Eni S.p.A. (NYSE:E) Q3 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

Oswald Clint: Yes, good afternoon. Thank you. I’d like to go back to Indonesia just to get a little bit more detail. It’s clearly a massive discovery. I was curious when you’ll go after this multi-TCF upside. Can you get this into a 2024 exploration drilling plan where we can look at that? Is there any chance of any of the missing acreage blocks on your map that seem to extend away from this current discovery? Is there any license rounds coming up that you might participate in and would you run this at 88% equity or I think Francesco talked about valorizing it at some point, is that a couple of years down the line? That’s the first question. Secondly, as we think about new developments in places like Indonesia, your friend Mr. Puliti at Oil and Money this year was saying he had to say no to a new FPSO job for a top client, talking about lack of people, lack of supply chain pressure.

So I don’t know if that was you, but it feeds into the view the supply chain is tightening up rather quickly. So I wanted to ask about the pressures you’re experiencing and ultimately just how robust that 3% to 4% volume growth is in the four-year plan. Thank you.

Francesco Gattei: Okay, about the dual expression model you know that this is something that you apply generally speaking in the various discoveries. Clearly this will depend on the opportunities, on the progress in terms of development. It is a model that is, let’s say, flexible, clearly by having an exposure of 80% after the acquisition net is an additional opportunity to extract and fast-track value. I leave then to Guido and then Aldo Napolitano that is the head of exploration, the answer related to the development of the cost and the exploration upside.

Guido Brusco: Now, clearly, the pick-up of the activity, both traditional and green, is putting pressure on contractors, both in terms of capacity and ability to deliver activity, but also in terms of cost inflation. We know that from 2021 to 2022 there was an increase of 10% of cost overall, 7% from 2022 to 2023 and we expect 4% year-on-year in the following year. So this clearly is factored in our CapEx estimation. The quality of Geng asset is such that we expect a very competitive unit cost per development. In terms of further exploration, I would, in the surrounding area, I would leave the floor to Aldo to give more color.

Aldo Napolitano: Yes, thank you, Guido. Yes, we are defining the plans for next year and future years in terms of further drilling in the area of the Kutei Basin. Maybe you have noticed that we have already actually pursued a strategy in the acquisition of acreage in the area. So we have recently, just a few months ago, actually had the award of another block in the area, so the Peri Mahakam. And as already explained, we have increased our shares in all other blocks where we believe there’s a good potential. So we have not yet defined in details our plans for future drilling but certainly this will be a focus area.

Guido Brusco: You had also a question, sorry, on the confidence of the plant growth for production of 3% to 4%. This clearly we have a strong pipeline of projects namely Baleine in Ivory Coast, Congo LNG, A&E structure in Libya and last but not least this Geng plus Mozambique and other significant projects from other affiliates and our satellites in Angola, a new gas project and a global development and from Var, Johan Castberg and Balder X. So with this pipeline of project which has been most of them already sanctioned in the plan and in execution, we are very confident to deliver this plan growth.

Oswald Clint: Very clear. Thank you.

Operator: The next question comes from Alessandro Pozzi of Mediobanca.

Alessandro Pozzi: Hi. Good afternoon. Thank you for taking my questions. The first one is on SSE, a carbon capture asset. I believe recently you announced a new agreement with the UK with regards to high net and you secured basically and the first as a base regulated model. I was wondering if you can give us a bit more color on the economics and what are the pros versus more traditional model. The second question is on GGP. I believe you contracted a fairly large amount of new volumes on the LNG. You have a target of 18 million tons per annum by 2016. And I believe that you are basically pretty much there with the new volumes. I was wondering whether you could see upside basically to the long-term guidance there. And the final one, if I may, on North Geng, you talked about a lot of potential upside in terms of discoveries.

I was wondering, will you be in a position to finalize the size of the next, the second floating production unit and whether potentially that has the capacity of doubling the current production in the country? Thank you.

Francesco Gattei: Thank you, Alessandro. Two questions are for Guido and the last one the GGP is related is to Cristian.

Guido Brusco: Yeah you’re absolutely right we have agreed with the UK authorities the main economic model terms and however the final stage to assign the definitive economic license is still ongoing and we are planning to complete this process by the second quarter of 2024 in order to have a cluster FID which includes also the emitter by the quarter three of 2024. The pricing is clearly and the economic model is based on a regulated asset base model which is still as I said under finalization with the regulator. And it will include also some mitigation mechanism to reduce the risk related to this first of a kind project.

Alessandro Pozzi: So basically is a return on the CapEx that you spend on the project?

Guido Brusco: Yeah, basically, this is the mechanism, the model.

Alessandro Pozzi: Okay.

Guido Brusco: Sorry, on the cost.

Francesco Gattei: On the overall cost, including also the operating cost.

Guido Brusco: Yeah.

Alessandro Pozzi: Thank you.

Cristian Signoretto: Yeah, so on the LNG portfolio, let’s say on the LNG supply contracted portfolio, as you said, we have advanced substantially with these last three agreements that we’ve signed. We are now around 13 million tonnes of contracted capacity. We want to achieve the 18 million tonnes by 2026. And sure, I mean, I think the big evolution on the Geng North discovery, this will give us some upsides on the target that clearly we are going to take into consideration when we draw the next plan.

Guido Brusco: As far as the size of the potential North Hub, of course, is still premature to say, but for the size of the current discovery and the asset and the knowledge we do have of the asset. We are planning something which is between 800 million standard cubic feet per day to 1 BCF per day with also a significant liquid production between 50,000 to 60,000 barrels per day. This is for the knowledge, information and data we do have today. Of course we are still assessing the discovery.

Alessandro Pozzi: Okay. So 50,000 to 60,000 barrels of liquids and plus on top the dry gas.

Guido Brusco: The dry gas.

Alessandro Pozzi: Okay, so it’s doubling basically, more than doubling the production from Indonesia at the moment?