Welcome to the Sable Offshore Corp strategic update call. We ask that you please hold all questions until the completion of the formal remarks, at which time you will be given instructions for the question-and-answer session. Also, as a reminder, this conference is being recorded. If you have any objections, please disconnect at this time. With that, I would like to turn the call over to the Sable Offshore team.
Good morning, everyone. My name is Harrison Breaud. I'm Vice President of Finance and Investor Relations for Sable Offshore Corp. It is my privilege to welcome you to a special investor call this morning. At this time, I would like to introduce you to Jim Flores, the Chairman and CEO of Sable Offshore Corporation, and Gregory Patrinely, who is Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer. On this call, we will provide an overview of the strategic update that was provided this morning in our updated investor presentation, and we will take certain questions from investors and analysts. As part of the Q&A session, we ask that questions be limited to the previously referenced strategic update in the interest of time. We may or may not have the ability to answer all pertinent questions. With that, I will continue with the strategic update.
Many of you have been following, and I've noticed that Sable's business has been very fast-moving and dynamic in the past few months and weeks. In late September, Sable announced its offshore storage and treating vessel, abbreviated OS&T, offtake strategy. This announcement was made in response to continuing delays from the state of California in approving the restart plans for the Las Flores pipeline system. As discussed then, the previous owner of the Santa Ynez unit utilized an OS&T strategy from 1981 to 1994 when the field first produced. Since closing on the acquisition of the Santa Ynez unit and associated facilities and pipelines, Sable diligently followed the path outlined in its federal consent decree to restart the Las Flores pipeline system and recommence sales to the onshore pipeline. For the most part, the state of California and its relevant agencies were cooperative and supportive.
As noted in our recent press release, where we disclosed communications between the state fire marshal and Sable, we believe that delays to the Las Flores pipeline restart have been unfair and based in error. This has led Sable to fully evaluate and pursue an accelerated OS&T strategy, which we have grown to be very excited about. Sable originally contemplated leasing an OS&T vessel, but due to market conditions, we believe that an ideal vessel for the Santa Ynez Unit can be purchased at a favorable price. Sable has submitted a development and production plan update for the SYU for the use of an OS&T vessel to the United States Department of the Interior Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, abbreviated BOEM or BOEM. We have been pleased by the efforts taken by the federal government in reviewing our updates and moving towards the necessary regulatory clearances.
Sable plans to pursue a comprehensive debt refinancing to both refinance its existing senior secured term loan and to fund the OS&T strategy. Sable expects to execute this potential debt refinancing in Q1 2026. In the meantime, we recently finalized an extension of the existing senior secured term loan to allow time, if necessary, to bridge to a comprehensive debt financing. In conjunction with, or shortly after refinancing the existing senior secured term loan, Sable expects to finish the procurement of an OS&T vessel and begin topside modifications, platform modifications, and the installation of the vessel at the Santa Ynez Unit in federal waters before recommencing sales in the fourth quarter of 2026. The OS&T business strategy provides many advantages to Sable and its shareholders in exchange for the additional capital expenditures associated with it.
Through the transport of oil through shuttle tankers, there is significantly better optionality in marketing crude oil to other domestic or international markets. As opposed to remaining beholden to one customer base, Sable expects to have the ability to market its production to those offering the most favorable price net of shipping costs. In addition, Sable expects to incur significantly less operating costs than it would operating Las Flores Canyon and the Las Flores pipeline system. These cost savings could create very material value over time. Our initial projections show a potential cost savings of approximately $10 per barrel compared to the estimated costs associated with operating the onshore infrastructure and selling into the Los Angeles refinery complex. With our remaining resources available, that cost savings compounds to real value over time.
Sable is very excited for these upcoming developments and looks forward to providing our shareholders with updates as they become available. The company is aware of the allegations contained in a report by Hunterbrook last Friday. The company's board of directors has formed a special committee to conduct an independent review into the allegations contained in that report. We have no further comment on this matter while the investigation is ongoing. At this time, we will now answer appropriate questions from investors and analysts. Operator, please proceed with Q&A.
