I apologize. I had an IT issue, so I had to move this to my laptop. If it's a too close for comfort view of my face, thanks for bearing with me. Happy to talk about U.S. Energy today and everything that we have going on. We filed a new investor presentation, which I'll go through fairly quickly today. Really highlighting the aspects of our business, both what we've accomplished over the last couple of years and kind of the inflection point that we're at today, that we plan on executing throughout 2026, to really put us in a position for this thing to take off. The case for U.S.
Energy, I think it's very simple, and I'll go through a couple granular points and kind of work my way up to where I think the investment thesis is and how it all comes together. First of all, as if you're viewing this, you're probably aware of, we have a very large asset base in the state of Montana that we've committed to developing and bringing online. What is that? What do I mean by large? By large, I mean a 50-year plus producing asset. That 50 could probably be 150 by the size of the resource base that's currently sitting in a $40 million market cap company. A few numbers to back... that size.
For those of you who are unfamiliar with Ryder Scott, is probably the preeminent engineering firm in the world. It was very important for us to get blessed by the best. 1.3 billion cubic feet of helium, which is a massive amount, about 440 billion cubic feet of CO2 in the ground, which is almost an unfathomable amount of resource, along with an extremely large proven oil basin. All three of these pillars, fully owned, fully operated by U.S. Energy today, with extremely de minimis third-party dependencies, where we control our own destiny. The middle column is our phase one, which is what we're talking about today, our initial development project. $92 million and 45Q tax credit value over the first 12 years.
For those of you familiar with that market, I'll get into it a little bit later. It's an extremely large emerging market that's dominated by really big companies. Us having this big of a footprint in that market and being as far along as we are already, is a huge differentiating factor for us versus other competitors. We're gonna be producing about 125,000 metric tons of utilized and sequestered CO2 per year, monetizing that at $85 per ton. You very quickly get to a low 8-figure annual revenue number from this source. The column on the right is when it all launches, a year from now, a little bit less. First quarter of 2027, helium sales, carbon management, begin enhanced oil recovery on our oil project.
Between now and then, construction begins, helium offtake will be executed. Our monitoring, reporting, verification, files, and permits with the EPA will be approved. It's a very de-risked and sequenced timeline that you'll see take place over the next 9 to 12 months, with key milestones every few weeks, to be candid, between now and then. We've currently invested about $22 million of our own capital into this project to get it to the point where it is now. Where does that get us? It gets us about a $15 million a year, EBITDA run rate, with an extremely... It doesn't even decline. It's a up and to the right economic profile as we continue to develop this project.
We currently have 170+ permitted Class II injection wells, which is one of the catalysts to get everything moving, and we'll be producing about 12 million cubic feet of helium per year. I'm gonna go very quickly through this because I spent too much time on that first page. Financial snapshot of where we're at. I think the takeaway from this page is the significant legacy reserve value we have, both on oil, helium, and CO2. It's about $100 million even before we started developing this. That flows down to a valuation framing, which I'll get to at the end of this presentation. We currently trade at about 2.5x enterprise value to 2027 estimated EBITDA, and a significant discount to our NAV.
I think if you look in the market on similar projects, both ones that get done in the M&A market, plus standalone companies, you find extremely significant increases to that valuation, ranging from 7-12 times. That's really the valuation pitch on where we are today as a company. What is the opportunity? We really have five structural advantages that no competitor can replicate. The guys in the market do have all five of these things today. It's literally the Exxons of the world. Number one is the position, it's the geology, it's the asset. That is something that you cannot replicate. We have the westernmost large-scale helium and CO2 hub in the United States, bar none.
Very low decline production, decades of proven geology and resource, and the fact that we have 3 pillars of revenue: helium, CO2, and oil, very much lowers our operating costs when all 3 of those revenue streams share the same infrastructure level. Existing cash flow today, we still have a meaningful oil production profile as a company. Provides a stable cash flow base while we continue to grow out our larger initiatives and developments. We're not starting with nothing. Oil optimization. The oil field we own in Montana is an extremely large oil field. It's gone through the hands, for the last 90 years, of extremely large companies and financial institutions.
