BP - Earnings Call - Q3 2025 (Q&A)

Transcript

Speaker 5

Welcome, everyone, to BP's Third Quarter 2025 Results Call, which today we're hosting in Abu Dhabi. We'll be focusing today's call on the third quarter results and the contents of the video that I hope many of you will have seen by now. Before we move to Q&A, let me first hand over to Murray for a few brief opening remarks. Murray.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Craig, and thanks, everyone, for joining the call today. We're now three quarters into our 12-quarter plan and have delivered another strong quarter of operational performance and strategic progress. Earnings and cash flow generation was good, with underlying pre-tax earnings of $5.3 billion and underlying net income of $2.2 billion. With $7.8 billion of operating cash flow delivered this quarter, we are making good progress in delivering on our growth target for adjusted free cash flow growth of 20% CAGR over 2025 to 2027. Our operations teams are doing a great job in running the assets well, with upstream production increasing by around 3% quarter on quarter, supported by upstream plant reliability at around 97%, leading to upgraded full-year underlying production guidance and refining availability also close to 97%. The best quarter in 20 years for the current portfolio. Looking ahead, we're also making strong strategic progress.

We've started up six new oil and gas major projects in 2025, four of which were ahead of schedule, and we've had 12 exploration discoveries so far this year, including Boomerang Bay in Brazil, where the latest analysis and results give us even further confidence. This performance is also showing up in the downstream as well. Underlying earnings in the first nine months were around 40% higher than the same period in 2024. In customers, we delivered our highest 3Q on record and refining captured a better margin environment. We're making good progress on de-risking our $20 billion divestment proceeds target, today upgrading our proceeds guidance underpinned by proceeds completed and announced this year that are expected to be around $5 billion. We're staying disciplined with our capital investment, with organic CapEx on track to be below $14 billion.

We remain confident in the momentum we are building in support of the delivery of the cost and net debt targets we have laid out. In summary, while there remains a lot of volatility, we are staying focused on what we control, underpinned by a laser-like focus on performance across the company. We have world-class assets and capability, with operations delivering strongly. We have a deep resource base and are building high-quality options for growth in the future, the focus of our ongoing portfolio review. We're continuing our momentum in our drive to reduce costs. We're making good progress in growing cash flow and returns and our plans to strengthen the balance sheet. Of course, we have more to do. All of this is in service of growing shareholder value and returns. With that, I'll hand over to Craig to take us through the Q&A.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Murray. Okay, we're going to aim to finish the call at around 2:00 P.M. U.K. time, so in just under an hour. To start with, I'm going to take one question per person so everybody gets a chance. If we have time, we can cycle back to those that want to re-poll for a follow-up question. I think we'll start there with taking the first question from Al Syme at Citi. Al.

Murray, I've got a question on Boomerangy. I'm really intrigued by the decision, rather, to publish the map on slide nine. Clearly, there's a lot of market interest in the discovery, but at the same time, it's quite early days to be publishing a map. Can you talk about the confidence in that geological map based on the data you've got? I'm also intrigued to know whether that sort of image looks any different to the pre-drill assessment that you had of the field. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yep. Great, Al. Thanks very much. Yeah, we're feeling pretty good about Boomerangy right now. As we disclosed recently, a 1,000-meter column, 100 meters at the bottom of oil, 900 meters of rich gas condensate. We've evaluated about two-thirds of the samples in the labs, and we continue to evaluate them. The map we've produced is off the pre-drill seismic. There's a lot of technology that's changed over time, and the pre-drill and post-drill are pretty close to each other. The guys were able to image the top and bottom of the reservoir within a couple of feet based on the quality of the seismic we had. We're feeling pretty good about it. It's a pretty good aerial view of it, at least 300 sq km, at least 1,000 meters of column height, and we continue with the lab sampling.

We will update the market in due course once we understand the gas-oil ratios fully and once we understand the volumes in place. We've secured a rig to drill the next appraisal well and do a flow test on it as well, which we expect to happen once the equipment's available near the end of next year. Good news on Boomerangy. Thanks for the question.

Thank you.

Speaker 5

Okay, thanks, Al. We'll take the next question from Alejandro at Santander. Alejandro, over to you.

Speaker 7

Alejandro, you may need to check the mute function on your device.

Hello. Thank you for taking my question. The question is about Castrol, the process, the strategic review of this asset, if you can give us some color about how the process is going. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Great. Thanks, Alejandro. I'll take that one again. First, just a small note of congratulations to Emma and Michelle who run the business. It's nine quarters in a row of increase in earnings. Very strong performance out of that business, and it's going very well. It's a commercial process, so I won't talk much about it other than to say there's strong interest. We are moving at pace, and we'll update you in due course. You'll remember that any proceeds that come from the strategic review will be dedicated to the balance sheet. Strong interest. We're moving at pace, and we'll update the market when we have something to say to the market directly about it. Thanks for the question.

Thank you.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Alejandro. We're going to take the next question from Irene Himona at Bernstein. Irene.