Thank you. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please click on the raise hand button, which can be found on the black bar at the bottom of your screen. When it is your turn, you will receive a message when you hear your name called. Please unmute your audio and ask your question. We will allow one moment to allow the queue to form. Our first question comes from David Deckelbaum. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Thanks, everyone, for taking my questions today, and thanks for sharing the update with us. I'm curious just with the updated timeline now, especially with the Exxon loan extension, there was a contingency in there to secure $225 million of equity capital. How do you think about that timeline vis-à-vis the Department of the Interior approvals, and what sort of equity structures or financing structures are available to you all?
Yeah, I would say, obviously, we've got the $225 million in the amendment. So we think in order to obtain the extension, we need to bring that into the House prior to the previous maturity of January 9, 2026. And as it's illustrated in the amendment and in the press release, it would have to be common equity interest at this point in time.
My follow-up is just the decision to acquire the OS&T versus perhaps a lease option, is that a simple MPV, or is it something related to modifications that you'd like to make to the vessel?
Well, no, it's David, this is Jim. No, it's strictly opportunistic. There's a couple of vessels that we think we can grab, and we'll have to purchase. We can always set up a lease later, but we'll have to purchase them with the structure of the deal and try to get the best vessel for our project. So we're just keeping the flexibility out there. But that'll all coincide with project financing. So there's a lot of moving parts to get that done, but that's the direction right now.
Thanks for answering my questions. I'll bring Q.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Charles Meade with Johnson Rice. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Yes, good morning, Sable team. I wanted to ask my first question. What's the status with the Office of the State Fire Marshal? Is that still kind of, has it gone dead, or what's the timeline for tentatively shifting to one?
Charles, this is Jim. We're not going to comment on the Office of the State Fire Marshal. We're back and forth with our lawyers on that. We have the attorney general involved, and they're going back and forth on their regulations that we put two letters out to them. I think they're posted on our website or whatever. They're fully disclosed with the whole situation. But we're ready to put it all in that pipeline as soon as they give us the clearance. And they're struggling with that right now, obviously, because we were supposed to have the clearance in September. Here we are in November. So we're moving on with the OS&T strategy, but we're happy to take a phone call from the fire marshal and say, "Put it all in the pipeline.
Got it. And then this may be no issue or maybe a big issue, but I believe that the way that Los Flores is set up is you have a cogen plant there, and you actually send electricity back offshore to the platforms from there, so is that part of what you have to figure out, is how you're going to bring gas, or what's the, is that something that we should be paying attention to, or does that have an easy solution that we could just, it's not worth?
Yeah, let me tell you how we're addressing it. We're engineering the OS&T in what's called island mode. There's no onshore support. But you're correct. We send all our gas to shore, and we process it, and we clean it up, and we cogen and send electricity out to the platforms right now. We'll continue to do that as long as we can, but the OS&T will be set up with enough power generation capacity, and we'll use our own gas, the same process. Then if it comes a point in time where we're not unable to send gas to shore in California for some regulatory reason, then we can do it. We can do it offshore and continue to produce oil and sell it offshore.
The only thing it would change is that the gas we wouldn't have any gas revenues because we wouldn't have a gas sales point, which is onshore at Las Flores Canyon as well. But we'd save a lot of LOE costs. So it kind of balances out from that standpoint. But that's the only change. But we have valid leases from the state lands across there, but you never know what would happen in California. We're very gun shy, and we've wired around it just to have the existing power on the OS&T enough to do it all.
Got it. Thank you, Jim.
Sure.
Our next question comes from Michael Furrow at Pickering Energy Partners. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Hey, good morning, Sable team. Can you guys hear me okay?
Yeah.
Yes.
All right, great. I'm just taking a look at your updated guidance here, and I've got a quick question on the monthly cash burn rate targeting $25 million, that's excluding capital expenditures. That seems like that would be a pretty meaningful step down versus current levels, which obviously seems like the right move here given the timeline shifting. So how does the company plan on targeting the fixed operational costs at Las Flores Canyon and current G&A levels to get to that $25 million target?
