Good morning, and welcome to DNO's first-quarter 2026 earnings call. My name is Jostein Løvås, and I am the communication manager here at DNO.

Present with me here today in Oslo are, as usual, Executive Chairman Bijan Mossavar-Rahmani, Managing Director Chris Spencer, and CFO Birgitte Wendelbo Johansen. In addition, we have a surprise guest, Morten Grini, who is Senior Vice President responsible for assets and project development in the North Sea business unit.

Morten will wrap up the presentation with a North Sea deep dive. After the presentation, we will open up for questions in a Q&A session, and press questions will be dealt with afterwards.

With that, I give the word to Bijan. Please.

Good morning, and welcome to our first-quarter 2026 results and operational update, again with a focus on the North Sea. This is a beautiful spring, sunny day in Oslo, clear blue skies.

You won't have a chance to see it because we're in a indoor room. My colleagues typically put me in an indoor room away from a window and away from the seagulls that fly over over Oslo Fjord.

Those of you in in Norway or know Norway may may understand the reference. Trust me, it's a beautiful day, and our results are similarly sunny and blue skies for the first quarter and and this has continued into the into the first part of the second quarter.

Much of this has to do with higher oil and gas prices, principally in the month of March, but the impact has been significant on our results and those of many other international or national oil and gas companies. The the the strong performance of our North Sea operations, which we will view in in more extensively Morten will, and others will touch on it.

Our strong North Sea performance has been has been able to capture high prices. We are, as not producing currently in in our Kurdistan sector.

The the acquisition of Sval Energi last year, and our our much larger presence in the North Sea now has proven the the the important de-risking that acquisition and diversification has brought to the company, and and now we are far more resilient company in terms of of capturing as much as we can the performance of our our two business units in in Kurdistan, but also in the North Sea, principally on the Norwegian Continental Shelf. The higher oil prices of course and higher gas prices are a result of of the geopolitical turmoil and the the the war in the in the in the Middle East.

Based on recent and latest reports, maybe seeing a light at the end of that tunnel, and and the peace and stability brought back to the Persian Gulf region and and Iran in particular and the other countries that have been impacted by this crisis. The the the higher oil and gas prices have resulted from it.

They have not been because of any action by the by our industry. Our industry has benefited, but of course we all recognize that tragedy and and devastation and suffering of the people that that are affected by these geopolitical crises are are not are not are not something we welcome, nor have we had anything to do with their creation.

The impact has been a strong financial results for us and other companies, and these will these are not only reflected in our first-quarter results, they will be importantly reflected in our second-quarter results. They give us the financial means with which to continue to grow our business, the many opportunities in the DNO portfolio, and the additional resources will allow us to capture those.

That's also points to stronger stronger weeks and months and years ahead. With that, I'll turn to our Managing Director, Chris Spencer, who will give a more color to the performance during the first the quarter, and facts and figures about the first quarter.

Chris.

Thank you, Bijan, and good morning from me. As introduced by Bijan, we've had a good quarter with the strong performance again in the North Sea, lifting our profits on the back of those higher prices that we've seen, particularly in March.

At the operating profit level, results increased by full 60% quarter-on-quarter, and happily we have black ink on the bottom line, which Birgitte, our CFO, will take you into a bit more in details shortly. The production, of course, as you see on the chart on the right-hand side of the graph, we are again at very strong levels of production in the North Sea, a new record by just 400 barrels a day, or barrels of oil equivalent a day, I should say.

We still love to talk about that because, first of all, it re-emphasizes the importance of the Sval acquisition we made last year, which quadrupled our North Sea production. Of course, at a time like this, the strategic importance of that acquisition is self-evident to everyone who follows our company.

Also, that is a higher level of production than we expected to have when we made the acquisition, which is one of the many areas where that acquisition so far has been very successful for the company. As we say on this slide, we're not resting on our laurels.

We are challenged that we've put forward, we've been very open about our target, to get to 100,000 from what we have within our portfolio in the North Sea by 2030. I'm very pleased that my colleague, Morten Grini, is joining us this morning to give you a bit more insight into some of the key projects that will underpin that ambition.