Speaker 0

Thank you very much. Good afternoon and congratulations on the numbers. Murray, can you give us an indication of an approximate timing for making concrete announcements to the market on the further portfolio simplification and restructuring which you referred to in your comments, please? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Great. Thanks, Irene. Thanks for your kind words. On the portfolio review, Albert Nucher is on board now. We're starting to work with him on thinking about the portfolio. Of course, this comes about because we've had such tremendous success inside exploration. When we set out our plans in February, we didn't imagine that we'd have 12 exploration discoveries in a year. We certainly didn't imagine we'd have a discovery like Brazil as well. That's all good news. We, of course, as a corporation, are very focused on making sure that we drive for value and returns and allocating capital to the highest quality opportunities. That's what we're commencing now. We plan to update the market as we go along. If you think about what happened in the third quarter, you saw that we made a sanction decision on Tiber in the Gulf of America, which we're very happy with.

You saw that we decided to divest the Killeen field in the North Sea. We feel that would have more value in other people's hands. You saw that we stopped the Rotterdam Biofuels refinery. It just didn't compete. It didn't compete on a returns basis in our portfolio. We'll update as we go along. Irene, you should expect us just to update as we go along through time and the decisions that we make. Thanks for your question, Irene.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Irene. We're going to take the next question from Lydia Rainforth at Barclays. Lydia.

Speaker 4

Thanks, Craig, and good afternoon from Abu Dhabi. Can I just come back to Boomerangy if I could? Just on what I'm getting back is a lot of, well, it might not be 300 sq km. You may only be able to access half of that, the CO2 content. It's almost like everybody's trying to talk it down. Just to take a step back and just build on your earlier answer, Murray, the idea of the commerciality, that was really the main message that you wanted to share with us on that update last week. Secondly, just a very different topic on AI and the cost base. We've seen lots of examples here in Adipak around just agentic AI, what we've seen there. Can you just walk us through how you think the deployment is going within BP?

You've talked about wanting to reduce the complexity of BP, improve the simplicity. Can you just walk us through where you think you are on that journey?

Speaker 2

Yep. Thanks. Thanks, Lydia. Just on Boomerangy. I think the principal thing to focus on is that there's an awful lot of oil and condensate in the column. It's a large column. We've updated it from 500 meters to 1,000 meters based on the logs. And the strong response we've got inside the logs and the samples. We do have the 100 meters of oil. We do have the 900 meters of rich gas condensate. That makes the CO2 manageable. Although you might need a little bit more money for metallurgy. Obviously, you're going to get an awful lot better flow with CO2 and an oil condensate column. We feel comfortable. We continue to think of it as the largest discovery in 25 years. We've obviously secured a rig to go appraise it and test it.

We feel that we're increasing the quality of this with the results that we're seeing out of the lab moving forward. We'll, of course, update you on gas oil ratios and volumes when we're ready with it, Lydia. I think on AI. I do think we're making decent progress. A couple of quarters ago, I had Emma talking to the sell side about what we're doing in AI. All of you know that we've partnered with Palantir more than a decade ago inside the upstream to really get going on structuring our data and experimenting first with linear programming and then moving into AI more recently as that technology has emerged. I think the first thing to say is we feel well progressed on the data foundations, which is critical to making AI work.

We've said that we'll have a unified data platform, not just across the upstream, but across the downstream, across trading, across finance, where working with Palantir and Databricks will have an entire unified data structure sometime around the middle of next year that then allows us to use AI and the LLMs against all the data we have. That's quite exciting that we'll be in that position. It's all cloud-based, so accessible everywhere. I think that will make us distinctive for having that type of data structure ontology. The actual examples of AI that we've got going around the company, I feel good about as well. Last quarter, I talked to you about kick detection, where the teams have worked with the LLMs to be able to predict kicks ahead of meeting them while drilling in wells like Far South and the Gulf of America.

We're at about 98% detection on kicks. As well, you saw in these results, production's high. We've upgraded our production guidance for the year. Why? Because we're at nearly 97% availability in the upstream. That's the AI helping us predict faults before they occur, repair them before they occur, along with all the investment in the hydrocarbon kit we've done. That 97% is a record since merger time. Outstanding result. We're also seeing that inside the wells. Wells are failing at a far less frequency than they were as the AI helps us manage pressure depletion inside our well stock. Another great example is well planning. The AI is enabling us to knock down well planning by 90% as it catalogs all the data, provides suggestions to the experts. That is significantly increasing the speed with which we can plan wells, not only safely, but more efficiently.

It is not just contained to the upstream. We are working very hard with Palantir and Databricks to work our way through refining in a few of our refineries. In the customer's business, there is an interesting example of an AI agent that is helping us in our Aral service stations in Germany. We have trialed it with 20 service stations in Germany. It has been designed to help us manage our stock levels there to make sure that food is not wasted, that we follow customer preferences for what they like to purchase and what they do not like to purchase. After three months in those 20 locations, they have knocked down waste by 45%. We can see tremendous examples of improved uptime, improved performance, better capital efficiency through AI. We are very excited about the opportunity this has as our data foundations get firmly in place.

Thanks for the question, Lydia.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Lydia. Right, we're going to move to the US to take the next question from Doug Leggett at Wolfe. Doug, good morning.

