Angus Energy (LSE:ANGS) — Geothermal Update

0:02 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the ANGUS ENERGY PLC geothermal update investor presentation. Throughout this presentation, investors will be in listen only mode. Questions are encouraged and can be submitted at any time via the Q and A tab situated on the right hand corner of your screen. Simply click Q and A, scroll to the bottom, type your question and press send. The company may not be in a position to answer every question received during the meeting itself, but the company review all questions submitted today and publish responses where appropriate to do so. Will be available on your investment company dashboard, and you'll be notified once they're ready for your review. I'd also like to remind you this presentation is being recorded. Before we begin, we'd like to submit the following poll. I'd like to hand you over to George Lucan, Managing Director of ANGUS ENERGY PLC. Good afternoon, George. Thanks, Paul. Good afternoon, everyone. We've got some 42 slides here, and it'd be a great relief. I'm not gonna cover them all. We cover about 15.

0:52 We may use some for the q and a session. So I hope to be be not more than thirty minutes here.

0:58 I'm gonna jump straight in. The government's, white paper last year made it very clear that oil and gas is, is living on borrowed time, and, we've taken that to heart as in most of our peers, in the onshore industry and then in in the North Sea. What we're looking at, is is, aligning ourselves with the way the public thinks, the government thinks, local councils think, our regulators think. And we're doing this in the most efficient way possible using the skills we have in drilling, and recently in high pressure and high temperature work to get into deep geothermal drilling. That's drilling five odd kilometers down to get super hot water to generate electricity principally.

1:46 And I think the other of these boxes, these mission boxes, the other ones that I I draw your attention to is low cost. ANGUS has always held itself out to be a low cost, player in the market, relatively low overhead compared to many of our peers, and that's something we hope to bring, that sort of focus on cost we hope to bring into geothermal, which up until now hasn't really been undertaken on a wholly commercial basis. It's always been substantial amounts of grant money. But other than that, these these aims, I think, are self evident. We're we're aligning ourselves with the gen with the general tenor of the times. It's not to say we don't, have an eye to our hydrocarbon assets.

2:31 As I've said before, we we aren't purists. We're we're drillers. And that there will doubtless be an Indian summer in both gas and oil prices for the next two or three years because we're under investment. But nonetheless, this alignment is absolutely essential if we're to have, an eye to a company existing in five years' time. If we look at the challenge that the government and the country face, on a on an electricity basis, let's just stare at the graph and worry about the text. This large chunk of of purple here is is the remaining gas and this precious little coal to get rid of any longer. Every new chunk of wind and solar that's coming online and another 10 gig of offshore wind, they speak of, doesn't diminish the need for that capacity unfortunately because you need to retain backup capacity.

3:25 We're bringing a new solution and it's the most important part of geothermal is its base load. It's like hydro, most of the year at any rate. It's twenty four seven and it does does mean you can retire or repurpose existing gas capacity. That's very important for everyone in the country and and the government in particular because with every new ten ten gig of offshore, retaining reserve gas capacity means ultimately paying more for all of that reserve capacity, and that means the consumer paying more. And I think we'll hear a lot more from the consumer over this winter, about how transition is being managed. I'm just gonna go straight on. The transport side of the equation, the other aspect of decarbonization that the government look at.

4:15 Look at the top, large blue chunk of that graph. This is this is sort of final energy consumption across The UK. The first bit's oil, blue at the top, and you're into gas, and the rest is electric, which itself is really half gas nowadays and and about half renewable. Now transport challenges, half of that blue oil block is, of course, motor transport. And if we are successful to transitioning all of those car stock into the car fleet into electric, then you've got to go and replace that energy. And you see that that was going to require you to actually almost increase by that seventy, eighty, 90% the the electric capacity of the country. And, of course, that's very difficult to do.

5:03 In fact, as regards upgrading the transmission and distribution work, it's it's almost impossible. So you can be absolutely certain that if we are to decarbonize road transport, then hydrogen as well as electric vehicles are are gonna be part of the mix. And it's going to be ever more important, more pressure we put on electric, to have baseload generations. Right? Bring bring that back again and again. It's of all the alternatives, it's one of the most attractive, that that that is knocking around today. We also make the point that there will be the potential many of our sites where where we don't have easy access to grid and and the grid across the country, local and national, it operates in many areas at at or close to capacity, which is another problem I think that the authorities will face as we explore different types of transition energy.