Another element that we've been very active on, and I hope you will continue to see, is the business development, not giant deals like the Sval one, but very much building on that through smaller and frequent transactions as we refocus that large North Sea portfolio into core areas, and seek to accelerate production through business development as well as project development. The swap deal we did with Equinor in Q1 is a fantastic example of that.

I'm very pleased to say that we found a win-win deal. Equinor are very happy with the deal, we understand, and DNO is very happy from our side.

It's accelerating the production from some of our discoveries in a unusual way because we've swapped out of those discoveries into primarily Atlantis, which we expect to come on sooner than the discoveries we left. Smaller deal, but another nice bolt-on is the Vega transaction, which we announced today.

It was just inked yesterday, thanks to INPEX and of course our team. A small deal, but once again, showing the way we are building and strengthening position in our core areas.

Last on the slide, but very much not least, the dividend was maintained by our board of directors in their meeting yesterday. Not a difficult decision on the back of these results, and that's maintaining a strong track record over the last five or six years.

Next slide. I'm just going to briefly touch on Kurdistan because we have a number of slides on the North Sea, which Morten will present shortly.

In Kurdistan, we started the quarter optimistically and strongly. We had recommenced drilling just before the end of last year and had really great results from the first two wells we drilled, until, of course, we got to the end of February and the world changed for us as it did for everyone.

Of course, we had to shut down as a precautionary measure. We are ramping up our what we call passive protection, in other words, concrete walls, in case we do get targeted, we're doing what we can to protect, of course, our people, but also our critical facilities, and particularly those that have long lead times to repair.

Following the declaration of ceasefire, we have started tentatively to get back to work, bring back people to site and so forth. We've resumed workover of existing wells and restarted drilling.

That means that when we're ready to start, we are optimistic that we'll be able to bring back Tawke and Peshkabir at higher rates than we left off at. Obviously, we're not quite sure now where the production levels from Kurdistan will be, the final bullet point saying at the moment, of course, '26 production will be lower than we thought when we addressed you a quarter ago.

Similarly, investment is going to be lower. When we do restart, we're expecting strong levels of production.

With that, I will pass over to Birgitte to take you through the financials.

Thank you, Chris. Thank you, Bijan.

Good morning, everyone, from me as well. I'm very glad to present start the year by presenting very strong results from DNO.

The revenue in the quarter was $627 million, compared to $482 million in Q4 '25. Please note that if you look at year on year, the large movement going from Q1 '25 is mainly related to the acquisition of Sval, included in our accounts as of June '25, and that's why you see the large movement for Q2 to Q3.

If we look at the movement from Q4 '25 to Q1 '26, the main drivers are, of course, the increased prices in the North Sea and also the increased sales volumes. In Q1 '26, we have 93% of the revenue stemming from the North Sea and about 7% remaining from Kurdistan.

If we look at the operating profit, as Chris mentioned, it's a solid improvement from Q4, and also again, we don't compare with Q1 since that is not including the numbers from the North Sea now Sval or previous Sval, now DNO North Sea business unit. There are two one-off effects that I would like to mention.

One is the change of deferred tax assets having a positive effect of about $30 million on our numbers, and the other one is an increased SG&A in the first quarter of about 30 $20 million, which is related to the reorganization in the North Sea that is also a one-off effect. That brings us, as Chris said, to solid black ink for the first quarter of $51 million in net profit in 2026.

If we move to balance sheet, Jostein. Thank you.

Oh, sorry, the cash flow. First, we ended 2025 with $454 million in cash position, and the result after Q1 was $531 million, a solid improvement there as well.

If we look at the cash flow from operations, stronger than previous quarters, high prices in March is yet to be reflected on our cash flow, and you can see this in the cash flow statement through an increase in trade receivables of $125 million. Tax, we had two tax installments in Q1 totaling $64 million.

