Okay, I guess, participants are coming in as we speak, but I'll start and introduce this earnings call. Welcome to DNO's third quarter earnings call. My name is Jostein Løvås. I'm the communication manager of DNO, and I will share some practical information with you. All participants in this meeting are muted by the organizer and will not be able to unmute themselves, chat, or share their screens. However, you are advised to turn off your camera. We will start with a brief presentation of the third quarter 2021 results by Executive Chairman Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani and CFO Håkon Sandborg. After which, we will open up for questions. If you want to pose a question, please raise the tiny virtual hand on top of your screen. If you are chosen or when you are chosen by the organizer, you will be notified on your screen that you are allowed to unmute. After which, you will have to remember to unmute yourself too. Please say your name and position before asking your question. With that, I leave the stage to the Executive Chairman. Good afternoon, everyone, and good morning to those of you who are in the United States or another part of the world where it's still before noon. I'm in the United States. This is yet again a quarterly presentation that's driven by COVID requirements and restrictions. My hope is that the next one, I'll be in Norway, and we can do it in person, certainly with the Norwegian participants. I've been saying that, I think, in the last two quarterly presentations, and this pandemic restrictions continue. Thank you for joining us. I think we have maybe close to 100 participants joining us for this meeting. Thank you for your interest. Without further ado, I will make some introductory comments on the quarter, focusing importantly on the operations side. Håkon will speak to the financial results and performance of the company during the quarter. We will of course open it up to a discussion among the full group. Jostein if you'd please take the next slide. This is a summary slide that we thought would capture a few messages. First, again, this is DNO's golden anniversary year. It's our fiftieth year as a company in Norway with a lot of history, a lot of stories, a lot of successes the company's had. We've been celebrating this year, our 50th under, again, COVID conditions and difficult conditions in the overall global economy, political system, and the context of the climate change debates. The issues raised about the oil industry, the fossil fuel industry and its future. We are proud to be a growth-oriented E&P company with a focus on the Middle East and the North Sea, and that remains very much a part of who we are and what we believe we are best equipped to do as a company in the interest of our stakeholders. We do stand out in the industry, not just because of our age, and we're now one of the older companies around the world that's still standing. There are older companies, but some of them are changing, as you well know, their focus and their orientation. Now we're one of the old boys or old girls. We're proud of our tradition, and we're proud of what we do. We also stand out in that our lifting costs continue to be industry beating lows at about $5 per barrel across our operated assets. That's very low by any standard. We are also a very low carbon company, again, beating the industry averages. Our CO2 intensity is about 10 kilograms per operated barrel of oil produced, and we'll say a few more words about how that stacks up versus the rest of the industry. The future of the oil and gas industry, with all of that that's happening around us, the future will be that of the low-cost, low-carbon companies. We'll be one of the last companies still standing to turn off the lights as fossil fuels exit, whether it's in 30 years, 40 years, 50 years, 100 years. With that, I will start the review of the slides, starting with the third quarter operations. Our gross operated production in the Tawke license, our flagship license, in Kurdistan, which we share with our partner, Genel. Gross operated production averaged around 105,000 barrels a day in Q3, which is down a little bit from Q2. Of that total, close to 79,000 barrels a day was net to DNO's interest, which is a substantial amount of oil for a company of our size, as you know. The North Sea contributed another 13,000 barrels a day of oil equivalent because we also have gas production in the North Sea. That was up, importantly, as a percentage of North Sea production from Q2. But of course, that additional few thousand barrels is lost in the rounding of our Kurdistan operations. Still very important to us because that's one of our important growth areas with respect to exploration, and it's been part of our strategy to diversify DNO's activities beyond Kurdistan. Our total net production was about 92,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day for the quarter. Our Tawke license 2021 gross operator production, we've given guidance of about 110,000 barrels a day earlier this year. That guidance is essentially unchanged. We're still looking to come out of the year with average in that range or approaching that range. It may be off, you know, a couple of thousand barrels a day or something. We'll see how the rest of the quarter grows. It's essentially that's the average figure for the year that we expect. Our actual exit level could be a little bit higher as a result of some of the wells that we've been drilling and working over coming in. We'll see. North Sea production guidance for the year remains unchanged, again, at about 