We, we believe the upside there is immense, as you can see by, you know, a 70 million barrel incremental recovery potential through accessing our CO2 reserves and really catalyzing the oil growth on the asset. Which leads to number 4, we're a first mover in a very large emerging market that is predicted to grow into the $ trillions over the coming years. We make money a lot of ways with this project: by using the CO2 to increase the oil production, and all of that flows to our bottom line. Fifth, helium. We're supplying significant volumes into a critical market: aerospace, chip manufacturing, medical devices.
Helium, while not widely discussed, is a critical element to every single one of these emerging markets that are growing more and more every day in the U.S. economy. I'm going to skip over this. This is just a description over our full ownership across our resource, our infrastructure, our processing, our CCUS, which stands for carbon capture, utilization, and sequestration, with really not having any third-party dependencies once it's up and running, for us to realize the full value of the project. This is probably my favorite slide in the deck. I call it the flywheel in action. It's pretty self-explanatory. We have one production stream that translates into three profit centers, with shared infrastructure driving increased margins at every step of the way.
It's simplistic, and it's simplistic by design, and it's a good thing that it's simplistic. Nothing we're doing here is unproven science projects. It's extremely proven, long-dated engineering and processes. We produce our stream, we process our stream, we purify the helium. Through the purification of the helium, we capture the CO2 that's created and liquefy it all through the same plant. We monetize the helium, we sequester a portion of the CO2. We utilize a portion of the CO2 for our enhanced oil recovery activities. We ring the cash register at every step of the way. What do we do with that excess cash flow from this process? We expand capacity, we expand production, we expand our operations, driven primarily through self-funding cash flow from our balance sheet. We have a very significant moat on this industry.
One, we've invested a lot of money into the project already. To go back to reiterate a prior point, you can't recreate a geologic structure like this, and you can't recreate an oil field right next to a huge industrial gas resource as well. It's the most driving factor of everything we're doing. This flywheel accelerates everything we're doing, from lowering our unit growth and really having an up and to the right financial profile beginning here very soon. I'm gonna skip over this. It's just a visual of what I've already kind of discussed on the full integration of our value chain, all the way from wellhead to CCUS. Every dollar of margin that we capture stays in-house. Looks like I dropped, but it says I'm back.
If, if I missed something, I apologize. These next three slides are all kind of on the same point, and it's around our CCUS activities. What we're calling our CCUS/carbon management activities, Big Sky Carbon Hub. As I mentioned, it's one of the largest structures in the U.S. It's heavily permitted. I'd say 90% of the permits we have are done, the rest are pending, de-risked, and it's very ready to scale. How much are we going to capture and utilize and sequester on this initial phase one process that we're talking about? About 125,000 metric tons. What does that equate to? It's about 25,000 cars a year removed from the road. Without spending any more capital, what can that scale to?
That can scale to about 300,000 metric tons of CO2 sequestration and utilization a year. If we're making $ millions and millions a year off of 125,000 metric tons, it's a very easily understandable line to what that can become in the not-too-distant future with the existing infrastructure that we have today. Economic transportation infrastructure. There is a major rail line that runs right through our property by BNSF, east to west. I think it's Canadian Pacific, north and south, along with interstate corridors and trucking access. Why is that important? Jumping ahead a little bit, going forward, we also intend to sell produced CO2 because we have so much of it.
The industrial liquefied CO2 market is structurally short today, with U.S. manufacturing coming back so much to the States, and we believe it's a huge opportunity to continue expanding our carbon management and CO2 platform. The last one, it's not very exciting, but it's extremely important. What triggers all this? It's really permitting. We have over 170 Class II disposal well permits in hand right now for the oil side, for the federal tax incentive side, we have two Monitoring, Reporting and Verification, MRVs is what they're called, have been filed with the EPA, which we discuss every few weeks with them. It's a process that's going as expected and positively, with approvals expected in the summer of 2026.