That means we will have three tax installments in Q2, round $95 million, reflecting the 2025 tax. Then we have the investing activities of $153 million, consisting of $107 million in asset investments and $48 million in decommissioning, partly offset by $3 million in net cash inflow from equity-accounted investment in West Africa, as stated on the slide.

If we look at financing activities, that includes net interest payments and also FX. The net cost was $88 million, leading us to the cash at quarter-end of $531 million.

Then balance sheet, please, Jostein. We have very strong, solid balance sheet still.

Total balance sheet is about $6.2 billion, of which half is PP&E, and that has been quite in line the last four quarters after the acquisition of Sval in Q2 '25, as mentioned. If we look at the net debt, an improvement there as well, about 12% reduction in net debt from $886 million by the end of Q4 to $790 million in Q1 '26.

We have an equity percent equity share of the balance sheet of about 21%. The equity is $1.3 billion, so that is well within the covenants in our bonds.

On the back of this strong balance sheet, as Chris said, the board has decided to pay a dividend of 0.375 NOK per share, 16 consecutive quarters in a row with dividends to our shareholders, totaling $497 million in dividend and $62 million in share buyback. That is quite quite strong.

On the back of that, very good quarter, very good position for DNO. I hand the word over to Morten for a deep dive into our North Sea business.

Thank you, Birgitte, and good morning, everyone. Today it's my pleasure to give you some highlights about the project portfolio in the North Sea.

If you look at Q1 results, production results of close to 90,000 barrels, you for sure see line of sight of reaching 100,000 barrels per day production in the North Sea by 2030. The scribbles you see on this whiteboard is some schematics identifying development opportunities for one of our discoveries in a sprint session together with Aker BP.

I'll get back to that later. Starting off with our sanctioned projects that are coming onstream between now and 2029, representing about 200 million barrels gross reserves.

Starting off with Symra, that's a four-well subsea tie-back to the Ivar Aasen platform. Here we have two wells already on production as of April 2026.

That's about nine months ahead of the PDO plan, well done by Aker BP and the licence to make that happen. We're still drilling, and we have two more wells to finish off, expect to put these two on production in Q3 and Q4 2026.

Then over to Dvalin Nord, which is a three-well subsea tie-back to the existing Dvalin subsea template. Here the subsea infrastructure is in place, and we are currently drilling this three-well campaign.

Two wells have been drilled to TD with the results as expected, and here we hope to get to production in Q3, also well ahead of the PDO plan of January 2027. Bestla next, two-well subsea tie-back to the Brage platform.

Both wells have been drilled, and reservoir came in as expected. We have some subsea campaign going on this year and also some work to be done on the Brage platform, but here OKEA is on good drive to get to production start in Q1 2027 and potentially late 2026.

Last but not least, the Berling project, which is a three-well subsea tie-back to Åsgard B. Subsea infrastructure is mainly in place, and we're getting ready to start drilling operations late this year or sometime during first half next year.

Production start is in Q1 2029, and critical path is the work to be done on Åsgard B. Hopefully we can also accelerate production here from Q1 '29 to late 2028.

Now the next series, the discoveries we have made where we have finished appraisal scope. Here you see it's nine different projects that is being matured for final investment decision between now and 2028.

Look at the first four, Syrah, Cuvette, Kjøttkake, and Ofelia. They have all final investment decisions in 2026 for production start planned in 2027 and 2028.

I plan to come back in some more details here on Kjøttkake, Kveikje, and Atlantis, but first I also want to highlight the focus that DNO has on accelerating first oil on all of the projects, and with the ambition of getting all this onstream before 2030. We have a fast-track mindset or a get-off-your-asses-and-develop mindset, which basically means, hey, what does it take to bring first oil sooner?

If it makes sense to make it happen, we go after it. If you look at the two columns to the far right, you see the scheduled production start for these, and you also see the DNO ambition if accelerated, and with the goal of getting all this, as mentioned, on production before 2030.

The success of that, of course, remains to be seen. We're working hard to make it happen.

Next. Also wanted to mention a couple of examples on our fast-track mindset.

Kjøttkake development. That was a discovery in Q1 2025.