13,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. Next slide, please. On the financial side, our revenues were up significantly in Q3. Importantly, because of the strengthening commodity prices that have impacted all oil and gas players, but also because we've had higher North Sea sales in the course of the quarter. You'll see on the right that the bar diagram that shows split between Kurdistan and North Sea, what has been going on on the revenue side. We show the splits. Our profits for the quarter has been $65 million. That's essentially flat. It's a little bit up from Q2. It hasn't kept up percentage-wise with our revenue growth in the quarter. Håkon in the financial slides will touch on this a bit more, but it still has been a third consecutive quarter in which we reported operating profits. That's good. As you know, we closed on a new $400 million five-year bond issue with a coupon rate of 7.875% during the quarter. This lowered our average debt interest rate, but also extended our maturities and helped strengthen our balance sheet. We were pleased with the outcome of that bond issue. We received $120 million from Kurdistan in the quarter. That includes, as it does every month, our share of entitlements, our share of the oil that's actually produced and exported, but also an override that we continue to receive every month based on 3% of the Tawke license production. This is related to an agreement that addressed a debt that KRG had to us back in the ISIS period. Plus, a payment towards new arrears that were created when COVID hit, wherein Kurdistan withheld some payments from all the oil companies, and they've been paying down that debt on a monthly basis. The total payment was about $120 million. That represented, I believe, two months, not three months. The third month has come since. That was the figure that was actually received in the quarter. At the end of the quarter, these new arrears, the outstanding amount has dropped to $203 million. Again, this is as of the end of Q3. That number's come down further since then with some more recent payments. That's down from close to $260 million at the start. That excludes any interest. DNO, like the other companies that have been affected by this, have been in continuing discussion and dialogue with the Kurdistan government about how to handle interest on these arrears during this period, and how to factor that into either the payments or into other obligations the companies may have with respect to their assets in Kurdistan. Next slide, please. I've mentioned our gross operations that split between Peshkabir and Tawke. The quarter is close to 60,000 barrels a day from Peshkabir and about 45,000 barrels a day from Tawke. At Tawke, we hadn't done any drilling for about 18 months when the price of oil crashed. There were some delays in getting approvals from the Kurdistan government in terms of spending, 'cause they were trying to pause on spending during the difficult price and COVID period. But we were able to reduce some of the natural production decline that occurs at all these fields through pressure support from gas injection, which we'll talk a little bit more about. Also, workovers and the smaller things that we could do at the existing wells shy of drilling new ones. We were able to slow down the decline rates, but now we've resumed drilling at Tawke, and we have a new well design which allows us to drill cheaper wells and more quickly. We hope that we'll see improvements in the decline rates and maybe steadying our production at Tawke moving forward as a result of this now increased level of activity. Both Tawke and Peshkabir will have multi-year development campaigns. At Tawke, a mature field, the next phase is to drill more and more and more wells, and to do so cheaply. That's again the natural progression of fields as they age. It's like being on a treadmill. You run faster in place just to be, you know, to stand still. That's anticipated and planned for Tawke. Peshkabir is a younger field. We have an active drilling program there, but that's less about a lot of drilling in a mature field and still about trying to test the limits of the field and see what it can do and perhaps add some additional production to it. We declared commerciality on our second license in Kurdistan. Hopefully, what will become our third field at the Baeshiqa. That's the asset we acquired from ExxonMobil. The transfer of the interest to us was completed. We have 64% of that license, 80% on a paying basis. The transfer has been approved. We've submitted and we declared commerciality. We've submitted a development plan, and that's been under discussion with the Kurdistan Ministry of Natural Resources. There's some fine-tuning that's being done and some final discussions with them as to how the development will proceed. Once we have all of that in place, we expect to be able to fast-track it, as we always do in Kurdistan. That's been the key to our success. By fast-tracking it here, we mean that we have two discovery wells, and they were left in a state in which they can be reentered and production started. We've already produced some test oil from those two wells. We'll start with those, and then we will drill additional wells to bring that license to a higher level of production. Again, hopefully what will be by any standard in record time. The next slide, please. We've talked about our gas capture and injection program in Kurdistan to replace flaring. This is something that we had initiated several years ago and commissioned in mid-2020, before much of the current focus on global climate change issues and in the