Really, what it was was all the contractors. We're supposed to be on production in September, so we had all of our work offshore, most of our work offshore completed. We released a lot of contractors at the end of September and so forth. That's a go-forward level, that $25 million of continuing to staff Las Flores Canyon and so forth at this point in time. What I'm echoing is once we understand what California's direction is and definitive, once we buy an OS&T, then we'll make the proper adjustments. We hope to transition a lot of the Las Flores Canyon and LFC people to the OS&T. We've got a lot of great people. We've got to find them jobs and ways to do it in our new strategy. That's what we're going to be able to do with our workforce.
That's great. Thank you.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand button at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Our next question comes from Leo Mariani. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Yeah, good morning here, guys. Wanted to just follow up a little bit on the debt refinancing sort of plan here. Obviously, as you mentioned, you've got some debt come due kind of early next year. You did say you got an extension on that from Exxon here, I guess. Can you provide a little bit more color on the nature of that extension? How much more time did that buy you? And then additionally, when you're thinking about the debt financing for the project, would this cover, I guess, the Exxon loan, the purchase of the OS&T vessel, and also would some of this cash burn of $25 million a month also be covered as you're thinking about the project financer?
Yes, Leo, that's absolutely right. That's how we're thinking about the comprehensive debt refinancing, which would refinance the Exxon term loan. It would fund the business through 2026 through first sales, right, the LOE, the G&A, and also the capital required to both purchase and modify the OS&T. That's how we're thinking about financing the OS&T strategy and funding the business going forward. The amendment of the maturity of the senior secured term loan, the existing maturity, that obviously is a conditional amendment that requires us to go raise that $225 million in equity, right? And that kicks out the maturity to March 31, 2020, the earlier of March 31, 2027, or 90 days post-first sales. It increases the PIK interest from 10%-15% at the effective date, so basically when we meet the conditional requirements.
We have a minimum cash balance of $25 million on hand. That's kind of the amendment in a nutshell. In terms of what we're looking at from a debt refinancing perspective, as we look to refinance the Exxon term loan, if we're able to achieve the federal credit support that we referenced in our presentation and in our press release, I think the financing will be much more attractive from an economic perspective. I think if we're unable to get federal credit support, I think it looks more like project finance in the range that kind of the interest rate range that we just amended the Exxon term loan. What we need to get that is we need to get the clearances to proceed on the OS&T strategy.
Okay, that was a very comprehensive answer here. And then just lastly for me, it looks like you kind of switched the order in your slides of kind of plan one and plan two. So is it safe to assume that the OS&T vessel is kind of now sort of definitively the option one and maybe something will happen with the fire marshal, but it sounds like you guys are full speed ahead with the OS&T as now kind of option one? Am I reading that right?
That's correct.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question comes from Noel Parks with Tuohy Brothers Investment. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Hello, good morning. I think probably the main question I have left is around the production ramp-up once you do go online, assuming the OS&T strategy. And given the facilities work that you're going to be required to do for the strategy, is there any meaningful difference in terms of either volume or sequence of the platforms coming on that would be different from the pipeline option?
Yeah, we'll have Platform Hondo ready to go at the same time as OS&T, so the pipeline option had Platform Harmony and Heritage both on, then Hondo coming later, and also our gas sales coming after that at POPCO. By fourth quarter next year, we'll have everything ready to go, so it's a little sharper ramp-up having all three platforms, Harmony, Heritage, and Hondo, plus our POPCO gas plant, so we'll be able to go to full production very quickly.
Great. Thanks a lot.
As a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please use the raise hand button at the bottom of your screen. Our next question comes from Subash Chandra with Benchmark Company. Please unmute your line and ask your question.
Yeah, good morning, Jim. On this permit approval, any sort of guidance as to when you think that might make it through? And then I assume it goes to the Secretary of Commerce, sort of maybe parse that out a bit. And so that's my first question.