Thanks. Good. I'm not even sure what time it is over there. So good afternoon, I guess. Murray, I guess I've got a couple of parts to this related to your production guidance long term. You're already over 2.3. BPX is knocking it out of the park, frankly, versus its more than 600 end-of-decade kind of guidance. And now you've got multiple discoveries and potentially an early production system from Boomerangy. My question is, how do you see the risk to your production guidance? Maybe a kind of part B to that. Would Boomerangy early production system be included in the CapEx guidance that you've given us over the current plan as well?

Speaker 2

Yep. Thanks. Thanks, Doug. I'll hesitate to give a ton of guidance forward. We've set out our plans to 2027 as principal guidance, and then we gave an indicator of volumes at the end of the decade as well. I think it's probably premature until we work our way through more of the portfolio review to understand where we'll be headed. We do have choices on short-term versus long-term. Of course, we can pivot more capital into BPX and drive up production near-term, or we can pivot more to things like the Paleogene and Brazil to drive longer-term resource production. I think if I stepped back from it, I think the thing I'd say is that I feel we now have the potential to grow long-term organic oil volumes for long duration.

I'm not sure I've been able to say that over the past 25 years with BP that we've been in a resource position like that. It's a nice problem to have. What we're tightly, tightly focused on is staying within our capital frame and deciding what the right thing is to do to grow shareholder returns and value on behalf of the shareholders. I think where I'd wrap that question is I'm very pleased to have been able to improve the guidance for 2025 after only three quarters, tremendous performance from the teams, as I said earlier. We'll update you on 2026 in February with what our viewpoint is of production then. I would say we have more potential to grow, especially in oil now. I feel we're in a better place than we've been in my career with BP, which is a nice thing to have. Hope that helps.

It does. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Doug. Thank you. We'll take the next question from Lucas Herrmann at BNP Paribas. Lucas.

Yeah. Murray, Craig, thanks very much. A couple of—I might. Just going back or staying with BPX, Murray, just trying to understand the CapEx profile. I mean, I appreciate the growth is very good. The recount kind of held. I guess my understanding was always that as you came to complete on the processing facilities, bingo, so on and so forth, that we'd see a step down in spend, which does not really seem as though it's happening. Some explanation as to the developments there. If I can, just a simple one for Kate on the pension fund, if that's ever since simple. Can you just talk around the buy-in that you've arranged with Legal & General and why it's sort of stopped where it has at this point?

Should we be expecting you to sell down or to allow Legal & General to buy in a greater proportion of the U.K. fund into the future? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Lucas. I'll let Kate talk, and then I'll come back on BPX.

Speaker 3

Yeah. Hi, Lucas. Thanks for the question. Yeah, I mean, it's been a conversation inside the Pension Trustee Board for a while in terms of de-risking. You can see a number of other companies have stepped into this in similar ways, some to a bigger degree than we have. I think the transaction that's been executed is a good one to date. Of course, it's not our decision as a sponsor, as a company. It rests fully with the Pension Trustee Board. I think they will continue to evaluate how they feel with regard to further de-risking as we go through the coming months. I have nothing further to be able to say in terms of guidance on that at the moment, Lucas.

Speaker 2

Great. Thanks, Kate. On BPX, Lucas, the way that we think about BPX is about $2.5 billion a year into it. Of course, we have the opportunity to flex that up and down. This year, we'll spend around $2.5 billion in BPX. As guidance, I think we guided around $2.5 billion through the next couple of years as well, as we talked about the shape out to over 650 KBD in 2030. I think a few things I'd say about BPX. The productivity improvement we've seen from the team is very high. They've had 30% productivity improvement in completions and 15% in drilling over the past 12 months. They're now at top quartile on each of the basins we operate from a drilling days per 10K. They're at top quartile on NPV per dollar spent, which are fantastic metrics to continue to push. Congratulations to the team on doing that.

Another little advertisement for them would be they've drilled the best well in the Haynesville now ever, a four-mile lateral, completed and now producing 80 million standard cubic feet a day, which is a record for the Haynesville. Congrats to the team for doing that. As far as where do we go from here with BPX, we see continuous drilling inside the oil windows. You'll notice quite a large liquid growth, 2Q on 2Q, 2024 on 2025. That is as we fill up the Permian. We're doing an awful lot in the Eagle Ford as well. There is strong growth in the Eagle Ford from the infill spacing, the down spacing I've talked about before, and from the refracts I've talked about before. Very strong liquids growth across that business. The natural gas, the drilling and natural gas, we're running eight rigs across.

We'll have a conversation as we head into 2026 about do we keep running at eight rigs, do we move it up to nine rigs inside the gas window. The productivity improvements are so strong that they've actually drilled 13 wells basically for free this year relative to what our plans were. I think count on $2.5 billion until we give you additional guidance. Obviously, more drilling than infrastructure as we finished off the infrastructure, the major infrastructure program, as you mentioned. We see the chance for strong growth moving in BPX moving forward. We're happy to support the US in growing production. Thanks, Lucas.

Speaker 8

Thanks, Murray.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Lucas. We're going to take the next question from Chris Coupland at Bank of America. Chris.