current context of COP26 and other discussions that are ongoing. That was a $110 million project. The purpose was to reduce flaring at the Peshkabir field, where we had associated gas production, which we don't have at Tawke, to stop flaring, move that gas to Tawke, inject it there for both for safekeeping, to keep it out of the atmosphere, and also to help with some enhanced recovery of additional Tawke oil. We're pleased with how that's proceeded, and we've been able to check all of those boxes, and we've been proud to do so. Iraq is one of the largest flares of gas, associated gas, in the Middle East, perhaps in the world. This is the first project in northern Iraq and Kurdistan to reduce gas flaring and inject the gas for again for future recovery. In the meantime, for enhanced production, if that's possible in the field. The government on the strength of the success we've had has now mandated that other operators should do the same, as much as possible, within some timeframe. This project has been held up as a success story and a model for how other companies and other operators should handle the treatment of associated gas. We've now initiated a phase II of this program that's gonna cost another $25 million, and that's to deal with gas breakthrough. As this gas is pumped into the Tawke field, some of it will break through. We will be recapturing it and putting it back in the ground to avoid any flaring at Tawke. I mentioned that our CO2 intensity is very low. It's at the level of 10 kilograms. That's about 1/2 of the target for 2025, set by a group of 12 of the world's largest oil and gas companies. It's a figure we're very proud of. In addition to CO2, I know there's been some focus, a shift at COP26 about CO2 and the shift away from CO2 to methane. Methane is an important nasty gas. We started in 2019 a project to eliminate routine venting of methane. We were again ahead of the debate and discussion on methane. We've now taken that to a phase II, also to launch a methane leak detection and repair initiative, to be able to monitor and to mitigate fugitive methane emissions. These are methane emissions that occur around equipment and so on, tanks, storage tanks, and that might not be visible to the eye, but detectable. That'll be part of our effort and contribution to, on the methane side, as well as part of our efforts in this area. Again, we've done these for years, and we tend to be quiet about them. We do it because it's the right thing to do. It's important because we are asked by stakeholders and by shareholders, by analysts, by bond holders, what is DNO doing? Of course, we have a good story to tell in this area as well. Next slide, please. On the North Sea, I mentioned our production was up a bit from Q2. We had an appraisal well was drilled on the Bergknapp discovery made in 2020 in which we have a 30% interest, which resulted in a 35% resource estimate upgrade in Q3. We're very pleased with that as we continue to build up our inventory of discovered resources in the North Sea, in Norway in particular. We've been very active as a driller. Our exploration efforts in Norway are an important part of our overall exploration strategy and portfolio. We operated and drilled the Gomez exploration well. It encountered hydrocarbons, not very substantial volumes, but could be volumes that could be meaningful. Our partner assessing the commerciality to see if that discovery is in fact commercial or not. We'll report back, obviously, as we learn more. Our Brasse field, where we have 50% and we operate, is on track for 2022 PDO, and we've made some further progress on that. DNO recently entered into a strategic framework agreement with TechnipFMC to cover certain subsea deliveries. As part of our effort to constantly review and high-grade our portfolio, we exited Fogelberg and shelved our Trym South permits. We continue to do active exploration, but also development drilling, appraisal development. It's been an active year for us in that area. We talk about the fourth of four back-to-back Peshkabir wells having been spudded in October. First oil planned in the first half of 2023. We're active and hope to grow our contribution of Norway production to our overall production volumes. Next, please. This slide, I won't try to read everything on the slide for you, but it's available as a reference for your reference. It has our 2021 and 2022 exploration drilling program in some detail in the North Sea. Okay. I think with that, I will stop and turn to Håkon Sandborg to discuss in more detail our financial performance in the third quarter. Håkon, please. Good. Thank you, Bijan. Hello, everyone. We will now move to a discussion on the Q3 financials. Move the slide, please. We start with these key figures, and we are again pleased to deliver solid quarterly financial results. You see that we have increasing revenues and we have a strong cash flow generation and also somewhat higher operating profits in Q3. As Bijan said, our revenues have climbed up by 38% from the second quarter to a solid level of $253 million. This growth was mainly driven by the increased North Sea production and sales, but also, of course, by higher oil and gas prices. Just to mention a bit more on the business unit level, the Kurdistan revenues in Q3 of $149 million, they were up by $8 million from the second quarter. That was, you know, primarily on oil prices. The North Sea revenues of $104 million in this quarter, they were up by $61 million from Q2. So that's quite significant. That was mostly on higher produced and also higher lifted volumes supported by the better oil and