Hi, everyone, and welcome to ABG Investor Days. My name is Nikola Kalanoski, and I'm an equity research analyst here at ABG. With us today, we have Kjetil Solbraekke. He is the CEO of Maha Energy. He will present the company to us for about 20 minutes, and then we will have a Q&A for about five. With that said, the floor is yours. Well, thanks a lot. So pleasure to be back here in, Stockholm. It's a bit of a temperature change coming from Rio, over here so my voice gets a bit, influenced by the, by the weather, so I apologize for that. So yes, very happy to go through, what we are doing. We think it's an exciting time for Maha, and so I will go through, after showing the disclaimer now, go through a bit of, what we are doing and try to keep within the 20 minutes, even though I think there is a lot of fascinating things going on. So my background, very quickly, Norwegian oil and gas industry background. I work for the ministry, so I did my service for the government in Norway to secure the petroleum wealth to the state. I figured out that, okay, now I've done so much for the state, so now I can start working for private sector. So I have been in Equinor, in Norsk Hydro, and then in CEO in Panoro, in SINTEF, and started up then DBO Energy six years ago and that has had a fantastic journey which I will go back to. So basically been in oil and gas companies and oil and gas industry for more than 30 years. This is the journey we had with DBO, starting up some six years ago, formally with the first acquisition, and we did together with Starboard in 2019. We were supported by RWE, and we shared then several investments together with Starboard and formed 3R, which is a listed company today in B3, in São Paulo, and has a value of about $2 billion today. So that was a fantastic journey. We had the 40% of the first investment together with Starboard that formed this company, and in five years, it's a company of $2 billion. So when that was done, we RWE sold out, and they sold out, starting with they had made an investment of $30 million, and they sold at more than $100 million. So they were quite pleased, so were we. We then started up with the lack of fantasy, we started up DBO 2.0. And that was basically with what was then remaining in the company after RWE sold out. And then we had already signed Peroá, which was a great gas field asset. And we later merged also this into 3R Offshore, together with Starboard. And now the latest move is that we have moved everything into Maha, and again, working with this very successful collaboration with Starboard. So we have been doing business together with this private equity fund in Brazil for the last five, six years, and it's been extremely beneficial for their shareholders and for ourselves. This is basically just a bit repetition, so I'll jump this. This is where we are in the world. We have a position in the U.S., Illinois. We have a position in Oman. I'm not gonna talk very much about Oman today. I think you have already heard, good stories from Oman, so, so I can jump that. We have, offshore assets, which is basically the DBO assets in, in, Brazil, so I'll try to touch upon, that very quickly. So down here you can then. And then now, of course, we have a position in Venezuela, and you can see sort of the magnitude that this, position has with the enormous, reserves that we, we get access to. And I will then spend most of my time now today to talk about, Venezuela. This, I think most people know, Venezuela is the largest, or the country with the most reserves in the world. They have more reserves than Saudi Arabia, and they have a ridiculous 1,000 years of reserves with the current production level. So of course, that says more about the production level than it says about the reserves, actually. So of course, they have a very, very low production, as you can see, dropped off over the last 25 years because of all the different crises that they have been through. So extremely sad development, a lot of resources, and where we are is in three fields that was developed in I can jump a little bit between this. It was basically developed already. This was part of winning the war for the Americans in the Second World War. So these are not recent discoveries, put it that way. They have been producing about 100 years. They are large accumulations of reserves. As you see here, we are talking about more than $8 billion, 8 billion barrels of oil in place, and about 16% of this has then been produced over these 100 years. But these are actually good reservoirs. They are this fairly light oil, as you can see here, it's between 15-35 API oil. So this is not the heavy crude that you have to make the syn crude out of, which is in the Orinoco Oil Belt, where I also have been working previously. But this is so this is lighter oil, which is easier than to produce. It's in a very western part of the country, which is also challenging when it comes to. There has been trouble in the area with the FARC guerrilla and so on. And it now has helped a lot that there is sort of the peace solution, both in Venezuela and also then, of course, in Colombia. So everything is now lined up for kind of a better intervention with the assistance of foreign companies, and in this case, Maha Energy, that can go in and assist PDVSA. And they are now changing the rules again to allow for the foreign companies to operate and do the work, and secure that the funds that you put in are basically used for investments. So this has been a bit of the problem, that PDVSA has not spent the money according to what they should do, but basically spent the money on other, other things. Yeah, this again, just