We have a final investment decision coming up in September this year, but we're on good path here to be able to deliver first oil in Q1 2028. That is three years from discovery to first oil, which is no other project of this kind have been delivered that quickly in the North Sea.

Look on the schematic to the right, you see Kjøttkake mentioned there. That's a four-slot template tie-back into the Nova subsea field, which Wintershall Dea is the operator, and then further tie-back to Gjøa, where Vår is the operator.

Critical for this success for us was to immediately appraise the discovery we had back in 2025. Then shortly thereafter team up with Aker BP to do a sprint to mature a development concept which we identified.

Then shortly thereafter, we put a team together. Aker BP had a team just coming off another project.

It made sense to hand the operatorship over to them. We also have secondees in from DNO into that team, and started the planning of this project.

With early pre-FID investments on the long lead and vessels was also critical to maintain the opportunity for Q1 2028 production start. Of course, also important to have a close dialogue and early involvement with vendors on this, obviously, but also hosts and regulators was also important, and that is progressing very well.

Over to Kveikje. The base plan there was to bring Kveikje into the Ringhorne Vest development and down to Troll for a 2031-2032 production start.

Here in Q1 this year, the licence and Equinor, as the operator, asked then DNO and Aker BP to go ahead and perform a sprint on behalf of the licence to look into this alternative of taking Kveikje to Kjøttkake and up to Gjøa as an alternative to be able to accelerate first oil with a couple of years. We had the sprint together with Aker BP, and they identified a development concept, as you can see on this schematic, with a 4.3-kilometer tie-in from Kveikje into Kjøttkake.

This team working on this to mature this development concept simultaneously as they're maturing the development concept to take Kveikje down to Ringhorne Vest and to Troll. Concept select here is coming up this summer, and then we will see what alternative will be chosen.

Still to be confirmed what alternative they will go for. Chris mentioned, of course happy with the BD deals accelerating production for us.

In this case here, it's Atlantis, where we had swapped in with Equinor to get 19% in that discovery, where the plan is a tie-back to Kvitebjørn, where we also have 19% work interest. FID here, investment decision, is coming up early next year and a production start in 2029 or 2030, expected to be at around 8,000 barrels net DNO when they get to plateau in 2030.

Also want to mention on this slide here, we have appraisal program ongoing, and Aphrodite and Carmen is in the same area. If in discovery, could be developed back to Kvitebjørn, potentially in some sort of combination with Atlantis.

Which takes me to my last slide, which is upcoming North Sea 2026 exploration program. We have six wells planned, three appraisal and three exploration wells.

The change from previous report out was, of course, we got Aphrodite in with the deal with Equinor, and we handed Mistral Nord and Snorre over to them. Snorre was also moved from previously planned drilling in 2026 to 2027 because of rig schedule, but still a good program coming up here now in 2026, and we have already started to drill on Carmen, where we expect to be in reservoir shortly.

DNO, we remain among the most active explorers on the NCS, and it's an exciting portfolio to drill also now in 2026, as you see, and some of them maybe some good opportunities for fast-track development. Thank you.

Thanks a lot, Morten, for the excellent presentation. Then we'll open up for questions in the Q&A session.

I guess I should give a couple of technical remarks there that if you want to pose a question, please raise the tiny virtual hand on the top of your screen. 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.

With that, looks like Teodor is ready to ask a question. Please Teodor.

Sveen-Nilsen.

Good morning, and thanks for taking my question. Can everyone hear me?

Yes.

We can.

Perfectly. Thanks.

A few questions from my side. First on summer maintenance for NCS given the strong oil and gas prices we see now.

Is it tempting to postpone some of the summer maintenance, or is it possible at all? Second question, that is on Kurdistan.

Impressive to see that you already have started drilling there after the potential peace plan. Just wonder, what do we need to see specifically to see you resuming production and not only drilling?

Third and last question, that is on guidance. In fourth-quarter report, you provided some guidance on production and operational spend.

I didn't see an update on that in the Q1 report. Could you just confirm that the guidance given in the Q4 report is still valid?

Thanks.