gas prices. Our netback, which is an after-tax cash flow before working capital change, has benefited now again from higher revenues and from tax refunds. We can see a good development and reaching a solid level of $194 million for Q3. As I said, some increase in our Q3 operating profit, that comes from the higher revenues again, but that's despite the increased impairments and also higher exploration expenses in this quarter. Again, quite pleased, and we see this as good financial results for this quarter. Next one, please. As we normally do, we go to quite a lot of detail on our profit and loss statement, our P&L. You see the Q3 numbers to the left on the slide. Here you can see the increase in revenues from Q2 that I mentioned. On our cost side, lifting costs and DD&A remain very stable in Q3 from the second quarter. There is this reduction in North Sea underlift that leads to an increase in our total cost of goods sold of $19 million in this quarter. That's the main movement on the cost side, on the cost of goods sold. As you go down on the cost, you can see that the expense, the exploration is up by $10 million, and that comes mainly from expensing of a well called the Black Vulture well. We have significantly higher impairments in Q3 at $40 million. That comes from again, the revised RNB submissions from licenses that we participate in. And there has been, you know, revised cost schedules and revised production profiles that go into these submissions that we have used in our evaluations. That is, you know, leading to impairment on a couple of licenses, including the Ula area. in addition to these type of impairments, we have an impairment from U.K. decommissioning cost on this Skuan and Kester project that we are working on. A bit higher cost there has been impaired. At the same time, we have had a positive movement on the other decom project that we have in Norway called Utsira, where we have had a cost reversal. That's a good development in Q3. This all leads to the operating profit of $65.4 million in Q3, up from $60.9 million in Q2. You see, net finance is stable, and we have, of course, the interest expense as the main element. This quarter, we also have items that include bond refinancing costs and accruals, et cetera, or accretion. We also this time have a positive revaluation effect on our KRG receivables. Interesting to see on the Q3 tax expense as it is of $6 million. That compares to a tax income of close to $25 million in the second quarter. We see that this is now due to reduced tax losses and some changes in the deferred taxes. With the reduced tax income, we show a net income of $30.9 million in Q3, down from $56.7 million in the second quarter. Next, please. I'm sorry. Let's just stay on this one. I have a bit more on this one. Go back again. We have to talk about the year-to-date also on the right side of this slide. As I mentioned last quarter, we see a very strong recovery now from the weak market conditions that we had last year. You can see revenues is now up by $167 million, provided mainly by higher oil and gas prices. Year-to-date, cost of goods sold are also significantly reduced from last year. That is now mainly due to lower DD&A or depreciation mostly. This comes from reduced DD&A charges per barrel in Kurdistan and from lower North Sea production this year compared to last year. We also have a reduction in cost of goods sold from the build-up in North Sea underlift due to lower lifted volumes so far this year. On the year-to-date side also, we have much lower impairments this year, and we show a much better operating profit year-to-date at $192.7 million, compared to the substantial operating loss that we had last year. Now our year-to-date tax income of $23.8 million is also much lower than last year. That's mainly due to lower impairments with the tax effect and deferred tax changes. Anyway, after finance and tax, we are pleased to show a year-to-date net income of $139 million. In my view, obviously, with our high production and the current oil and gas prices, we see a good outlook for further strengthening of earnings going forward. Now we're good to go on the next one. We give you some guidance on what we term as the operational spend, the sum of the CapEx, OpEx, exploration, and the OpEx categories. Our operational spend guidance for this year is basically unchanged. We expect we have a $15 million increase in projected NCS or North Sea exploration spend compared to our Q2 presentation. The biggest contributor on that exploration increase is the additional work that we now are doing on the successful. The projected operational spend is split between $200 million in Kurdistan for this year and $460 million in the North Sea. That is before North Sea tax refunds, importantly. As we show in the quarterly spend graph on the right side of this slide, the year-to-date operational spend is at $493 million for the first three quarters, and we project an estimated additional spend of $167 million for the fourth quarter this year. Staying very, very close to our guided levels here. Let's go to the next one. For our cash flow, we again now have delivered a solid operational cash flow in Q3 at $143 million. And that's again, on the back of increasing oil and gas prices, but also with the higher North Sea volumes. We see that reflected in an increase in our pre-tax profit, including or adjusted for non-cash items, up by $44 million in Q3 from Q2. In the third quarter, we received two monthly payments from the KRG, and we have since then received other payments after quarter end. With the two monthly payments, we