highlights, the, a bit of the potential of reserves. But I will also say that it's not our ambition to have a plan now to produce 500 or 700 million barrels in this, field on a 100 percent basis. Our target now is to increase the production from a ridiculously low 1,000 barrels per day into 5,000 barrels per day, 10,000 barrels per day, 15,000 barrels per day, 20,000 barrels per day, and do that in batches of improvements, and take its bits and pieces of this whole area. We're gonna start with what was with what is called. Sorry, the La Paz field, which is the one in a better shape. And here, it's actually a bit sad story. But it's part of the reality about Venezuela, and probably many of you know. Here they have problems with the cannibalizing equipment. They haven't been able to import the simplest filters for, you know, for their gas treatment, oil treatment, and so on. So when you cannot do basic cleaning of any product that you put through the process, then the process equipment also gets distorted, and it just goes on anyway. So today there is no gas compression working in the field. Just fixing the gas compression, it's a very simple thing to fix. I don't still know what the cost will be. I would be amazed if it's much more than $1 million, but it could be $5 million, I don't know. But just by doing that, we can increase the production to 3,000-4,000 barrels. And then we have other programs that we're looking into going from gas lift, which is the current mechanism, into ESPs. And also that is another thing that could probably more than double the production, again, from whatever level we then start with. So that's the way we're gonna work with this. We're not going to kind of say that, "Okay, now we're gonna spend $100 million and try to get $500 million out of $500 million. Yeah, but also 500 million barrels out of this in the 20-year horizon." I think we are much more focused on. We have underlined that already with the authorities in Venezuela, we want to go in and make quick wins. That's actually exactly what they also want, because they believe that the sooner they can get an increased production from these fields, the sooner they can get increased support in the population, which is basically, you know, literally very hungry for new jobs, more opportunities to make money, and so on. Those are questions. Should we take them at the end, or? Let's take them at the end. Yeah, okay. Please continue. So that's. He's the, he's the boss. So we already have a team in place, we, which is super important. So Javier Gremes Cordero, he is Argentinian professional. He's been the country manager in Venezuela for Petrobras. He's been active in Perez Companc, which was the largest private company in Latin America. He was the CEO of Perez, Pecom, and he's been CEO in other, also, pipeline company down there. So an extremely experienced Latin American leader. And I'm super happy to work with him, and I'm very impressed. He's a super project director concerned with understanding every detail, every little thing that needs to work in a project. And, together, we have been sitting and working on the project plan, understanding really what are the critical things we need to get around in order to increase the production. So a fantastic guy. We also have Reinhard Gross, who's a subsurface specialist and petroleum engineer. Also, a ton of experience from project development in both brownfield and greenfield. And then we have already a set of Venezuelans, partly living in Maracaibo, where we have the assets, and partly living in Caracas. So we are already on the ground. And this was, of course, not because we have just mobilized extremely quickly, but because we had planned this for almost a year, we have been working on this already. For everybody that hasn't started yet and starting now, they are probably a year behind. So that's, in a way, good, good for us. We think we still have an advantage to compete for more opportunities in Venezuela. The deal as such, I think the these key numbers speak for themselves. Obviously, when you go into an area like this, there is a lot of uncertainty, many people have questions. Of course, but where can you buy, you know, this amount of barrels for less than $1 per barrel? So, so of course, we see that, you can say it's always a risk-reward game. Here, we have actually spent very limited amount of money into getting a fantastic position in, a place where we are very, we have no doubts about the oil, being there, and also very, no doubts about being able to, with relatively small amounts, being able to increase the production quite significantly. Then, the last part is, of course, when can we take out 500 million barrels? Okay, maybe never. Maybe it won't, really, be economically interesting, at least, for the next, 10 years to do that. But some. You know, every percentage that you increase the recovery factor is 80 million barrels, so that's food for thought. You see a bit of the structure here. It's, it was lined up to be an exclusivity period of nine months + 12 months. Why that? Because the whole deal was structured in order to plan for how to get a license from the Americans to operate. So we saw Chevron got it, so then we said, "Okay, we can actually apply using our Illinois company as a basis to achieve exactly what Chevron achieved." So Illinois became a strategic point for us, and now we are considering, you know, is it still that important, or does it still have the same potential role in the future? And that is too early to say. But that was why we had so much time. I think now we can work much faster. The PDVSA and the government wants us to go quickly into the field. On