Morten, you want to do the summer?

Yeah. For sure.

Summer maintenance, some of this scope here is important for tie-ins. We have important scope on Brage, which is important for to tie in Bestla, and we also have important scope on Ivar Aasen and Edvard Grieg for this Symra production.

We also have some critical maintenance that they have to do on the Norne field because of backlog there. Some of it, it's difficult to push out in time, but I'm sure there'll be some optimization opportunities there to maximize on production.

Thank you. On Kurdistan, yes, we resumed drilling, and we did that following the first ceasefire that was announced.

Our concerns in Kurdistan in terms of operations broadly, including drilling and workovers and other investments and activities, our concern is the safety and security primarily of our staff, but also as Chris mentioned of critical surface infrastructure. In the time that we had stopped operations, start of the war, the Israel-US war and strikes on Iran, we started put into place as best as we could passive security measures that has principally been in the form of concrete walls around critical infrastructure and even more importantly around residences and areas in which our staff either live or work.

We have now put in something over 2 km of these concrete walls in the Peshkabir field and also in the Tawke field, we're more comfortable that we provided a safe work environment as much as possible, as much as we are capable of doing for our staff, and knock wood, there've been no strikes and therefore no impact on the individuals or on our equipment in Kurdistan since last summer, where we had those drone attacks that we had reported on. With that, we've resumed drilling and other activities, so that we can hit the button when the time comes with respect to again safety and commercial viability of our operations.

Once we hit the button, as Chris said, we expect we will have even higher production levels than we did when we stopped production. That's a result in part of not having produced these fields for some time, and there'll be flush production, but also a result again, as Chris mentioned, of our drilling in the interim period.

We have new wells coming on that are available now to be produced or will be coming on production soon. Now, I've made reference to commercial viability because if you recall, as we've again widely reported, our average sale price prior to shut down was around $30 a barrel, just a bit over $30 a barrel.

That price that we were receiving, and we indicated that we received the payments in advance of production. We were paid first, and then produced subsequently, quickly thereafter.

That was in a global price environment of I don't know, $60 Brent, give or take a few dollars. We're in a very different environment now.

There are wild gyrations in prices every time there's a report of peace or new strikes, prices can move $5, $10, sometimes $15 a barrel in a day. The average seems to now be about $30 to $40 a barrel more than it was before.

We are obviously not prepared to sell our oil for any period of time at the same price today in a much higher price environment globally than we did previously. How do we get there?

There's a lot going on that affects pricing and affects how we sell our oil, to whom, and to where or from where. The government of Iraq has only just been announced that there is a prime minister who has been elected, subject to confirmation by the parliament in Iraq, and that's expected to take place, but it'll take some time.

It's taken many, many months for to get to this point. A cabinet has to be appointed and approved.

That will take a bit of time. Until that happens, any discussions we have with Baghdad and the Iraqi state oil marketing organization, and we are having those discussions, will take a bit of time.

Those of you who follow Kurdistan also know that the contract between the government of Turkey and the Iraq for the use of the pipeline that takes Iraqi and Kurdistan oil to the Mediterranean, the port of Ceyhan, that contract expires at the end of July. What will replace it, we don't know.

It's still a work in progress. What the implications of that are in terms of the access of Kurdistan companies to that pipeline and Iraqi companies to that pipeline under what terms and conditions, that remains to be seen.

How that is resolved, and have to be resolved by summer, by the end of July, will impact how we can market our oil and under what terms and conditions. There are a number of moving parts out of our control, but that are imminent.

There will be a government in place in Baghdad hopefully in the not-too-distant future in a matter of weeks, and in a matter of a couple more months there'll be potentially a pipeline agreement that will govern how our oil can move at least through Turkey to world markets. There's a situation in Syria is a lot more stable today.

There's still work to be done there, but in terms of repairing pipelines and roads and access for companies to move oil and gas out of Syria. That opens up another possible routes.