Yeah, thank you very much. Trying to stick to the one question rule, but a wider one beyond Castrol. Murray, could you maybe let us know where you're at on Gelsenkirchen, on Light Source? If I may just ask, you've done the TANAP stake disposal now in BPX. How many of those midstream opportunities do you still see when you look across your portfolio for potentially more non-controlling interest stakes? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yep. Great, Chris. Thanks very much. We laid out a program of $20 billion. Pleased to report that we have announced five now. I think $1.7 billion of proceeds in the door, Kate, and obviously another $3.5 billion to come in the door to help the balance sheet as we complete these transactions, as we get to completion and approval. I think what I would say is there is strong interest in Castrol, and we continue to move forward with that. We will update you. Same for Gelsenkirchen, strong interest, and we will update you. On Light Source, we started strategic conversations with counterparts, and we are at an earlier stage on that than we are on both Gelsenkirchen and Castrol. You should expect something that takes a bit longer to disclose on Light Source.

We are making strong progress on all three of those things, and we will update you as their commercial processes. I do not want to say much more than that. We will update you when we have news to tell you. I think on the infrastructure stuff, Kate, why do you not take that bit, please?

Speaker 3

Yeah. Hi, Chris. As we look out in terms of the delivery of the rest of the $20 billion program, we do not see any other significant infrastructure deals in the pipeline. In terms of how you should think about NCI, the way I would suggest you hold it is it is not going to increase beyond this. Actually, next year, as we redeem the hybrid that we pre-finance, there is about $1.4 billion left of the 2026 maturity that we pre-financed, if you remember. That will start to bring NCI down. Should we choose to take advantage of the 25% of the hybrids that we could taper under the S&P rules, should we choose to step into that space, you would see NCI reduce further. The way I would suggest you hold it is it is where it is, and from here, it will go down.

Speaker 2

Thank you, Chris.

Understood. Thank you.

Speaker 5

Okay. Thanks, Chris. Thank you. We're going to go back to the US, taking the next question from Ryan Todd at Piper Sandler. Ryan, good morning.

Good. Thanks. Boomerang Bay is rightfully getting the bulk of the attention right now, but you've had quite a bit of success across the portfolio. Can you talk about what are some of the other discoveries or opportunities this year that have been particularly exciting, maybe in particular in Namibia, what you've seen so far, how it's comparing to expectations, and timeline of next steps?

Speaker 2

Yep. Thanks, Ryan. Let's see. I think maybe, so I think we're 12 out of 14 right now, if my math's right, on discoveries. Congrats to the explorers for such a great year. It's probably the best year in our history. Particularly interesting has been the convergence of seismic technology with new chips from companies like NVIDIA and the emergence of AI. It's allowing us in places like Egypt, Trinidad, Brazil to see below salt much better than we ever have. I can remember looking at the seismic on Egypt where you could actually see the channels. We're seeing a change in technology that has helped exploration this year. I don't want to say it'll necessarily do that next year as well, but that's been part of the story of the excellent exploration we've had. I think Trinidad offers up two good discoveries for development.

Egypt offers up two good discoveries for development. Brazil, we've talked about. If I then move to Namibia, again, we're very excited. That's been done through Azul, our joint venture with Eni. We've had effectively three discoveries. The third one, Volens, came in the third quarter. We've got a nice reservoir in Capricornus, the second one, 38 meters, very high Darcy rock, good oil properties. Then we have the Volens discovery, 28 meters, if memory serves, rich gas condensate, only 14 kilometers away from Capricornus. Namibia is looking like a very good block. We continue to test the samples in the lab through the operator of the exploration phase, Rhino. We're quite optimistic about it. I think the Namibian Energy Minister called it the best block in the nation.

We're really pleased with that and looking forward to further appraisal and an update from the operator, Rhino, in due course about how we take the development of this block moving forward. Thanks for recognizing it. A very good year for exploration, and we're proud of the teams for what they've delivered. Thanks, Ryan.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Ryan. We'll stay in the US and take the next question from Paul Cheng at Scotiabank. Paul, good morning.

Thank you. Good morning or good afternoon, your time, I suppose. Murray, I want to go back into exploration. You guys definitely have a very good year. In addition to maybe that combining AI and seismic to allow you to be able to see through the rock better, is there any processes or the personnel changes that lead to this great success? And how repeatable are they? From that standpoint, going forward, if you do believe that you have better success rate, should you deposit more capital into the exploration going forward to be able to use it at maybe a larger source of replacing your resource going forward? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Paul. I guess there are a few things happening. First of all, inside exploration, we have a great experienced team who have been high-graded over time. They've built on the track record of their predecessors and built up a very good base of knowledge around the world. We have great people with great deep knowledge, I would say, of the basins in which we operate. I think the second thing is technology is changing. The NVIDIA chips that we're now using inside our supercomputing are just incredibly fast and allow incredible iterations of theories. I'm kind of dumbing it down. All the geologists on the call, please forgive me for dumbing this down. It enables much faster interpretation, ideas, thinking about how one can think about the subsurface. That, of course, is converged with wide seismic, full waveform inversion algorithms.