6:02 What what's what's interesting and useful is that the temperature which we take water out lends itself to all sorts of enhancements to existing very standard technology to convert to hydrogen. It's it's not in course an additional source of economics for investors. It's just a different sort of economics. So the one thing about being able to do that locally, with hydrogen is that you're no longer tied to sites which have to be proximate to, areas of the grid with low capacity. And in in the areas we're looking, we we can already say that that that that's an issue. Capacity is an issue, in the Southwest Of England. I'll come come on to hydrogen in a bit more detail later.

6:53 We'll get straight into the commercial algebra. I think we'll start with the bottom right hand box here. A lot of investors have expressed skepticism about the size of these projects. And if you look at the bottom left, you you see a figure of 16,000,000 of equity mentioned on a site basis. Now in any oil and gas exploration, the the lead operator will will seek partners.

7:20 When when we had our market cap was few years back, well well north of 30,000,000. We still wouldn't have gone into any of those drills at a 100% licensee, we we would always have sought out partners. It's what you do in oil and gas. It's sensible. It's surprising that in the deep geothermal projects done today, it hasn't been done. And that probably reflects the large amount of of, state subsidy, that has allowed investors to, sell risk it. We we wouldn't. And if you take, say, a third, a third, a third expiration share, that would be a a sort of a £5,000,000 investment in a couple of years' time. And it wouldn't be £5,000,000.

8:06 It would be a modular staggered investment of risk. So you'd start with £1,500,000 to, put your share of a disposal well in the ground, prove up, at least some of the fracture system, and then proceed, to add investment later. None of this is going to happen for, eighteen months realistically. And I don't think that it's beyond the resources of the company particularly as I believe we'll start to enjoy a significantly higher market capitalization as investors take on board, the reality of our, our gas assets. So this isn't an immediate question, but it's an important one they've raised. This is not beyond ANGUS' capability at all.

8:58 You'll see some frightening figures for debt there, but actually, when when once the initial wells, two wells are drilled, the proposition lend itself quite naturally to staggered or phased introduction of debt. That's not all coming in at once at 60,000,000 comes in again on a modular basis over five years. And with each passing well, not only is there more cash flow to derisk the proposition, but it's also, significantly derisked by greater knowledge of the reservoir.

9:28 And and then the the top two left boxes were really these these are decent IRRs and decent MPBs for alternatives done on a commercial pushing. 8p per kilowatt hour may sound large, but we'll come to, how how we get that. That's a sort of blended rate. Every site is going to be quite different as we'll see. And the last point to make in the top right hand box, this is scalable. We could take a site, a single site on a port system might do 20 megawatt, but a multitude of sites might address the same port system along different lengths and comfortably get up to a 100, a 150 megawatt. We believe Southwest has at least two gigawatt, I think I mentioned earlier in the program.

10:21 I'm gonna get down to some more detailed economics. It's quite small print here, so I will, run through what I think are the key assumptions. First of all, the top left hand corner, it's a long life asset. So you're looking at thirty years. A lot of oil fields, you might not be looking at much more than ten or even less. Here, thirty years, it's a real investment. You're not gonna get PPA for much more than fifteen years, power take off agree off take agreements. So there's a degree of nebulous, economics here. You know, not not everything is written in stone, but, you you can at least make a a decent stab at the first fifteen years of economics, and and come to some reasonable conclusions there.

11:08 I think then the next point to direct attention to is the pricing per kilowatt hour. Right now, we looked at longer term PPAs on the wholesale market, and 6p a kilowatt hours, they they measure in megawatt hours at £60 a megawatt hour, is is quite, is achievable right now. And and the prices are going upward, not just for the reasons that I mentioned, but there's some more immediate short term supply constraints, which are holding the next two winters quite firm in terms of forward prices. Beyond that, you have the latest government feed in tariff subsidy system, which is a contract for difference.

11:56 The current prices for our particular pot, and recession about 13p you know, a £130 a megawatt hour. Higher than I've written here at nine to ten. I I used a lower value, for conservative statement, but the actual price is higher. Although, as we said, the cost is small and won't, certainly won't be able to cover a number of these sites. And lastly, and this is really where it gets much more profitable, is direct sales of heat and electric. So if you're able to find a site with a nearby industrial user, or, EV charging station or or or something of that order, then you can undercut the business tariff, which is about 14p a kilowatt hour, and supply direct.