Yeah, so we've submitted everything to BOEM, which is Bureau of Ocean Energy Management. We're working with them and BESI, the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement. They're all both in the Department of the Interior, as you know. And we've been very impressed, surprised, excited how hard these men and women in the Department of the Interior have worked during the government shutdown. They've continued to process things, ask questions, and so forth. And we're moving. I think we have a big meeting on Wednesday with our operations people and so forth, and as we get the information going forward. So our permit is kind of cruising through the DOI. At the same point in time, the active permit was denied back in 1984 by the Coastal Commission under the CMZ, which would require an override from the Commerce Secretary. That we've been in touch with DOI and so forth.
And they're in the process of working with Commerce on that. And that's exactly what happened on the pipeline option when they built in 1984 because California's Coastal Commission denied both paths. And at that point in time, the Commerce Commissioner overruled it, or Commerce Secretary overruled it. And then we'd be looking for the same type of situation here, just the reverse order. So all that's moving along, and we keep getting feelings that they think they can get this done this year in spite of the shutdown. And so as far as we're concerned, we're looking at that and working with our banks on the project financing. And hopefully, we'll be able to take Exxon out in January. We won't need this extension, and we'll get on with our business because we also have to fund the OS&T and the whole project.
So that's going to be a real key kind of accelerator right there. So right now, we're on track. And the guys in Washington and gals in Washington are very proactive and very—and of course, the Department of Energy has been very supportive. You've seen all the public tweets and public releases by DOI and DOE. So they've been, "How can we help you more?" So it's been a lot more fun calling east than calling west over Sacramento, that's for sure. So right now, we're going in that direction because we don't see any impediments. There are some things we have to do, and we're knocking those down. We have government there that wants to cooperate and want to get these barrels out. Because remember, the $2 billion of royalty the next 10 years all go to the federal government.
It's part of the big, beautiful budget bill and so forth. Being in federal waters, they want to be totally supported from that standpoint. The big uplift for us on this is you pick up about $2 a barrel in expense savings between the OS&T and LFC, the onshore facility. You pick up about $8 a barrel in transportation and lifts off from refineries because as the California refinery market has continued to collapse out there in the pipelines and so forth, the refineries that are left are pretty hangry about what they'll pay for onshore crude or crude through the existing pipeline deal. There's some big lifts out there, and I think those are going to continue to widen as they become the refiners of last resort for that crude.
Picking up $10 in cost is real significant to the whole project and certainly give us a nice return on our additional dollars we're putting in the OS&T and going forward there. We've got a fully baked, all the financial components here so you guys can build your models and see what the advantages are. We're pushing hard for the DOI clearance, and that would, of course, include commerce. Then project financing, hopefully before January 9th, then we can close out Exxon and forward. We do appreciate them working with us to give us some breathing room so the investor can see the runway, and if we need it, we have it. We've got our ears pinned back and going to work.
My same question is, so clearly the language is it's time to move past OSFM, no ifs, ands, or buts unless they do something sort of unexpected last minute. But can you make any sense of what their waiver issues, what their remaining hang-ups are?
It's a political answer at this point. It's not regulatory and so forth. We have clearance from FEMSA, the federal pipeline group. We worked with the staff in the pipeline group, the Office of Fire Marshal, and basically had all the criteria for what was needed. We have a defined federal mandate called the consent decree that was ordered by the federal judge. And we follow all the rules, but the Office of Fire Marshal did it with their supervision. We had 180 excavations out there. We had their personnel there to inspect everything. We did everything all laced up. And now they want to change the rules. So it's a Sacramento issue. It's not a fire marshal issue. And I just don't know if we can get past that or not with all the differences between what's going on in Washington and what's going on in Sacramento.
But I tell you, it's so much better putting out an operating plan that we can execute on versus one we hope to get approvals. It's a big difference.
Thanks for the call.
Sure.
That concludes the question and answer portion of today's call. I will now hand the call back to Harrison for closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone, for joining this investor call today. We appreciate everybody's participation and appreciate the good questions that were asked. Please refer to the disclosures on our website in order to further look into the strategic updates provided today. We look forward to keeping investors informed going forward. Thank you.