You have this real thing of very good experienced people with incredible horsepower in compute, much better than anything in history, along with dramatic technology steps from the service providers. I think the magic we have right now is the team's very engaged on the digital side and very engaged with using the technology and the AI to test new theories and see what else is there. That's a little bit about the magic. Is it repeatable? I'm never going to say that with exploration. My father was a geologist, and I know you curse yourself if you say that. I don't think I necessarily bank on that. We've certainly had a good year. We have some very good prospects next year. As far as increasing capital in the space, the lesson for life from us is always quality through choice.

Create as many opportunities as you can, high-grade down to the very best ones. That gives you a higher chance of success than you otherwise would. To me, what's so important is you keep quality through choice. I think we're spending around $600 million a year right now on exploration. I would not want to push that up, despite the success, because it forces quality. Thanks for the question. Congrats to the explorers for a great year. We just need to remain capitally disciplined and make sure that we're pursuing only the very best opportunities. Thanks, Paul.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Paul. We will go to Makely at Goldman Sachs next. Makely.

Thank you. Congratulations again on the strong delivery this quarter. I wanted to come back to the CapEx budget. You reiterated the guidance for this year, and you've got a relatively wide range for 2026, 2027, or $13 billion-$15 billion. I was wondering, in an uncertain macro environment, if you were forced or decided to go to the low end of that range, where would you find the levers of flexibility to lower the budget effectively from the $14.5 billion of this year? I find it's an interesting time of year to start to think about some of those moving parts. Thank you.

Speaker 2

Kate, why don't you take that one?

Speaker 3

Yeah, I will. Thank you. Hi, Makeley. Yeah, so we have got a decent range around the frame for the next couple of years. That gives us plenty of space to maneuver, I think, in different price environments. As you look at this year, we've guided to around $14.5. If you take out of that the final bullet on our BP Bioenergy and organic, then you're actually sub-$14 on an organic basis. If prices were to dip, we've got plenty of opportunity to take ourselves down to the bottom of that frame. We'll continue to be very careful as we deploy every dollar. If prices are strong and we choose that, we actually want to drift up towards the top of that frame. I don't see any need for us to let go of the tight discipline that Murray and I have put around capital.

I think it forces the right conversations in terms of the value and returns focus that we're pushing into every investment decision that we are now stepping through. You've heard us talk about this on previous calls, that discipline and that approach to our capital investment is so critical to us as we seek to drive improvement in the operating cash flow going forward and making sure that we're choosing the very, very best of the opportunities at our disposal. We've got probably one of the richest sources of opportunities to consider that we've had for a very long time right now, which is a great position to be in. I'm very comfortable with the range and the flexibility that we've got. We've talked before where we would go if we needed to take ourselves down to the bottom of that range.

There's plenty of opportunities around some of the onshore drilling, which we could choose to slow down. There's a little bit around the exploration playing at the edges, depending on how much of our rigs are committed over the next 12 months. We have space and we have flexibility within that 13-15.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Makeley.

Thank you.

Speaker 5

Great. Thanks, Makeley. We're going to take the next question from Henry Tarr at Berenberg. Henry.

Speaker 7

Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about Iraq. Can you give us any more detail on the sort of economics for BP of the contract in Kirkuk? Obviously, others have entered into the country, and there is a sort of large program planned. How material, or from a macro perspective, do you think the overall impact could be for production growth in Iraq if we look out three to five years? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Henry. I have to be careful on economics. The nation has not yet published the production sharing agreement. Until they do that, it's very difficult for me to say anything under the restrictions that we have. What I will say is progress since I last talked to you. We've done the initial production test and agreed that with the nation. That's 328 KBD of black oil being produced. The team's on the ground now, 45 people on the ground in Kirkuk, starting to work on well-work jobs, acid jobs, compressor rewheels, getting procurement contracts in place, etc. We look forward to helping the nation ramp up that field over time. I think the stuff that I can say on the terms are they're obviously better than the first round terms. We're on round eight.

Each round has been incremental, is my understanding, across time based on what's been published publicly. We do have price upside in this one. We do have the ability to take price on gas as well, which has not happened in previous rounds. We have exploration rights on the acreage as well, both surrounding and deeper. It's a much better enhanced contract than we saw in the phase one in terms of Romela. Kind of, gosh, how many years on is that now? Almost 20 years on. That's probably all I can say about the commercial terms of Kirkuk, but we're very happy with it. In due course, when we're allowed, we'll happily share the details with the marketplace. I think on the overall capacity for Iraq, there is a lot of oil there. Obviously, we've seen a few other deals being signed recently.

I guess my response is it's what the world needs. We continue to see oil demand moving forward strongly. We see strong demand for that oil. We perceive that some of the non-OPEC Plus is pretty much tapped out after February, March, April next year. We see flat to declining production outside of OPEC Plus. It's going to be dependent on places like Iraq to help fill the demand that's coming forward. I think the world's going to need it. It wouldn't be right for me to talk into Iraq's production capacity. That's something that the nation will have to talk about as opposed to myself. Hope that helps, Henry.

Speaker 7

Many thanks.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Henry. Great. Thank you. We're going to take the next question from Kim Fusti at HSBC. Kim.