12:53 So, onto, the CapEx per site, we're a 10,000,000 pound cost per producer well and a 4,000,000 pound disposal well, we would certainly start any drilling program with a disposal well. Really, because, we don't need to drill so deep. The well doesn't need quite, such expensive modifications as a producer well. So we can spend less money and still, get quite far down, so it's still three kilometers down, and have a much better sense of the reservoir without undertaking further significant risk investing further significant risk capital. So it again, it's about staged reduction in risk.

13:40 The actual surface CapEx, we estimate at £5,000,000 per doublet, so the doublet being a producer and an injector well. And again, we are in discussions with turbine manufacturers about doing this on a modular basis. So it's not all as it was on some of the drills and the content we can come to, a vast, 30 or €40,000,000 plant plunk down all at once and then you discover after your first world that these don't work. This is all staged, in order to be absorbable by a mixture of equity and high risk methane debt. And then I've added also a £3,000,000 charge for connection and or ancillary, which might well be hydrogen electrolysis systems on-site where we can't get electric connections.

14:35 And then there's various OpEx results. At 8p a kilowatt hours, it said on the headline page, we start getting an NPV of £30,000,000 on each site. That that's an NPV 10, which is nowadays, frankly, a very high discount rate. And if it's supplied at at a slightly better rate, those sites where we can get more direct sales, we're up to £60,000,000 a site. But I think we'll come on to this. One of the greatest, variabilities in this is not actually the headline price. It's the amount of heat we can convert, the so called conversion efficiency to electric. That is ultimately where profitability, shifts quite dramatically. And this is based on 12% heat conversion.

15:30 And we do believe and we reason to believe that we can do better than that. I'll just go on. This is just to draw out that every site will be radically different in terms of a risk reward profile and investment proposition for third parties, and so on. And this this comes down to temperature below the the subsurface stuff, temperature below ground, drilling depths, the availability of other uses, for our heat, or direct use for electric, and perhaps the availability, which is looking ahead three or four years, but not that far ahead, of, the the quantity of, electric vehicles and hydrogen vehicles, as a proportion of the total vehicle population.

16:24 So that's just to state this there there is no standard. Every site is very, very different. The offtake prices, the risks, and so on, are site specific. This this is a very clear indication of the point I made earlier. Your ability to convert more than 12% of heat to electric radically changes the economics because you're still paying for the sell saying, but you're getting vastly more bank in your back buck with every percent that you increase, from from 12%. So you start taking a site up from being a a £30,000,000 present value into a, into the 100 plus territory as you move toward a 20% conversion efficiency.

17:17 And it's remarkable how little investment has been put into conversion of heat. The fact that it's remarkable how much was done a hundred years ago and how how little how how small the advances are in the last forty years. We can come to that, later. These are rather all the offtake possibilities, for heat. And and we we will, on a 12% conversion rate, say you take a gig say say you take a megawatt out of the sorry. Say you're getting a megawatt of electric, you're probably putting eight megawatt of heat back in the ground, without using it at all. So in every site, we'll always be looking with local farmers and local landowners, local councils for any use of heat in in an efficient way, and we'll have a plentiful supply of it and we'll be able to supply it at very competitive prices.

18:21 And there's everything from greenhouses, animal husbandry, aquaculture to the to the heavier industrial processes. Anyway, it's it's it's left there just to give people a range of of possibilities. Green hydrogen isn't added just to get the buzzword in. It's an essential part of our derisking strategy because, as I said, areas of the country have great sites for geothermal subsurface potential, but then the grid above it, is tired and, strained. And simply, when take past, and we hear tales from, solar, farm owners of considerable delays, multiyear delays, to get access for their full capacity into the grid. It's a real issue across the country.

19:19 And we'll we'll we'll get only only worse that issue. So being able to have an alternative offtake possibility is absolutely critical. I mentioned here alkaline water electrolysis. It's actually, an exceedingly well established, process, and it's scaled and tried and tested around the world in scale, and it's operating in scale principally in ammonia production. So what what where where we use that is to liberate ourselves from grid, and being able to compress that hydrogen and sell it on the open market. The problem we have is that the other producers on the open market, the so called gray hydrogen, is very, very efficient. It's cracking gas at at a thousand odd degrees, into hydrogen.