received $120 million from the KRG in the third quarter, compared to $159 million with three payments in Q2. We thereby had a negative working capital change over $24 million for this quarter, mainly from the increase in KRG receivables that impacted the Q3 operational cash flow. As shown on this graph to the right, we have received North Sea tax refunds in an amount of $37 million, and that again added to our quarterly cash flow. We have increased our investments further now to $109 million in the quarter. As we show on the slide, $81 million has been invested in assets and asset developments and $28 million in decommissioning spend. Peter mentioned that, but we had a successful closing of a new $400 million bond in September. Now in the third quarter, we used $300 million of that plus call premiums to buy back and redeem the remaining DNO '02 bond. I'd like to note that, as I've done many times before, through this new bond placement, we have done an early call and early move on our bond maturities to both extend the maturity profile and to enhance our credit profile. In sum, as we've seen in the recent quarters, cash from operations again funded all investments in the quarter. If you add the tax refunds and the finance proceeds, we increased the cash balances by a substantial $132 million in Q3. I think we said that before also, but we see a very good outlook now for continued strong cash flow generation going forward. So next one. Here we have our capital structure. You can see that we continue to strengthen our balance sheet. Also through the third quarter, we have increasing cash balances, and we have a conservative leverage in my view, as we show with a steadily declining net interest-bearing debt level. As such, our cash balances have grown by $213 million over the last 12 months since the end of the third quarter last year. This has mainly been achieved through increasing cash flow from operations backed by the higher commodity prices. Also with support from the accelerated Norwegian tax refunds in this twelve-month period. Over the same year, we have cut net interest-bearing debt by 39% to $360 million at the end of Q3 this year. That reduction has come mainly through the higher cash balances, but also we have reduced other debt in that during the last twelve months. Shown on the right with the improved earnings this year, we have also strengthened our equity ratio to the current level of 33%. With this balance sheet and with our strong cash flow generation, we are in an obviously very solid financial position, and as we plan our investment programs, we will consider other uses of capital also going forward. As we normally do and plan on doing now, we will work with the updated plans and work programs and guidance for next year in our Q4 presentation in February. That was a brief run through of the financials for the quarter. That's the end of the presentation. I think we can now move on to start the Q&A session with the questions from our participants. Please, Jostein. Yes. I think we already have gotten a question from one of our old friends, Teodor Sveen- Nilsen, who's an analyst with SpareBank 1 Markets. If you just make sure to unmute yourself, and the scene is yours, Teodor. Thank you. Good afternoon, and thanks for taking my questions. I have three questions. First, on a general industry trends, we see in certain other industries bottlenecks in the value chain. I just wonder, how is that in Kurdistan? Where do you or do you at all experience any bottlenecks? Second question is on KRG payments. You said you got two payments in the third quarter. I just wonder whether or not we should expect four payments in the fourth quarter. Last question is on the Bergknapp development. I just wonder what kind of development concept do you expect for that discovery. Thanks. Theodore, good afternoon. Let me start with some answers. Excuse me, on the bottlenecks. Yes, I think we feel those in Kurdistan to an extent. It's probably not been as difficult as perhaps in other areas because we have, you know, purchased stocks in advance of equipment casing and so on. We've been prepared to an important extent for disruptions and delays. Plus, the rigs we use are typically dedicated rigs in Kurdistan operations. We don't have the same issue that perhaps in other parts of the world they have trouble getting rigs and rig crews and so on mobilized to do drilling. It's not been an overwhelming challenge for us. The bottlenecks are not really bottlenecks, but there have been disruptions, of course, and challenges from the COVID-related, making sure that people go in, are quarantined, the teams are quarantined. The fields are probably protected, that we ensure the safety and health of our employees. Knock wood, we've been very successful in that respect. There's a lot of hard work by our colleagues in Kurdistan and those in Dubai who manage the Kurdistan operation. But the challenge has been on the human side, making sure that our people are safe. That early on, it was a question of bottlenecks in terms of getting vaccines and get people vaccinated. It's a different maybe kind of bottlenecks that you had in mind. Remember that at the start of the pandemic, the bottleneck in vaccines is probably more of an issue for people than the bottlenecks in the casings, for example, or other wellheads or equipment. We've come out of that, I think. It's not over yet. Hopefully, we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. I think that at the end, it was managed, certainly in our operated activities to address, plan, and manage the challenges posed by COVID. With