We've said before that we are trying to and hoping to and probably in the matter of months, if not earlier, we'll be able to access export prices in some form. Now, even when we were exporting our oil to Turkey, Teodor, as you well know and others, shareholders and analysts know as well, we were getting, again, much higher prices, but there was still a deep discount because we were moving across a large territory geographically, and that was complicated.

Our expectation is that we will approach those sorts of prices, or those sorts of discounts to Brent and global prices that were in place previously. We're very optimistic we'll achieve that, and once we do that, that could make a significant difference in terms of our production, our sales, our pricing, our revenues, our operating profits, our net profits.

That's our target, and that's achievable once some of these complexities are addressed and hopefully resolved, hopefully to suit us fine. Chris, would you like to add something to that?

No, I think that's a comprehensive answer. I can just touch on the final question on guidance.

The only guidance we updated this quarter, Teodor, as you will have seen, was on the Kurdistan business. I touched on that on the slide I presented, and obviously with what's happened since the end of February, we're not really in a position to offer a new guidance.

I think you can make your own judgment on that just as well as we can, given the current situation. The fact that we haven't updated the other guidance means that we stand by what we said last quarter, simple as that, basically.

Good.

Thank you.

Sorry. Next question comes from Claudia Carpenter.

You might have to introduce yourself.

Hi, I'm a reporter. Is that okay?

There's no one else on the list, I guess we can take a question from a reporter.

Thank you very much. It's really interesting what you're saying about Iraq.

Since you say that the production and investment that you'd planned in Kurdistan is going to be lower than previously, can't you say what you're expecting now?

You must have

some expectation if you say that there's an expectation.

You've raised two questions about what's going on politically and what we're able to do. We have resumed now our investment plans that we had previously announced, which included the drilling of eight wells in Kurdistan this year.

We're back on track. We have rigs drilling.

We're going to add rigs, and so our investment plan was interrupted for maybe a couple months, but has now been resumed. I believe we're the only international oil company in Kurdistan drilling, and with such ambitious drilling plans, but also extensive.

We're back on track drilling. The fact that we've had such a great quarter and that our revenues are higher partly because of higher prices in March, and now in April and going into May, and there's a lot more cash coming in, we have the corporate resources with which to execute our investment plans.

That we're doing. What happens in terms of actual production and price, those are out of our control.

Price, of course, depends on what happens to global prices, but also importantly what happens to the price that we can achieve, and other international oil companies operating in Kurdistan. They have a different price plan and export plan than ours.

They reached an agreement last year, and we chose not to participate in those arrangements at that time, in part because we were able to receive payment from our buyers in advance of our actual sales. We called it cash and carry.

Of course, it wasn't really cash. It was cash during the ISIS period where people showed up with suitcases of cash.

The banking system had broken down at that point. They delivered suitcases of cash, and we delivered the tanker truckloads of oil to them.

Now, of course, it's a different arrangement, but we still use that cash and carry apparent term.

You can't just give me a number what you think the net production is going to be in Kurdistan in 2026?

If you're a reporter, I assume you follow Iraq and the region. If you tell me what's going to happen in Iraq and the government formation will take place and what'll happen to the Turkey pipeline, if you give me those inputs, I can give you the outputs that you're looking for.

Okay. Are you exporting everything through the pipeline, or are you using trucks?

When we were still exporting, it was through the pipeline.

There've

been periods in the past where the pipeline wasn't available to Iraqi and Kurdistan sales that we used trucks, lots of trucks.

Apparently there's a huge surge in demand for trucks now, everywhere.

I think we'll have to take the next question now from

That's fine. I'm sorry.

Sorry. From Nikolas Stefanou, and there seems to be a follow-up question from Teodor, and I think those will be the last two questions today.

Nicolas, you might go ahead

and yeah. Both press and analysts.

Good to hear back from you again. Guys, sorry just a clarification on Kurdistan realizations.

You've very rightly said so that we're $120 dated Brent now for the last average for this quarter. If you're going to resume production there and sales, would you try and make an agreement with the traders for a much higher price before you do that?

Or how should I be thinking about your sort of approach to maybe getting a bit more of the share of the pie there?