20:18 Still carbon dioxide intensive, but it's cheap. It's about a dollar 80 a ton, and we would be, more like $2.5 sorry. A dollar 80 kilogram. We've been more like 2.5, to $2.6. So very difficult, to beat the economics of gas as it is in even in regular electricity. But as gas becomes comes under more and more pressure to be clean, That so the pressure to ask those gray hydrogen producers to get blue and to inject the carbon dioxide back into the ground or, try and use hydrogen itself to generate, to to break to crack the meeting to produce more hydrogen.

21:07 As those economic costs or burdens are put on that gray hydrogen industry, we think that we can actually, come close, with green hydrogen, with geothermal, to being able to offer a competitive product. And that that will require some innovation, but not a lot. Alkaline water electrolysis is already about 80% efficient, but there's a possibility of using some of the heat that we naturally have, to get a percent or two more, on on that efficiency of conversion, and therefore, we have to stand eye to eye with gray hydrogen. Not gray hydrogen, blue hydrogen. No one is gonna stand eye to eye with gray hydrogen.

21:55 This was just to reiterate that we this is not a single fundraising single or drill, a very modular, application of risk capital to a disposal well, a site acquisition planning design their disposal well, then a producer well, then generation, introduce methionine when the cash flow is actually being generated, and then again, into, the same disposal and producer wells on on the same side up to we think about four doublets per site, each one, producing five megawatt or more with improvements in conversion efficiency.

22:41 And again, this is trying to graphically represent that risk curve. So we're doing, on the left hand side, already have done a considerable body of seismic subsurface studies that are contained in the back half of this presentation, for those who are interested. And then we start moving into detailed wellbore design and turbine design, permitting, and then, we will probably do an exploratory borehole in some sites, then moving into, disposal producer wells, disposal producer wells, so forth.

23:24 I I I think everything has been about derisking this project. So there's lots of ways we could do that. The obvious one from the previous side is that you approach every investment on a modular basis, spending no more than you need to at that point in time. So at any stage, you can say, right. This is not good. This is never a good risk reward proposition for for our money. We'll pull out and go elsewhere. One of the things you can do, right from the start, the simple stuff, which is occupying a lot of the rest of this presentation is actually do much better subsurface studies. And the range of the subsurface studies we're doing is something for the rest of that presentation I'm delighted to take questions on today or rather in subsequent, weeks.

24:18 The the second, way you can do it is actually just reduce the cost of drilling. Many of the continental, drills were, it was an exploratory industry. They were were were not, if you like, innovating because the project itself was such an innovation. And people tended to be quite risk averse in the drilling techniques, and perhaps there was over specking here and there. There was certainly a great number of errors. They have errors everywhere, these are errors which probably shouldn't have occurred and costs on a lot of those drilled spirals. And it was as well that they were grant funded because they they they they would have been, acting out failures if they had not been grant funded.

25:10 So drilling costs, and a lot of that is about introducing things that we've learned over a hundred years in in oil drilling. And and somehow, I don't think all of that that sort of historical wisdom from the oil industry was was easily transferred into the geothermal industry. It was almost as if some of the drilling was done as if from scratch, drilling programs at any rate. So, I I would describe most of the other ways of derisking, but but, which is to be modular in in every aspect, get cash flow at least going from one doublet before and tries to advance to the next. And then some of the downhole technologies we can do because there are things we can do inside the well which will radically improve, conversion ability. And we we have been in discussions with CERAFI to to explore some of their technology, as have other members of the industry.

26:16 And we're also working on thermodynamics of people within the world, seeing what we can achieve there. And and there are some particularly interesting and I hope one day proprietary things, that we can do, which have not been done before. So there there is there are a great number of ways where we can innovate here or simply look ruthlessly at cost and take risk out of the equation.

26:45 To say, most most most of these projects today, I can just whiz forward to to some of them, have relied very extensively on local central government grants. So here's here's some of the deep geothermal projects coming up. The bulk of them, as you can see, have been in the Rhine, the Upper Rhine Basin here around Switzerland of Germany and France. And they they've received substantial amounts of public funding. There's two in The UK down one down in Saint Austell, by Eton geothermal, and one in further out in Cornwall at the so called United Dams project.