When those are done, we will be the only entity in Montana that possess those permits. What's different about this platform? I think it's the company size we are today. We would be the 17th largest active CCUS project in the United States. The only one, at least the first one, that's not dependent on fossil fuels, ethanol, or direct air capture. You know, what does that mean in terms of market growth? I think it shows that this is a huge emerging market. Huge, massive, multi-trillion dollars, and the volumes that are going to be utilized in this industry right now are minuscule to what they're gonna become. There's 20 operational projects today.
That being said, 70% of them are concentrated in just 3 projects, all run by very big companies: Exxon, Oxy, Kinder Morgan, et cetera. The amount that we would monetize a portion of our CO2, it's been codified in federal documents, $85 a metric ton, and that increases, I believe, 3% per year, for the next 12 years. It's as firm of a pricing as you will find in any commodity industry and really sets a floor on our value, independent of other commodity prices. I will hit on this slide because it's also very important. You know, kind of going back to our legacy roots as a company. We still control a very large oil field that is 15 miles away from our helium and CO2 resource. We've owned it now for 4+ years.
We have a large contiguous acreage position of low-decline, vertical-producing assets that are perfectly designed from a geologic perspective and a characteristic perspective with successful CO2 EOR projects in the United States. We believe the incremental recovery potential is immense. We think our average production over the coming years is going to be many multiples higher than what it is now. What's the catch? The catch is that we're not spending significant CapEx to bring those barrels to market. It's quite the alternative. We're making money from the catalyst that increases our oil production, which is CO2. The last part of this is you know, how do you get to where we are today to the very significant oil production numbers that I just mentioned? It's really a three-phase approach.
phase one, which we're doing now, we have 3D seismic, we have petrophysical analysis, really confirming the recoverable oil in place, and that's where we start. phase two, when your operations really start going, and you repressure that reservoir with the CO2, you see a multiple scale-up, leveraging just the existing capacity that we have today. phase three is really just more of everything. More CO2 injected, more revenue off the CO2 that's injected, and ultimately, a significant uplift in oil production from our existing facilities. You know, this is kind of where the rubber hits the road slide. What does all this mean? You know, we have three revenue sources: helium, carbon management, oil production.
The graph on the right is, you know, our management estimate on what this turns into beginning in the beginning of 2027, so really just around the corner. You see the layout of the revenue streams, all significant, weighted a little bit differently, but all key drivers. With the black line being our forecast at EBITDA and not cumulative, annual numbers. You see a $15 million a year number starting off next year that goes up to 20, low 20s. Eventually, we will add another, increased infrastructure, which we have a very firm, cost estimate on because we're adding one right now, and we have the resource to support that.
I think that you see a very significant up and to the right profitability of this company when going back and looking at comparable comps to M&A transactions, demand multiples of 10 times. You take the EBITDA number and larger company multiples, established process multiples from where we are today, and you can see why we're excited about the future. I'm gonna skip this 'cause I'm getting close to the end, and I want to answer the questions, but this is just a little more detail on all of our three streams of revenue that have no redundancy with each other. I'll also go fast over this one. I've already mentioned a little bit. It's a little more granular. Infrastructure and market access. Infrastructure is extremely important. Market access is extremely important. Takeaway access is extremely important.
If you can't bring your product economically to market, you don't have a product. I think in this part of the country, that's been a very big limiting factor, one that we focused on from the very beginning. Everything we've designed and acquired through land deals, through permitting, through building on our own dollars, at the forefront of what we've thought has been: what's the most economic way to be able to take our product to market? Whether it's having our facilities close to interstate corridors, having our facilities and our relationships growing with rail access, I think we've done a very good job of that. It's something that doesn't get a lot of attention in the markets, but once this project is up and running, will absolutely flow through to economics.