respect to Kurdistan payments, do we expect another payment? You do know, as well as any of us, probably better, that the payments of Kurdistan are sometimes delayed and sometimes we're surprised with how quickly they come, and sometimes we're disappointed that they're slowed down, but they do make it. Whether they're a week late and it becomes, you know, slips over to the end of the month or the end of the quarter, I don't know. I can't give you any assurance, but the payments have been coming. Coming both for with respect to entitlements, royalties for those of us who have royalties, but also with respect to the payment of arrears. We're not happy that the arrears are still outstanding, but they are being worked down. You know, we have every confidence the payments will come, but whether they come the day before or the day after the close of the quarter, I can't really say. You see them coming. These are large sums of money that the Kurds are paying to the companies. It shows a commitment on their parts to do so. They understand that without these funds, these companies can't spend in Kurdistan to the same extent. If we don't spend, revenues are gonna go down, and they're pushing us to produce as much as possible to take advantage of these oil prices. They understand that for us to do that, the payments have to be coming in on an ongoing basis. We have every confidence payments will come, but the timing of them one day or two days or five days before or after, I can't say. Also, as you know, from the announcements of other companies, not all the payments come to all the companies on the same day. Sometimes, one company gets payments earlier than others do. Then sometimes the R3 payments are spread over two days or three days. Some of that I think is related to the banking system and delays. I don't know if I've answered your question with respect to timing, exact timing, but we have every confidence the payments will come and continue to come strong given where oil prices are and the fact that our production is what it is. On the Bergknapp, I don't have an answer to your question. Håkon, do you have anything you wanna add on Bergknapp? I think it's a little early in the season. Maybe not the right guy to address that, but I know from discussions with our technical teams that this is a concept that we are still sort of early phase. We are looking at possible tie into existing infrastructure, and we have a lot of installations in the nearby area around this discovery area. Likely sort of tie into the existing infrastructure in the neighborhood, and we know that we together with our partners are working on maturing the options. That's sort of the level of detail I can go into now at this stage, Teodor. Okay. Okay. Thank you. That's all from me. Yeah. Okay. I believe the next question comes from Nikolas Stefanou with Renaissance Capital. You may unmute yourself. Good afternoon, gents. It's Nick from RenCap. Thank you for taking my questions, and I have to also give you congratulations on the fiftieth anniversary of the company. I've got a couple of questions and then a follow-up. Bijan, I have some. I'm a bit disappointed, you know, not having a dividend announcement today. I think, you know, this is what the market was expecting, especially given how healthy cash flow is, you know, how much you have reduced net debt, and then also, you know, what your peers are giving to their shareholders. What was the reason you decided not to announce a dividend this quarter? And generally, you know, any comment at all about would be quite helpful. My other question is on the Tawke license. It looks like, you know, despite the kind of like drilling hiatus there because of the minister approval delays, you're still pretty much on track to deliver your target, or at least be quite close to that, for 110,000 barrels per day. Can you give me an idea, you know, with development now resuming at Tawke, what kind of like exit rate we could see for the end of this year? Thanks. Let me answer your second question first. I think I mentioned that our exit rates could be probably a little bit higher than 110,000 barrels a day. That's an estimate. In that range, because as you know, the third quarter, again, the numbers were a little bit lower, so the fourth quarter will have a little bit higher to relatively catch up. I expect our exit rate will be at least 110,000 barrels a day and maybe a little bit higher. We'll see. Every day the figures are a little bit different. We're currently, as we have some of these new wells coming into production. There are days in which our production is running higher than 110, but where we end up at the end of the year, I don't know, but I think 110 is a safe estimate as an exit rate. It may be a little bit high in terms of the average for the year, but by, you know, but not very. If it is, by not very much, and I don't know whether it will be or we'll hit that average or not. Again, depends what happens in the next month and the next, I guess, close to 7 weeks or so. But we've done well. This is a. Again, we're very pleased and proud with our team in Kurdistan when they knew and we knew that we weren't gonna get new wells down on Tawke. The question was how do we keep Tawke production as high as we could in the face of natural field decline. They got busy. They rolled up their sleeves and started doing other interventions. We're able to do a fantastic job. Of course, those sorts of interventions, you always can't keep doing those. You have to drill wells at some point, and now we've started drilling wells. We've had it under the