27:36 All of these have enjoyed very substantial amounts of taxpayer money, and it's not our intention to to be looking at government for anything other than grant to support innovation. We we intend to approach geothermal. It's either commercial in the long run, or, really, it it's not for ANGUS. So, everything in the next year or two is going to be about further improving our drilling program, to prove that we can take that cost down, which those wells experience. So some of those sites I just showed you, had some pretty frightening figures for the cost of a well.

28:24 We do actually have those drilling programs, and we've gone overreach them. We've seen where they've gone wrong, and we do believe that that that they're wrong, that this is a commercial, commercially available proposition.

28:38 From government, where we would could do with help, in addition to an improved offtake environment, is is actually an insurance program. So one one which would be, industry supported but government led, thereby, if you drill well and you don't get the temperature, pressure, or fluid flow that you're expecting, there is a a payout. And the reason for this is essentially to be able to attract capital, but it's it's meant to be a net neutral, scheme for the taxpayer. So, it's not just to call or pay for the well, it's it's, help us attract capital into drilling the well, by organizing and leading, an insurance program, which will all contribute.

29:36 What we would like as well in the in the longer run is is more pressure from government on through Ofgem on grid operators to make available capacity on a preferential basis to base a generation such as our own. It's it's obviously very valuable compared to more variable forms of generation. And we believe it should be taken into account in allocating capacity. We've made a lot of progress. We have, in discussion with documented heads of terms with with a with a number of landlords now, and we have been identifying it and just opening discussions with other landlords across the area. So I think we have in total some eight target sites of which three are are, I hope, approximate. I hope shareholders would see documented evidence before during q four on closing them. We've also been in discussion with a number of funding partners.

30:59 And there is enthusiasm to fund what I call the second layer of risk,

31:04 the the mezzanine style debt. When you've proven out the reservoir and you're showing some cash flow at the start of development finance similar to that which we raised at Salt Lake Street. So relatively high margin, but, only in situ, we believe, until the the full site is built out. And then, with with a sort of proven two or three year constant cash flow, rapidly refinanced to, more favorable terms. We've also talked to regulators, of course, district network operators, and are hoping to, open a conversation with, where we have begun to open a conversation with National Grid. So we've not we've not been idle. This has been a a year and a half of a considerable draw on management time.

31:55 But we in in to slightly anticipated question, which I know is coming, is in in our business, two and a half years ago when when when I took over, we had a great reliance on two two wells. One one fell away by virtue of the reservoir not being there, and another one fell away by virtue of regulatory interference or rather a planning authority interference. You can't afford to have just two assets to play with anywhere in the world.

32:40 It's insane, and I recognized that when I joined. We have to have a great number, a pipeline of projects. This this this, the devotional management time in our in our spare moments when we're not putting together sort of maybe is essential, to actually building out a decent pipeline because we know how long regulators take in The United Kingdom, and we know how long planning authorities take, and it's not something to whinge about. It's a given. And we have to, therefore, have multiple opportunities, multiple sites even within this geothermal sector if we're going to prevail and grow each year so that in three years' time, you'll start to say, well, that site b is coming online, type d, and so on.

33:26 I think that's that's a very, important aim. I'll leave you with this happy slide. This is the Lardarello well from almost, exactly a 100 years ago. And there's Pierre O'Gennory Conti waving his stick over the steam and that's still producing today quite early. It is, in fact, a shallower geothermal well, but it gives you an idea of the reservoir itself. We're not dealing with an oil reservoir that might well water out after four years or five years. By and large, the record on on the geothermal wells is good. They hold their value over a very long period of time. So what we're building here is a very large legacy asset and an exciting utility proposition for debt funders, but something of great value and consistency, which I think will be attractive, to shareholders as they realize it's not an enormous upfront undertaking.

34:38 It's actually something we can approach commercially and sensibly and with an eye to risk and cost. And, Paul, at that point, I'd like to Fantastic. George, thank you so much for your presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, do please continue to submit your questions using the Q and A tab situated in the right hand corner of your screen. Before George takes a few moments to review those investor questions submitted already, I'd like to remind you that recording of the presentation, along with a copy of the slides and the published Q and A, can be accessed via your investor dashboard on the Investor Meet company platform. I'd also like to remind you that your feedback is important to the company. Immediately after the presentation has ended, you'll be redirected for the opportunity to provide your feedback in order that George and the team could better understand your views and expectations.

