that prior period of time when we were doing well, you had to acknowledge that the way we were doing well was not helping the client. It was destroying their project economics, delivering late, delivering over budget. They had no certainty, therefore they shifted their investment to somewhere else. We had to change that, and we've done that, and we've done that successfully. When you look at strategic decisions that a company can make, there's the build it, there's the buy it, and then there's do something radically different. You always hear build versus buy.
What we're seeing now in the industry is a lot of buy, a lot of consolidation, and it's happening on the operator side, and it's also happening on the services side. That's okay. That's not something I subscribe to. I believe as a technology company, we have to be the one, and really the stewards of the offshore and the stewards of the subsea. I believe we have a fundamental responsibility and almost a moral responsibility to do things differently. Now, I'm going to repeat, we won't always get it right. By doing that, we'll be able to drive substantial change. We'll be able to create substantial value for our clients, for our employees, and for our shareholders. All that you're seeing is a difference of philosophy.
The traditional way of, well, let's just buy and consolidate and leverage and that's that supply-demand kind of thinking, that is shorter cycle reward or the opposite. Whereas what we're looking at doing things that are, again, going to set up for a very different long-term structural change. I believe we're on the right path. More importantly, our clients have embraced this. Our clients have embraced the Subsea 2.0, as I mentioned earlier. They've embraced the integrated model, the iEPCI, and the vast majority of our contracts are now iEPCI 2.0 put together, and leads to these 80% direct awards. We're going to continue to innovate. We're going to continue to work on the rest of the 2/3. We're going to continue to reduce cycle time. I talked about 26 to 14. We're not satisfied at 14.
You start getting much below 14, you're now challenging cycle times of every other investment opportunity they have in their portfolio, including onshore. Because you can drill onshore wells very quickly, but by the time you tie all them in, because remember, it's not one well, you got to tie in 200 wells into a production facility. Whereas in the offshore, because of the production per well, it's just so substantially greater. We're very proud of the path we're on, and we're going to continue to stay focused. By the way, I wish no ill will to others, and I hope that the result for them, that they have a successful result as well, because I truly just want to make sure that the offshore remains the most attractive investment opportunity for our clients.
There remains four minutes and 33 seconds. If you have some further questions, please do not be shy. In the meantime, maybe I would say a more open question, if I may. Are there one or two messages that you would like maybe to specifically highlight or which we haven't spoken, which you believe is important?
Sure. I know I have a short period of time. There are a couple things we didn't get to touch on. I want to go back from the question from the audience. Again, thank you for that question. We have demonstrated the ability to grow this company without expanding the capital investment. We've demonstrated the ability to be able to grow this company because we are thinking and operating differently. The relentless pursuit of reduction of cycle time not only affects our customers, it affects us. If I can take one year off of a three-year project, I've increased my capacity by 33%. It's as simple as that. We don't have to build new stuff. We don't have to consolidate. It's not about more. It's about doing more with the same. That's what's driving returns to levels that are extremely attractive to you as the investors.
The other area that I also want to touch on is there is a lot to do beyond the traditional oil and gas market offshore. We've talked a lot about that today, but there's a tremendous amount of opportunities. Let's first start with the area of carbon transportation and storage. There's a lot of people who say, are anti-fracking around the world. If you're anti-fracking, you should be anti-CO2 injection in your backyard. This belongs offshore. We're doing this now in the U.K., where we're taking carbon that is being sequestered 145 km offshore to be permanently and safely stored, 145 km. That can only be done with all-electric subsea technology. We're the only ones who can provide that, and we're doing that project today for BP called the Northern Endurance Project. Another example would be in Brazil.
Brazil has a very high CO2 content in the oil that they produce. Today, that's being produced to the surface to a floating production storage offloading facility that needs to be treated, separated, and reinjected. You're bringing it all the way to the surface, allowing it to potentially be exposed to fugitive greenhouse gas releases, only to be reinjected in the reservoir. We worked with Petrobras for seven years. We have developed a technology that will allow us to separate the CO2 on the seabed. It will never see the environment. It'll be separated on the seabed, reinjected on the seabed, which again, is a huge benefit, not only from a greenhouse gas point of view, but also from allowing our customer to produce more of what they want and they value to the FPSO, which is the oil, without having to bring the associated CO2.
Another area we continue to be believers in is offshore floating wind. Not fixed-bottom. That is economically challenged, offshore floating wind. Its time will come. We are very proud. We've invested and developed a technology for a high voltage dynamic inter-array cable. It is the highest quality specification power cable that exists today. We're able to do that because as a subsea company, we're used to things moving around, we understand dynamic versus static. We have partnered with Prysmian, who's the leading provider of ocean bottom electric cables, and we'll be bringing to the market an integrated approach like we have in oil and gas, which will be iEPCI, or an integrated project for offshore floating wind. You'll be able to, today it's 40 different contractors, we'll be able to take that package from the water column down.
Somebody else will make the turbine, we'll do the rest, where we'll take it from the mooring systems, the power cables, the communication, and the long-term service contract associated with that, into the offshore floating market. The final thing that I'll say, because I know we're running out of time, is the seabed is 70% of the world's surface area is covered by water. We all know that. We learned that in school. People don't really think the inverse of that means 70% of the world's surface is underwater. We like underwater. We understand how to live and how to work and how to breathe and how to do things underwater. We work on the seabed 2 mi deep in the ocean. Everything is advanced automation, robotics, and control. We often don't get thought of as that type of a company.
We put things on the seabed that are designed to last as equivalent of what NASA puts on the Moon or on Mars. If you really think about what we're doing, it's quite phenomenal, and I think I'm going to run out of time.
Thank you very much to all of you. Thank you very much, Doug