the other hand, they also spend time with their bureaucracy to approve the deal. So, we'll see how fast we can do it, but we have to make sure that we do it, you know, not faster than what we have of licenses and approvals, of course. But we are at least preparing ourselves to be ready once we get these licenses and so on in place. Personally, I expect, and I would be disappointed if we don't see production to Maha in 2024. That's our clear ambition. Okay, Maurel & Prom, just to highlight, after the sanctions, other companies have received new agreements like Chevron. So you could think that, "Oh, maybe they will change the type of contracts once the license, when the sanctions were lifted." But Maurel & Prom got exactly the same contract, and that's the expectation we also have. This is the type of contract we will have. We will be able to control the investments. We will be able to be paid in kind and control the offtake of the oil, so securing the revenues to support the return on the investment. Yeah, there's a lot of words on this page. I think the key thing I would say, we are extremely concerned and occupied with making sure that we understand the environmental challenges that we take over. So we're gonna have a specific study to document everything which is in the field of leaks. We know there is a lot, or we assume there is considerable leaks from the past and so on. So all of that will be documented so that we can document that we are improving. I think, actually, I would say that this is a great case for ESG, in the sense that we know today that Venezuela are they are venting methane gas from the tanks without collecting anything. Of course, one of the first thing we will do is to go in and fix that, and use that energy for producing or use that gas to produce energy for the field. So it's also an interesting ESG point in this. The other part here is, of course, we know there is a lot of. There has been known for being a lot of corruption in a place like Venezuela. I have been interviewed in Venezuela by the press and Bloomberg, and I said, "You know, we are a Swedish-listed company. I'm a Norwegian. We have absolute zero tolerance for anything else than straightforward contracts and, and so on. Nothing no tolerance for any type of corruption." I think it's just important to take that stand immediately and take it very clear, so we have been super clear on that from day one. Aggressively, I would say, clear on that from day one. There is no other way. A bit on the other fields, four minutes. So Papat erra is producing well, and more and more so. A bit of the pictures here, this is a field that basically was a disastrous investments by Petrobras and Chevron. They spent $7 billion in investing in these three platforms. One has now been shipped off, and then now you have the FPSO and the TLWP, which is there. We think and they've basically Petrobras neglected to the degree that maybe there will be a prosecution, a legal process to go after Petrobras for the way they have managed the FPSO, which is very bad. But it led to a low regularity in the beginning, as you see, down to 25%. This is now gradually being fixed by the operator. We are having very, very tight connection with, of course, the company we created. So I've always been in the board of 3R and now 3R Offshore. We are discussing, and when you have the board meetings, you know, the CEO is there, the CFO is there, the COO is there. Everybody is there to really also hear my view and our thoughts about how to develop this forward. So the operational regularity is increasing. It's going to increase. We are fixing the offloading system. We are improving the tanks. We have worked on the boilers. We are fixing the gas compression, and so on and so on. So there's a lot of things that had to be fixed, and as you can see, it's gradually getting better. I think by the end of 2024, I think you will be up at 80% rate. Could there come new surprises? Yeah, I think so. I mean I can't rule that out. That's just how it is with a takeover, something like this. But is it getting better? Yes, we can see that it's getting better every quarter on this. So I'm, you know, let's not forget the possibility of things that still could happen, but the situation is much better. The other part, which works fantastic is the reservoir. And so now we have started on the campaign to start up some of the wells that were shut in. So there is three workovers basically now. The first one has already started, two more coming early next year. And then we're gonna drill a new well, which is the first well that will be drilled by the new operator. But in a way, it's a bit boring. It's a copy of number seven. But, well, the boring part shouldn't be that boring because it means also we know pretty much exactly what comes out of that well. There is no reservoir risk linked to any of these things, and I think these numbers are quite conservative because the operator doesn't want to, you know, make too much, forward statements on getting much more oil. So I, I think the production will be higher than what we are prognosing with these, with these numbers, which should take us at least over 25,000 barrels on a 100% basis. Mm On, in next year. Peroá, a gas field, which I don't wanna say so much about, I think it's a fantastic gas field at the end of the pipeline. Gas prices are going up, and we are now selling our gas ourselves. Illinois, traditional onshore play, actually makes good sense, have a good payback in less than a year, with the oil price we currently see. So we are drilling three more wells. Oman, I said, has already been talked about by several others. I think we'll