35:24 George, we did receive a pre submitted question. Perhaps we can start the q and a session off with that. It reads as follows. Geothermal is a very interesting prospect, but wouldn't the time be better spent on actual delivery at SFB before embarking another project in the short term? Yes. And I I get that, and I get, people's concern, anxiety about that. So, Pee Pee project, We have all the bids out with all of the suppliers and all the fabricators are busy at work. There's a limited amount which we could do in terms of hiring very capable engineering houses around the country hovering over their their backs. We I know that this equipment is coming on, and the rest of my team knows that.

36:11 Unfortunately, making shareholders believe that until they see it may be more difficult, at least some of them. So I do I do appreciate that, but there really isn't any more hurrying we can do. We have done an enormous amount of preparatory work at all, and it's now up to third parties to deliver equipment. However, every, every moment, where it is necessary, we are a 100% devoted to SORP Levy. So, this week, we have our hand up, which is going through all of the detailed p and IDs and process flow diagrams for all of the equipment and looking how all the valves are going to interact, making sure there's gonna be no accidents down the line, designing the control systems, how we'd like to be controlling the plant on a day to day basis. So we're doing all of that work, but there will always be days.

37:03 And when we are not doing that work, we have been doing this work, and we believe that it's an investment being made for shareholders in in the future and that it will be worthwhile. That answers the question. Fantastic, George. Thank you very much indeed. If I may just ask you now just to click on that q and a tab and just where appropriate to do so, if you could read out the question and give you a response, from the questions received from, the attendees, that'd be fantastic. Thank you. Yes. This one from Karen s. Which would be the best sites for this? The answer there's a lot of detailed, answers to that. We wanna start with the best, biggest, and easiest fault system. We know where those are. So that's one part of it. Then you want very good you want good transportation links. You're not taking an awful lot on and off, but just in site construction and so on.

37:59 They're talking about the Southwest Of England and a lot of the road network. It's not always in places suitable even for for the most basic points of access. So that that that's the second point. As you narrow it down, grid, grid, grid is the first point. We want a decent ability to get at the grid, and to get your your product to market, to your electricity that you're generating, essentially. And, of course, all of the other aspects where where grid is not available, we have hydrogen. So then you're back into road transport. I think the other areas which will be interesting for all hydrogen localized, the hydrogen producers in the future, will be electric vehicle charging, for the actual fuel generation and for hydrogen, hydrogen vehicle fueling.

38:58 I think that's a very real prospect in the future. It may not look so now, but by the time we're, actually looking at a real significant size or cash investment in year or two's time, I think it will already start to be a much more, credible prospect. So there's there's a great there's a great range of things. But if I had to say there's one thing about being on being in the right place in terms of on top of the right reservoir, then it would be being close to somewhere you can sell your product. And the first point is going to be grid, local grid. And I go through that that answers question. For the life left Karen has posted another, so I I go through it. Life left on your leases, give enough time frame to make the second one.

39:53 Yes. Yes, Karen. We'll go for 99 plus leases. So we we we will actually we will actually be looking, the way in which we are structuring our heads of terms to take options, then relatively short leases and then much longer leases, each with, increasing premiums for the landlord. But, at each point, we'd have increasing conviction, that the investment was worthwhile. So, if it turned out after two years, it wasn't, then we're out of the land landlord's hair. We don't pursue the lease any further. But if not, we can have, you know, 99,999, whatever the year lease is, etcetera.

40:44 But certainly, yeah, not a fifty year lease because that wouldn't it it wouldn't make sense. And, I have a question from Chris R. What milestone should we be looking at in in the near term from a project perspective? I think I think the the the first milestone is site acquisition and knowing sites are and being able to begin to bring to our shareholders and potential sources of capital elsewhere that includes, potential farm in ease or coventurers at an equity level as well as mezzanine high risk debt partners to see their get a feel for their level of appetite for a particular site.