I'm not gonna go through our milestones achieved and catalysts ahead is very important. We've spent the last 2 plus years really setting up this position and setting up everything that we need to get it to market. Through multiple acquisitions, through drilling operations, through regulatory work and permitting, we've done a very good job getting it to this point. Where are we going? You see there on the right side of the page, it's the last steps of our infrastructure, the last steps of our financial needs, the last steps of our permitting, all of which are very much in hand and very much in progress, and I very much believe that we'll have done in the not-too-distant future.
It, it's a, it's a proven track record of having a vision, of executing on that vision, and ultimately of bringing that vision to market. What are some of our near-term catalysts? I think, you know, this is pretty self-explanatory. I expect to have an execution of a long-term helium offtake agreement with a large company very soon, initiate plant construction, receive approvals, completion of certain infrastructure, add some third-party carbon management partnerships, all leading up to our first helium sales next year. You know, a, a good KPI for the market to see what we've done, what we expect, and continue to tick these off as we move forward. The last slide, the investment case of U.S. Energy , while you're all listening to this here, I think it's, it's threefold. It's the asset.
You can't replicate the asset. You can't replicate the size of the resource. We 100% own and operate it, and that's not changing. The economics. Economics have to work. We have three independent revenue streams. We have close to $100 million in 45Q federal credits coming over the next 12 years. We trade at a fraction of what this project would transact at once it's up and running, with that up-and-running time being under one year from now. Everything is underpinned by a proven large oil field with immense EOR recovery potential at extremely low decline rates when based on other oil and gas companies. We've executed well. We've invested a lot of our own money, all leading up to this project kicking off in the first quarter of last year. Why now?
We've done so much, we've accomplished so much that we're on the precipice of launching this development project into the monetization zone, and we traded at a very significant discount to what we believe it's worth in the very near future. The remaining items are quantifiable, each one representing a de-risking event and truly a value-changing inflection point over the next 12 months. Anna, with that, I'm happy to answer any questions. I appreciate you all listening to me. This is on our website as well, if anybody wants to go through it a little more granularly.
Thank you, Ryan. We do have lots of questions for you. Let's see how many we can get in. I want to start with Laurel. She asks, "Would you say your strength is from exploration to production, or can you find growth in acquiring other projects that might be in need of a partner?
Wonderful question. I think it's both, right? I think that's an easy question to answer. I think our strengths are multiple, right? I think that we have the professionals in-house with the experience in exploration and which we've accomplished. We're really not exploring anymore. We've checked that box, which is always the biggest risk, to project management, to processing, to monetization. We always focus on what we have in front of us because that's what's in front of us.
On the M&A front, I absolutely think there's opportunities going forward, for synergistic partnerships with both much larger companies that need access to our assets, all the way down to smaller, less capitalized companies that candidly, you know, we can take a little advantage of with smart, good projects, bring our capital, bring our expertise to this kind of industry, and go make smart deals. We're always looking for smart deals. We're always in discussions with multiple parties, ranging from massive companies to small companies. I think that's something you'll see going forward.
Perfect. Eliana wants you to explain the cost to produce the helium outside of the natural gas that it's coming from?
There's not very much natural gas in our gas stream. If you think about the gas stream that produces the helium, and the CO2, and some other things that don't matter for this conversation, the cost is very low from an operating basis. The main cost is the capital to put in your infrastructure and your processing. Once you send your gas stream to your processing plant, that we're going to build, we'll use some debt and some of our own money, that then splits it out at the processing plant. Just simplistically, you know, helium goes to the left, and a large industrial company will come and pick up that every couple of days from the plant.
As part of that helium processing process, it creates CO2. We capture that CO2 and send it both via truck and via pipe to our facilities. The operating cost isn't that much. The capital cost is significant, but it's in line with, I would say, any other type of industry where you have to put in processing infrastructure.
Okay, perfect. Can you talk about just helium revenues in general, and what you project them to be?