Speaker 8

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the Venture Global case. You've won the LNG arbitration case, unlike one of your peers. Why do you think your case was successful? When do you think you might receive the $1 billion of damages that you've asked for? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yeah, Kim, I'm obviously not going to comment on any other cases. I'm not familiar with them, and it would be inappropriate for me to comment on that. As far as our case goes, we're very pleased. We're very pleased with the result. Congratulations to our lawyers and our traders for having achieved this. The next phase on damages is being organized with the arbitration panel. A date has not yet been set. I'm sure there'll be an update when that occurs. As far as the damages themselves, that's not a number that is our number. We don't recognize that number. All I'd say is we're pleased. We look forward to the next stage. We'll update you when we're aware when that's happening. I'm very pleased with the result from the arbitration. Congrats to the team.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Kim. Okay, we're going to go to Josh Stone at UBS, please.

Speaker 7

Thanks, Greg. Good afternoon. Question to Kate on the balance sheet. I'm curious as to how much attention you're paying to your gearing ratio on either a net debt to capital or equity basis. The reason I ask is as you get more of these cash proceeds in from asset sales, you're effectively selling parts of BP, so your asset base will be coming lower. That's also before the impact of impairment. Maybe just talk about how you're thinking about these ratios. I appreciate you've got an absolute net debt target, but I think the gearing ratio is also relevant here. Maybe some comments on that would be helpful. Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yeah, hi, Josh. Thank you for the question. Let me step through how we think about our balance sheet. Because I think if you'll just bear with me, and I'll take you through my thinking, because I think it's quite important context. Financial resilience is really important to us as an organization as we move forward. It allows us to execute on the opportunities that we have as they present themselves. It's comprised of a number of things. The first thing that everyone can measure us against is net debt. We've now put a target against a material reduction in net debt by the end of 2027. We've put the $14-$18 billion, which we will deliver. If you think about where we stand today at $26 billion, that would be a $10 billion reduction in terms of the net debt stack.

Of course, I think if you remember some of the slides that I used to talk about balance sheet and financial resilience at the capital markets day in February, I was trying to be pretty transparent that we understand our total liabilities and the drain on our operating cash flow. Those type of commitments are not just around debt. If I think about some of the other big components, we have over $1 billion a year going out on Deepwater Horizon. Another two of those will go before the end of 2027. That's $2.2 billion. We've got a level of pre-financing of the 2026 hybrid I referred to earlier. That's $1.4 billion. Even if we do nothing else, where we stand right now, our liability stack will reduce over the next two and a bit years by $13-$14 billion.

That's how we think about it as opposed to contemplating a gearing. We haven't got a gearing target. We've got a target on net debt. That's the first priority. That's what we will deliver. I hope you can hear from my language that we think about the totality of our liabilities, and we're cognizant of the total cost of all of those.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Josh.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Josh. We'll take the next question from Jeff at TPH, please. Back over in the U.S. Thank you.

Speaker 7

Hey, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question. We were hoping to also ask about the structural cost improvements, which have to be progressing quite well, especially based on the supplement disclosure, the roughly $400 million improvement quarter on quarter there. I'll actually gear my lone question here to follow up on BP Act, if you could dig into basin-specific plans a bit more and maybe give us a sense for how you plan to pace activity adds in the Haynesville specifically over the next 12 to 18 months or so, and maybe how the Eagle Ford may play a role, if at all, as part of that. Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yep, great. Thanks, Jeff. Thanks for the kind words on cost progress. I'm sure Kate would like to update somebody if they want to ask a question on that one. As far as BPX, our plans in the Permian, as we built out the infrastructure. We, of course, want to keep that full now that we've built that out. So two to three rigs to continue to keep that full. For time. In the Eagle Ford, we continue to be very excited with the downspacing inside the oil windows of the Blackhawk and the reef rack programs. The downspacing wells are doing better than the original wells, simply because fracking technology has moved on so much from when they were drilled a decade ago.

And the reef racks, similarly, we're seeing much higher production on reef racks than we did in the original wells from a decade ago that PetroHawk would have drilled. Those are places that we'll continue to push and push the liquid side over time. On the gas year window, of course, we've got the associated gas from the Permian. But equally, we have fantastic Hawkville gas, which is in the Eagle Ford. And we have fantastic Haynesville positions as well, the core of the core. On the Haynesville itself, we'll follow the infrastructure is the way to think about it. As I said earlier, the teams have been doing a fantastic job on driving capital efficiency inside that basin, setting record after record on production capacity from the wells, now up to 80 million a day on this latest four-mile horizontal.

Through our trading and marketing organization, we've been busy establishing offtake points. We'll just gradually continue to grow the Haynesville in line with the infrastructure buildout, really in field gathering rather than any main export issues. We'll be contemplating two versus three rigs as we head into 2020, into the fourth quarter, into the end of the fourth quarter, and into 2026. We'll update you from there. Tremendous resource, tremendous performance by the team, and good gas prices, obviously, as well that we hedge out. We'll look forward to growing that part of the business. Hope that helps.

Speaker 7

Thank you.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Jeff. Okay, we're going to go to Alice at Morgan Stanley. Alice, I know you're deputizing for Martin, who's also here in Abu Dhabi. Over to you, Alice.

Yes, thank you. I have a question about downstream. You printed pretty strong results sequentially, but also with a number of moving parts. Of course, there was the successful delivery of the cost reductions, but also supportive macro for refining, and then on the other hand, weak trading. Could you please give some insight into the contribution of each of those elements? On balance, what could we expect the runway to look like? Thank you.