41:45 And then there will be, you know, a there'll be some investors who like particular sites, particular reasons, and there'll be some investors interested in the offtake as well. So we don't envisage necessarily that all of the and I think this is the next stage or next milestone. Necessarily envisage that all of the coventurers need the commercial coventurers, some may be financial coventurers purely. It's not an industry regulated by the OGA, so there's no limitation at present on splicing and dicing the risk and the return into all sorts of royalty streams to get, to get, the people who have specific risk reward demands, get them what they want, and get the capital for the project same time. So we've got a bit more liberty than we have in oil and gas.

42:40 And I think it would attract a broader range of capital, and there would be some sources of capital who are interested in it because they're mandated to look at ESG projects, and there'll be others, for whom it is a contribution to a net zero investment. But I do think there will be a nice broad range of potential providers, co ventures in equity and providers of Metzli. And I think it will be a handsome Metzli in finance, good return, with clear exit, and and all around, I whilst the figures may look a little bit scary now, I don't see it as at all unachievable in the context of what's being done elsewhere in project finance. So yeah. So in in summary, Chris, getting to see, the sites and then building a capital base, around those sites and coventurers supported, providers of finance.

43:44 I'm gonna go to Martin g. Are you this is a question about a placing anytime soon. If so, would it just be given? I'm not going to ask, answer questions about a placing. As I'm not allowed to. Any any anything I'd say about any placing, I'd had to announce the next morning. So, I get these questions. I have had them for the last six months. I'm sorry, Martin. Everyone on our website has said, for six months, are you doing pacing? And I can't answer you because if I answered you, I'd have to go out and do an RNS every bloody morning. Sorry. I have a question from Alan m, who's asking about, delays, in in in projects in the past.

44:46 We we have had a history of a delay with SobFleetby. That was principally a history of raising finance for the project, and that finance was finally raised in June. It took the board a year and three months to raise finance. We did waste some time talking with one particular bank for four months, it was very disappointing result. We were trying to raise finance and point out to to you, Alan, during, 2000 and, '19 and 2020, principally 2020, a period which saw some of the worst oil prices in, in recent history, and and very considerable hostility toward hydrocarbon from a number of parties and and the reluctance of private capital to to invest in the industry. So, yes, there was a a long delay getting that that finance.

45:44 And, yes, you'd also be right to say that in general, the regulatory timeline, both at planning and with our principal regulators, has grown, over the last five years, and all of the regulators have got tougher, about every aspect. We were in a more unfortunate position than most in that I I took over a business with three assets, which one was already in in a regulatory backdrop when I joined, and the other two required significant work over to to bring them online. So so there are two things there. Finance was very difficult in 2020. It's it's significantly easier now. And regulatory for hydrocarbons, I'm afraid it's going to get still more difficult.

46:33 And and we're conscious of that in recent, documents on flaring, which we have to be particularly care careful of, now that we're an operator of a gas field. So, yes, the the regulatory world for hydrocons is not gonna get any easier, nor is the planning world for that matter, even if we have significant shortages this winter. But but that that's part of the course. One of the joys we've noticed since being in this geothermal, building this geothermal project, is that when we go and knock on the door of council or regulator, we're we're met with a smile instead of a, you know, computer says no moment. So, I I would hope that geothermal won't actually encounter the same level of regulatory delay, which we have been encountering for the last three or four years in in onshore hydrocarbon.

47:28 In answer to your question. George, thank you very much indeed. I think you've actually covered the forwardly questions we've received through from Invest. And, of course, if any further questions are submitted, you'll have the opportunity to review those. And perhaps before we redirect the attendees to give you some feedback, if we could just get a final snapshot from me, George, that'd be great. Thank you. Yeah. Well, I'd what I'd what I'd like to say, what, in summary of where we are, I think I think we're following on from our success, I believe, success in transforming, the company from oil to cleaner gas. ANGUS is gonna be looking to take its transition, one step further into becoming a leading publicly listed originator and operator of a pipeline of industrial scale, deep geothermal electricity generation and hydrogen production projects over the next five years.

48:24 Thank you, Paul. George, thank you very much indeed for updating investors today. Could I please ask investors not to close the session as you'll be automatically redirected, for your opportunity to provide your feedback in order George and the team can better understand your views and expectations? This will only take a few moments to complete and is greatly valued by the company. On behalf of George and ANGUS ENERGY PLC, we'd like to thank you very much for attending today's presentation. That concludes today's session. Thank you, and good