circumstances. I think we've done well at Tawke, as I think you were suggesting. We will have to drill wells to keep Tawke production decline from being too harsh. On the issue of dividends, as you know, last, I guess, May at our last annual shareholder meeting, the shareholders approved the startup of our previous pre-COVID dividend program. Which was to dividend out, I think something on the order of $20 million equivalent, in the second half of each year and then the equivalent amount in the first half of the following year until the following shareholder meeting. The board has a discretion and the authority to dividend out up to the equivalent of $20 million before the end of this year. That authority is in place. It cannot be, the amount cannot be increased. We can't borrow against next year's $20 million to increase it if we wanted to as a board. We were capped at $20 million. The board understands that anything less than $20 million is sort of meaningless. The $20 million figure is a target. The question is: Does the board want to proceed with the dividend distribution or not? That decision has not been taken. In fact, we haven't discussed it in our recent board meetings, where our focus has been on some of these other challenges that we face. We'd agreed as a board that as we repair and then now strengthen our balance sheets, that we have a assurance that we're successful with that the payments of Kurdistan, like, continue on an ongoing basis, a predictable basis, that oil prices would support it before we took that decision. We didn't want a situation in which another crisis would hit, and we started a dividend program and then cut it short again. We were very disappointed as a board that COVID forced us, we felt, to cut dividends, to cut costs. We cut people large. You know, we really went in with a carving knife and cut out expenses in ways that are quite painful to staff, never mind the shareholders. I wear, as you know, two hats at DNO. One is the Executive Chairman, the other is a very significant shareholder, personally and through RAK Petroleum. Wearing my shareholder hat, I'd love to see dividends on a predictable, ongoing basis and reflective of the underlying strength of the companies financially. But I'm wearing my DNO hat, I need to make sure the rest of the management team and the board that we put the company's dividends in the context of the company's larger financial program obligation and opportunities. We have close to two months to go before we make that decision. We have a board meeting at the end of November. It's I believe the last scheduled board meeting for the year. There'll be an opportunity at that time to make a decision about the dividends. Also importantly, to put that into the context of a longer-term dividend plan. There are other uses for cash. Obviously, as you well know, we have a lot of cash coming in. Some of that cash we wanna return to shareholders as other companies are doing. Whether it's in the form of dividends or share buybacks, and we've done both in the past. We wanna put it in the context and think about a plan that is sustainable over a longer term. Because again, the worst you can do is start something and have to stop it, start and stop it. We don't wanna be in a business of making a big dividend distribution and then stopping. That's not the way to at least from our point of view to do it. The door isn't closed. In fact, that door is open because the shareholders have given the authority. A lot of the shareholders, including myself and my shareholder capacity, would like to see dividends and that meet those targets. My suggestion would be to have some patience and we will come back obviously with the board's decision on dividends certainly before the end of the year, because we have that limit that's closing now. I believe the last question will come from Karl Fredrik Schjøtt- Pedersen with ABG Sundal Collier. Please. Hi, guys. Thank you for taking my question. With reference to slide number 13, so in operational spend, there is a substantial increase in the CapEx in Q4 relative to the other periods. Is this an indication of an activity ramp up, which we should extrapolate into 2022? And could you elaborate on the allocation of this capital? How would that play into production in especially Tawke license for 2022? Håkon, do you want to respond to that? Yeah. So as you know there, you know, there's a lot of activity ongoing in both our business units now, Karl Fredrik. We are moving up our drilling schedule in Kurdistan, as Bijan has discussed. We have two large rigs now moving and drilling rigs continuously in Kurdistan. We are looking for a third large rig to even do more drilling. We have two smaller rigs also in operation in that area. We see that for the pickup of our drilling program in Kurdistan, that's one reason why you see increased CapEx coming into Q4. In the North Sea business unit, very high activity also ongoing. I don't have a full breakdown, just here, but I could mention that, for the Q3, let me just find that page. We had $38 million of CapEx in Q3, and it's sort of coming up quite sharply in Q4. For Q3 by itself, we had $22 million spent in Kurdistan. I expect that to come up now with more drilling, more rigs in Kurdistan from $22 million in Q3. We had $16 million CapEx in Q3 in Norway. That was mainly for the Ula, Brasse, and Penélope. Those three will also continue into much activity into Q4. We had the capitalized exploration included in our Q3 numbers. We will have more exploration ongoing and hopefully capitalized and not expensed into Q4. There's also that's