Kate, over to you.

Speaker 3

Yeah, thank you. Hi, Alice. Let me try and break out the components of the improvement in the downstream. I would say it's been a nine-month period of really good performance across pretty much all of the business, actually, in terms of the way that we've seen the organic improvement coming through. Firstly, on the customer side, a number of things. We've seen improvements, I would say, in almost every area of the customer side, whether it's aviation. Castrol is up 21%, I think, now year on year for the nine months. We've got stronger performance coming through the tight integration that we've got between fuels and midstream. That's something we've been working really hard on that's coming through. We've got really good cost reductions. Structural cost reductions delivered for the nine months so far inside customers is about $500,000,000.

The other component of the improvement in the downstream operating cash flow from customers is around the BP Bioenergy. As you recall, we consolidate that now. You're seeing an improvement in terms of the consolidated earnings versus just rail curve, about $300,000,000. If I look at the product side of it, the refining portfolio is delivering superbly now. We've got refining availability year to date at 96.4%. That compares to the 96% that we set ourselves as a target back in February. That's a result of conscious investment and systematic improvement in the maintenance and integrity of our kit. As a consequence, it's running well. As the refining margin improves, as it has done in the last quarter, we're able to capture the maximum of that. I would also say that refining have done pretty well on their business improvement program as well in terms of reducing their costs.

They've reduced their costs by about $200,000,000 for the nine months. Finally, perhaps on trading. Trading had a weaker quarter this quarter, but they had a very strong quarter in 2Q compared to others. We were very pleased with that. As I look at the nine months year to date, trading is pretty much in line with where it was last year. Very comfortable with where trading is. That's quite a long answer. Hopefully, that's broken it down to enough detail for you to be able to follow the various component parts, Alice.

Speaker 2

Thanks, Alice.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Alice. We're going to take the next question from Peter Lowe at Rothschild Redburn. Peter.

Speaker 7

Hey, thanks. Yeah. Maybe one just on the Gulf of America. Now that you've taken FID on the Tiber-Guadalupe project, does that open the door to potential farm down of your Paleogene positions, or what's your current thinking on the optimum time to do that kind of within the development of those assets? Thanks.

Speaker 2

Yep, thanks, Peter. Yeah, very, very happy to have taken a sanction on Tiber. It's obviously the second sanction inside the Paleogene, Cascade a year ago, and now Tiber to 80 KBD boats. We own them 100%, with tremendous resource recovery potential. Sanctioned and potential moving forward. I was really pleased for the project's team. They were able to knock $3 a barrel off the development cost on Tiber by effectively photocopying what we've done on Cascade. Design one, build many. That's all very good. We are in conversations with counterparts about the potential farm down in the Paleogene. We'll do this for value. That's all that we have in our minds is how do we do this for value. We want to make sure that it's accretive and that it's in the shareholders' interest to do that. We continue the conversations.

Like all other divestments, we'll update you when we have something to tell you. Thanks for the question, Peter.

Speaker 7

Thanks.

Speaker 5

Thanks, Peter. We'll turn to Mark Wilson at Jefferies. Mark.

Speaker 8

Oh, thank you for taking my question. I will bring it back to Boomerang. You still got a lot of data you mentioned, and that appraisal will take a flow test. The release a few days ago spoke to an early production system. It sounds to me like a flow test there would have to be a prolonged period of time to test multiple areas of a large column and fully understand the CO2 mix. That also sounds quite costly within a $600 million exploration budget if that includes appraisal. First, I'd like to ask if I'm visualizing that work scope correct for, say, 2027 in terms of what flow testing is needed. Would you appraise that at 100%, or would we expect overall exploration cost to go higher to accommodate the Boomerang appraisal? Thank you.

Speaker 2

Yep, great question. It's a pretty good reservoir. We think the flow test where we're drilling the second appraisal well will give us a pretty strong indication of what the rest of the reservoir will perform like. We, of course, could be surprised as we go through that, but given the strength of the seismic, what we're seeing on the logs, we think that is the case. As far as, we'll do that somewhere around Q4 2026, early 2027. We do have a team working an early production scheme. Of course, it will depend on how the flow test goes. The flow test is really focused on productivity of the wells, to be honest, and how many wells we're going to need to drill. That's the primary focus that we'll have on that, as we've done all the sampling and the sidewall core already from the initial appraisal well.

It's mainly about how many wells we need to produce the reservoir over time. As far as timing of partnership, that's something in time we will bring in a partner for sure. You probably don't want to do it until you're through the appraisal well and the flow test because that'll have an awful lot more information that's de-risked. That is, of course, a decision that we'll think about with the board as we move forward. The exploration, I'm not quoting an exploration number including appraisal at this stage. We're somewhere around $500 million or $600 million on exploration. We're drilling about 15 wells a year right now. We'll update you as we work our way through this as we enter 2026 and 2027. We will stay inside that $13 billion-$15 billion capital frame that Kate talked about. That's very important. Hope that helps, Mark.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Mark. Okay, we're going to go to Bertrand Kettler next, please.