Again, the price we're getting before and the arrangements we had in place before were based on $50, $60 oil prices. Those have now doubled.

It moves up and down every day, as I said. You can be assured that our aspiration is to get a higher price, and we are talking to several parties to see how best that can be achieved.

It's complicated by politics and geopolitics and access to transportation infrastructure. It's complicated, but you can assume, and you should be assured, that we will do everything possible to try to capture the higher global prices and the higher value that our oil commands.

I hope when we meet again for our next-quarterly discussions that we will have some of those arrangements clarified, and hopefully put in place. We're working day and night to try to get there.

Does the change to the oil price environment change in any way you think about your participation in the tripartite agreement?

We had some concerns about that agreement that we voiced at the time. That was many, many months ago.

That agreement is now evolving in terms of how it's working. I'm not privy to all of the details, but I assume we will have more information about how it works and how those arrangements and those payments compared to what we were receiving through our alternative arrangements.

We'll see. We'll see how that's working out, how the consultant's report, if you're familiar with the details, has worked in practice, how quickly and how much Baghdad is going to be paying the other companies under that arrangement.

If that turns out to be favorable, if some of the uncertainties that we were concerned about have been resolved one way or the other, then we'll have more information as to how that option works compared to other options that we are pursuing. Again, the region has changed.

Who knows if the US and Iran come to some agreement and sanctions are removed, Iran would be one other way of getting oil out of Kurdistan into global markets through swaps that there are refineries near the border between Iran and Iraq. One can potentially move oil into those refineries and get a swap in the Persian Gulf.

Hopefully by then, the Strait of Hormuz will have opened up. The world has changed very rapidly and creates optionality, including what agreements they reach on the use of that pipeline for an option.

There are new options that did not exist when the other international companies in Kurdistan reached their agreement. They did the best they felt they could at that time.

The world has changed. It's going to continue to change, and in ways that we can't quantify right now what the broader implications of that.

Of course, the role of Baghdad in the sale and transfer of Kurdistan oil was based on a budget law that was passed over a year ago, and with a different government, and there'll be a new budget law that also covers Kurdish oil, or whether Kurdistan will choose to again export the oil from the region itself. We don't know, but those are all a lot of moving parts.

We're watching them very carefully, and we will try to engage in the arrangements that we can put in place that best collapse the price we receive for our oil and global prices. Again, we should know more on how those conversations will go at our next quarterly meeting, I hope.

If something is put in place before then, of course, we will announce that to the market when that takes place.

Thank you.

There will be a last short follow-up question from analyst Teodor Sveen-Nilsen.

Yes. Thank you for taking that follow-up.

It's regarding North Sea lifting schedule in Q2. Should we expect over lift or under lift for your North Sea production in second quarter?

Birgitte, can you address that?

Yes. I don't have all the details on top of my head, but April and June, more normal as at least some thoughts that have been given.

I don't have all the details and all the facts for the time being to be honest, sorry about that. We can come back to you afterwards.

Maybe, Morten, do you have any

I can chime in.

Thanks.

We talked about the Q1 production, just talk about production from my side. Q1 production, as we talked about, came in very well.

We expect to go down as we mentioned now, because of the maintenance and these upgrades that is happening now in Q2 and Q3, slightly less than production, of course, next two quarters before we then ramp back up and have a strong finish in 2026 here, around 90,000.

Good.

No info on lifting.

Liftings are always very difficult to predict, Teodor, as you know. Particularly when you get to the end of the quarter, just as a matter of a few days can make a cargo flip from one quarter to the other, it's extremely difficult to give guidance on liftings.

However, just emphasize for everyone that we have contracts in place so that we don't just get paid depending on the price of the oil on the day of the lifting. We have what we call PQ contracts in place so that we're exposed to the price of oil every day.

You don't have to worry. I know for some of my colleagues who have offshore production in West Africa and so forth, then you cannot get those type of financial arrangements, and so the price you get is just when you load your cargo.

For us, on both the gas and the oil in the North Sea, we have the exposure to the ongoing prices that you see. You may not see on your screens because, of course, the dated Brent has been considerably higher than the front-month Brent during March and April.