a separate category, but we're also, as you know, active on decom included in the $167. I think the answer to the question is really basically continuing and stepping up from Q3, especially in Kurdistan on the drilling side on both the Tawke field and the Peshkabir field as we go into next year. We will guide you on that in the Q4 presentation in February. Yeah, then of course hope and expect to be quite heavily involved on the Baeshiqa development also into next year. Expect the trend of if you can sort of see a trend on a line basis here increasing into the next year is the expectation. If you look at the annual figures, it dropped down quite a lot with the COVID in 2020, coming up again in 2021. I expect to be increasing our spending into 2022. Again, we will revert on that in February. Wanted to add to that, Bijan, maybe? No, I think you captured it. Again, we've had a strong quarter. It's been quite a reversal from the damage COVID did to our business, to a lot of businesses. It's been amazing how quickly this has turned around in our industry again and many other industries. We've had a strong third quarter. I expect we will have an even stronger fourth quarter. If those trends continue, we'll have a strong 2022. But we won't, I won't project into the future. We'll wait and see what happens to the world economy 2022. You know, we're excited about where we are and where we're going. Håkon's a very steady hand and a very steady voice for those of you participating in this before. You can't show too much excitement. I sort of pick up some of his habits. We're really very excited where the company is and the opportunities that are opening up. With the rapid reduction in our net debt, that creates an opportunity for us to look at different paths forward. What is clear about the DNO story is that we will stay an E&P company. We're not looking at opportunities in windmills and solar and other things. We're good at what we do, and we've had 50 years history of doing it, and I'd expect we have a long ride still ahead of us. That's who we are and what we are. I think we're well-positioned, again, as a low-cost, low-carbon company. For those who are looking for this kind of an opportunity and investment and to join us on the ride, well, this is who and what we are. I was quite struck when we did our Bond Roadshow with how supportive the bond side was to the E&P story, not just DNO's, but overall. The equity side is still hesitant, it seems, to some extent, but I think we'll see some change in the sentiment on the equity side as well as these volumes of cash come into all the companies of the E&P companies, coffers and treasuries. We're excited about that as well, the change in the sentiment and the support we'll get on the equity side. We're about to close the meeting, but Karl Frederick, if you have a very short follow-up question, you're allowed. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. I'll be brief. No, different this time. A lot of cash on the balance sheet. Are you looking at M&A? If so, is it in which regions? Nothing that we can clearly obviously report on or discuss. I think a lot of our efforts and time were spent this year on recovering from COVID and strengthening the balance sheet and then focus on our current operations. We're always of course looking out to see how we can grow the company in a way that's accretive and meaningful. I don't expect in terms of M&A we'll do much more in Kurdistan. We're already the most important player in Kurdistan among the IOCs. With Baeshiqa, hopefully finally getting underway, we'll get. That's a better opportunity for us to grab. Assets in Kurdistan are changing hands at very significant prices, and we'd rather do it ourselves. We're able to do it because we have a history in Kurdistan. Again, at Baeshiqa, a very good asset base to grow. It won't be in Kurdistan. North Sea. We're always looking at the opportunities for growth in the North Sea. Sometimes opportunities come up that make sense for us, and other times not. Sometimes it makes sense and we know we. But they're done before we have a chance to move on them, and other times and then they're. Obviously, we have an office, a full office and team in Stavanger that are always looking at opportunities and, if the right one comes along at some point, we'll do it as we did with Faroe Petroleum. Outside of Kurdistan and the North Sea. Again, their deals are pitched to us or we're, you know, we look around. We're not trying to do a global search for opportunities, either for exploration or for mergers or acquisitions. It'd have to be something that would be compelling, and it'd have to be somewhere where we DNO have a competitive or comparative advantage before it makes sense for us to proceed. Nothing to announce. Our focus has been really on recovery. As you say, now that we recovered and as the cash pile builds up, growth in through mergers or through other ground floor activity becomes one of the options we'd have to pursue. We're at a crossroads the way much of the rest of the industry is. Do we harvest you know fruit from the trees or plant it some time ago or do we plant new trees? Many shareholders want the oil companies to do the harvesting, produce and distribute the cash to shareholders. Some still look to grow, to see opportunities where the other players are pulling out. That, I think, is the challenge that we face and other companies face too. Do we harvest or do we plant new trees? With that, I think we should close the meeting. Thank you all for attending and see you again soon, hopefully in person. Very good. Thank you.