Yes. Coming back on the Venture Global arbitration, Maui, you've just mentioned that the $1 billion-plus in damages that were in the press was not your numbers. Can you elaborate a bit, or are you seeking a higher number?

Speaker 2

Bertrand, thank you for the question. Look, this is. You're quoting a number that was in a press release from Venture Global. We have not disclosed anything to the public markets around our viewpoint on this. As it's a commercial process, I cannot disclose anything because it could impact the arbitration process, and I'm not going to do that. I'm afraid I'm just going to have to say that that was their number, not ours. In due course, we'll file our claims with the arbitration panel. When the arbitration panel decides, they can make their views public. I have to be very careful in the process, and I can't talk about anything commercially. Sorry, Bertrand.

No, no, but I appreciate your thought.

Speaker 5

Okay, thanks, Bertrand. Thank you, Bertrand. We're going to move to the US again. Jason Gabelman at TD Cowen. Jason.

Yeah, hey, thanks for taking my questions. I wanted to ask just on the equity affiliate portion, given you have quite a few of them at this point. As you think about what the overall net contribution of those affiliates to your cash flow is, I'm wondering if that's changed at all, given the Jaran X BP joint venture and Beacon Wind within that joint venture being canceled and perhaps less cash infusions into that joint venture. Conversely, the success at Azul with the Namibia explorations resulting in perhaps less cash distributions from that entity in the near term. Just how that kind of rolls up into your overall views on distributions moving forward. Thanks.

Speaker 3

Yeah, shall I? I'll take that if you like. In terms of Jaran X, the way to think about that is it's about creating for us in the future optionality, but in a very, very capital-light way. Jaran X will make their own decisions in terms of the projects that they execute and the sort of hurdles that they're testing against. From our perspective, it will be very capital-light and capital that we, if we were required to put capital in, it's going to have to compete with the other calls on capital in our portfolio, which is a pretty high hurdle. In terms of Azul, a very different type of joint venture. It's been a very good quality joint venture for us so far. I think we've got about $7 billion of distributions from it year to date. Sorry, in total since inception. It's now self-funded.

It's got a PXF, and it's also issued its first bonds externally. In terms of it being able to finance itself going forward and its growth, that's how we think about it right now. It has the ability to do more with regard to external financing. We're not expecting it to be a drain on our capital. Of course, to the extent that it is recycling its own cash flow to invest in opportunities like Namibia, then you would see a slight reduction in terms of the dividends that we receive from that organization. It's too early to be able to scale that for you.

Speaker 2

Yeah, and if I just added a few things on Azul, we do not often talk about it, but it has had tremendous success, Jason. Agogo came online earlier this year, eight months ahead of schedule. Congratulations to the team for doing that. NGC is the next major project that is going to come online shortly. They, of course, had the exploration discovery near the LNG plant of a TCF and a couple hundred million barrels of associated condensate. In Angola, it is doing fantastic. I was down there recently to celebrate the Agogo startup. Gordon was offshore on it. Just a tremendous joint venture with Eni that is doing very, very well for us, and we are very pleased to have expanded that into Namibia and the success we are seeing in Namibia. Craig, I hope that helps, Jason.

Thanks.

Speaker 5

Thank you, Jason. Okay, I think we are probably at the final question. Given time, we're going to take that from Maurizio Carulli at Quilter Cheviot. Maurizio.

Speaker 1

Good afternoon, Mary and Kate, and well done for the positive results. Can I have a bit more of color on the 20% increase in Castrol earnings and what has driven it? Also, if I may squeeze in an additional question, is it possible to have more detail on your recent strategic investment in the electronic cooling solutions? Thank you.

Speaker 3

Maybe you want me to take that one, Mary?

Speaker 1

Yeah, sure.

Speaker 3

Yeah, so this is a consequence of very deliberate progress that Michelle's been executing now for, I think this is the ninth quarter where we've seen quarter-on-quarter progress. They have a strategy of onward, upward, forward, and it's deliberately seeking to make their organization as cost-competitive as it can be and grow volumes, which they've managed to do systematically over the last couple of years in almost every part of the business. The other part of the improved delivery in Castrol, of course, is a consequence of the fluctuations that we've seen in base oil and additives, and they hit a high post-COVID. Those have tapered off a little bit, so that's also coming through, which is helping. It's about very deliberately growing volumes, driving costs down to improve their overall operating cash flow delivery inside the organization. That's doing really well. Do you want to talk about the liquid?

Speaker 2

Yeah, the liquid cooling for data centers is an interesting opportunity. They've signed a couple of deals with counterparts. It's commercially sensitive, so I can't name the names. They're in trial on that with a few companies. It's a long-term growth potential for the business. That looks quite interesting. It's quite a competitive space. We're hopeful that that starts to develop at a faster pace moving forward. Thanks very much for the question, Maurizio. Nice to hear your voice.

Speaker 5

Okay, great. Thank you, Maurizio. We are going to finish promptly on the hour. Irene, Chris, I know you are still pulling. Maybe please follow up with the IR team in London. Happy to do so. A big thanks on behalf of Murray, Kate, myself. Thank you for listening. Thank you for the continued interest in BP's results today. We will stop the call there. Thank you again.