Whilst liftings impact on our profit and loss side of our accounts, when it comes to cash flow, we are not dependent on liftings.

Great.

That's fair. Thank you.

Are there any other questions?

Just a press question that we'll deal with afterwards, I think.

Because we're like Donald Trump, we can't stop talking to the press, and also to our shareholders. We don't want to cut you off if there are other questions.

We can take a few more minutes to address them. If not, we can close this session and the press.

I just wanted to ask, what is your name?

Sorry, if there is a press question, it's not going to be raised by you. It's Diaa Serhal from Middle East I think MEES, right?

Diaa Serhal, will you unmute yourself?

Hello, good morning. Can you hear me?

Yes.

Good morning. Thank you very much, and congratulations on the results.

My question is to Chairman Mossavar-Rahmani. I'm just picking up on something you mentioned.

You mentioned that there has been some sort of conversations with SOMO with regards to restarting production, if I understand it from your earlier answer. Because what we hear on the Iraqi side is that they want the Kurdistan companies to produce so they can double exports currently to Turkey.

I'm just trying to understand if there has been any conversations on that recently. Thank you.

Thank you. Any other questions?

The answer is yes. Yes, but and we've had discussions with others as well who might open up channels to to to to exports and monetization, and startup of production and monetization of that production.

We still the issue of security and safety of our people and of our equipment is is critical to to us. We've been hit by drones before that put us that put the we had to cease production while we did repairs.

Again, and we sprinted to make those repairs, but but we've been hit before and damaged, and we are very sensitive to that. The situation in the region continues to be very uncertain.

Other companies have been attacked as well by missiles and and drones. That is the single most important issue for us.

We anticipate we will start production, and in that anticipation of startup of production, we started up now for some weeks of work in the fields, workovers of existing wells, so that when we start up the wells are are available to produce at maximum volumes. We've drilled new wells.

We will have additional production, we we're doing what we can. When we hit the button, we will we will have significant amount of oil going into the the system from Kurdistan.

We are, as you well know, the largest producer in Kurdistan. As I've said, we're the only company actively preparing for startup by by drilling new wells.

I believe once we, as the largest producer, as the oldest producer in Kurdistan, once we start production, our our expectation is that other companies will follow. Their production, these other companies, below ours, but I think if they see us producing, and they see us producing safely for for some period of time, they will add.

For purposes of SOMO, when we start up, it won't be just us starting up at 85,000 barrels a day, it'll be additional oil coming from Kurdistan as well, and that's to everyone's advantage, to the company of the other companies. Once we take the lead and take the first hits, I hope there won't be any any any hits, and that the situation will be stable and the region peaceful.

Our engagement and our involvement in exports will open up much more oil than just ours alone.

Thank you. Just to pick up on this, is the channel you're looking at, is it Syria, or is it Turkey when you're looking at other alternative channels?

I'm thinking here trucking.

Trucking is an option through Syria. Trucking is also an option through Turkey.

I think the currently available route for substantial amounts of oil where the transportation cost is lowest is the pipeline through Turkey. That has been our preferred option, and the one that we've used maybe not half the period we've been producing in Kurdistan, because we have also used trucks.

Hundreds of trucks a day during the ISIS period, and during other periods where the Iraqi-Turkey pipeline was not available. There was a time when we were producing 125,000 barrels a day in Kurdistan, we were loading a truck every 1.5 minutes.

At the time I described it as being like a Coca-Cola bottling plant. The trucks would come up, fill them, and they'd move on.

That's an option. Trucking is far more expensive per barrel than pipelines, and our preferred route would be the pipeline through Turkey for economic reasons, and for other reasons of efficiency.

If it comes to trucking, we'll look at that option as well. Trucking opens up Syria as a possible route.

It also opens up Iran, if hopefully all the issues are resolved and sanctions removed, then Iran would be an option for us as well. These are to be seen.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. That concludes this earnings call, and thanks to all for participating, and see you again next quarter.

Thank you.