Yeah. I think, you know, initially, I think they'll be modest. I think they'll be in the low millions of dollars for a number of factors. Helium is hard to produce. It's, it's hard to, it's hard to find. You're not dealing with 90% helium streams. You're dealing with 0.5% helium streams or 0.7% helium streams. Helium also, because it's so critical, triggers a lot of the federal incentives around the CO2. I think our helium revenues will continue to grow modestly as we continue to develop, continue to produce, continue to expand. I would expect everything to grow almost pro rata to what you saw on the earlier financial sheet that we showed. It will probably be...
remain our third largest revenue stream, but continue to grow into a significant stream with really good margins.
Perfect. Well, Ryan, we have lots of questions for you, we're out of time. Thank you for this thorough presentation, and we will certainly be following along with your progress in the new year.
All right, Anna. Thank you, and I appreciate everybody for listening.
Absolutely. Okay, everyone, we'll be right back with our next presenter. Welcome back, everyone. Next, we have Orion Energy Systems, Inc. Trades on the Nasdaq under the symbol OESX, and provides energy efficiency and clean tech solutions, including LED lighting and controls, electrical vehicle charging solutions, and maintenance services. Happy to welcome CEO, Sally Washlow, and CFO, Per Brodin. Nice to see you both today. We're happy to have you on the conference.
Thank you for the introduction, and thank you for having us today and joining us today for our presentation.
Perfect. The floor is yours. Call me back when you're ready for some questions.
Thank you. I'll jump right in. As Anna introduced us, I would like to first start with our organizational mission, is that we are helping our customers achieve their sustainability, energy savings, and carbon footprint reduction goals through innovative technology and exceptional service. How we do this is delivering through various business segments. We go to market with lighting, maintenance and technical services, and EV charging systems. Within our lighting division, we design, manufacture, and install energy-efficient LED lighting systems. We have completed over 25,000 projects with a strong focus on commercial and industrial retrofit businesses. The applications are interior and exterior, and we're often partnering with IoT solutions as well to bring to our customers. I think a really important part to note here, and I'll share a bit more, is that we have multiple go-to-market models, including turnkey.
Some of our other go-to-market models within lighting is we have a distribution channel. We also work with energy service companies, otherwise known as ESCOs. Our multiple paths to market enable us to meet the end users where they wanna meet us, whether it's a full turnkey solution or whether we're working with them through a distribution partner or the ESCO channel. All of this has led to many repeat clients, year over year. In our maintenance and technical services group, here is where we are delivering recurring services across lighting and EV systems. Our maintenance group services electrical, EV, and lighting. Recently in the fall, we had announced a three-year renewal with one of our largest customers and partners that will provide $45 million of maintenance services over the next three years.
Our capabilities are actually also national, because of this large contract enables us to have a national footprint. Within EV charging systems, we go to market under a brand called Voltrek, really a pioneer in turnkey installation of EV charging systems, where we are doing end-to-end commercial EV charging solutions. We are starting at the beginning with site design, installation, and commissioning. We're working with the leading equipment suppliers, such as ChargePoint and ABB. Many of our installations are with Level 2 and DC Fast Charging, along with fleet installations. We have national execution capabilities within our EV segment as well, and within this segment, we also have networking and maintenance, which is another source of reoccurring revenue for us. We believe at Orion, we have nimble technology and unrivaled ROI. Within this, our Orion's value add provides many competitive advantages.
Through our industry-leading technology and design on the lighting side, our product development teams are always working to ensure that we have the highest energy efficiency, our smart design delivers the highest ROI in the projects that we serve. With our unique turnkey capability, we are able to execute projects from concept to completion. Our design and manufacturing facility, you'll see on the left here, is an example of our 266,000 sq ft manufacturing facility, which is located next to our corporate headquarters in Manitowoc, Wisconsin. This allows us flexibility, along with our U.S.-based manufacturing, affords us to be BAA and BABA compliant. We also, though, rely on.