go and press release our next steps in Oman within the week, so I don't really have much to add here now about that. This is the production forecast with conservative numbers on Papat erra, I think, and we haven't added the Venezuela production on top of it. We will do that as we start to receive the licenses and start to be concrete about what kind of steps we can take. So, this is basically it. This is the strategy that we have previously also talked about, you know, focus on what we have. Core area, which is the Espírito Santo and Santos Basin, and of course, the bridgehead, which is predominantly now Venezuela, where we have taken this position. We spent very little money. We think we can de-risk it and use it as a base for the growth. We also have taken a small position in the pipeline in Bolivia that gives us a little bit of the same kind of advantages, that we are early at the table with the YPFB. We're also looking at possibility of taking gas all the way from Argentina, revert the pipeline that used to go flow oil, flow gas from Bolivia to Argentina, reverse it, and import gas to Brazil from Argentina. So lots of things going on. I reached the end of my presentation. I used two minutes extra, but that wasn't too bad I hope. So now open for questions. Absolutely, excellent. Thank you very much. I think just a few questions from my end before we wrap up. You know, Maha has undergone some significant, I guess, transformations with respect to both management team and ownership structure and, and then as well as the asset portfolio. You know, given these large changes, could you just summarize, you know, what your focus will be for 2024? Yeah. I think, yeah, it's correct. We have done I think we have only two people left in the organization from what was a year ago. Mm. So it's been a complete new organization. I would say to everybody that was in my. It's not because the individuals were not smart or good individuals. This is much more a result of changing the focus and changing. Mm T he way of working. We had the main office in Canada, which is now about to be closed down. Our focus on the operations is much more now driven down into the assets. So that means that we have less SG&A that are kind of just staff functions. So we have the very basic in the back office, economy and legal support, and so on, will be in Rio. But the project support and the competence to a large degree will be in Venezuela. Mm A s we see that as our hub going forward. So yeah, so we have, in a way, lost very many very good people, but we have replaced them with people that are now very focused on what the focus is now. And the focus has been business development, has been preparing for growth. We have hired people like Javier Gremes, which is a fantastic professional, as I said, and the people we have in Venezuela. I expect them to deliver great in Venezuela. Together with Starboard, I mean, DBO, myself, Paulo Mendonça, and the other guys in Starboard, super hands-on shareholders. Mm. Basically, we planned the part. An important part of buying Maha was to have it as a vehicle Mm T o go into Venezuela. So this is not sort of we're just jumping around to do, you know, random deals. This is actually a partnership that are planning, executing, and, and, and delivering on these promises. And we have done this before with great success in Brazil, and I see the situation is very similar in Venezuela. There are some of the challenges, there are some challenges are more, but the sentiment among. Yeah, people like in this room, I think it's very similar to what we saw in Brazil. People thought we were a bit crazy when we started out in 2016, talking about setting up an oil company to do business development in Brazil, where you had the largest corruption scandal that the world had ever seen, called Lava Jato. And you had the they threw out the president. It was chaos. Everybody said, "How can you, how can you do business there? This doesn't work." And it worked out perfectly well. We thought the timing was fantastic. I think we are in a similar situation now in Venezuela, and I'm sure it's gonna be fantastic result in Venezuela also. Yep. And just a final question before we wrap up. You're sitting on quite a large net cash position. Are you looking at, you know, other M&A deals, inorganic growth opportunities, aside from the cash that you will need for your present operations? Is there anything you could tell us about that? We have a good cash position. Hmm. I think the current cash position is more than good enough for doing everything we in the short run at least wants to do with the Petrourdaneta, our current position. I think what we will, of course, and what we are already working on, is looking at other possibilities. The government wants us to look at other opportunities because we are already there. So it's easy for them to pitch new things into us than to, you know, any other random company around in the world. And Chevron already has a lot, Maurel & Prom already has a lot, and so they would actually like to see Maha also take on more projects. So in that sense, I think that depends on the project, and so on. We know that there is actually almost a line of people with a lot of capital that likes to put more capital at work into Maha, if we get the right deals, and I'm sure we will get them. So we know there is a big interest to get in, and so I think, yeah, it's a good moment to secure oneself the larger share of the company. Yep. That's very informative. Well, I'm afraid that we're out of time, but thank you very much, Petter, for the presentation, and thank you to everybody else for listening in. Well, thank you.