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Equinor ASA (EQNR)

Q4 2011 Earnings Call· Wed, Feb 8, 2012

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Transcript

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Statoil’s Fourth Quarter Earnings Presentation and Strategy Update, both to the audience here in Oslo and to our audio and webcast audience. My name is Hilde Nafstad. I’m the Head of Investor Relations with Statoil. Before we start, let me say that there are no fire drills planned for today. In case the fire alarm goes up, you will need to exit through the two doors in the back of each side of the room and continue on towards the same side and downwards. This morning at 7:30 Central European Time, Statoil announced the results for the fourth quarter of 2011. The press release and presentations for today’s event was distributed through the wires and through Oslo Stock Exchange. The quarterly report and the presentations can, as usual, be downloaded from our website, statoil.com. I would ask you to kindly make special note of the information regarding forward-looking statements, which can be found on the last page on the presentation set. Today’s program will start out with Statoil’s Chief Executive Officer, Helge Lund, providing a strategy update. Thereafter, Statoil CEO, Torgrim Reitan, will go through the earnings and the outlook for the company. The presentation will be followed by a joint Q&A session. Please note that the questions can be posted by means of telephone only but not directly from the web. The dial-in numbers for posting questions can be found on the website. The operator of the conference call will explain the procedure for posting questions over the phone. The event will close around 3 p.m., Norwegian time. It is now my privilege to introduce our President and CEO, Helge Lund.

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Hilde, and there, ladies and gentlemen, welcome to our strategy update for 2012. It’s always stimulating and challenging to meet our investors and the analysts, both to present our results but also to show you how we are executing on the strategy. And I think more importantly for you that we make ourselves available to be challenged on simple and more challenging issues. I think what you expect is bare facts, clear strategic direction and also few surprises, and that is exactly what we will try to provide throughout the presentations today. Last year when we met with most of you and many other investors and analysts in New York, we presented our new strategic framework. We emphasized at that time the priority of safe and efficient operations, on the strong project portfolio and the quality of the investment program, the good and growing cash flow including a solid balance sheet and finally, that we have a strong commitment to deliver also dividend according to the policy that we have formulated and communicated to ourselves earlier. These are the topics that we will address in depth today, but before we do that, I will reflect very, very briefly on the 2011 numbers as Torgrim will go through those in much more detail later. I mean, the summary of all is that we delivered record results, net operating income of NOK211.8 billion. Adjusted earnings were up 26% to NOK179.9 billion, record earnings delivering an EPS of NOK24.76 and also a strong underlying cash flow from our operations at NOK244 billion. This has been driven by primarily production according to our expectations and plans and also through solid prices as you all know and finally, that we have made a number of transactions recently that also gave NOK23 billion in…

Torgrim Reitan

CEO

Thank you, Helge, and good afternoon, everyone. In the fourth quarter, we produced as expected, 1.975 million barrels per day, that is a 3% increase mainly because we started and ramped up production. However, we also move gas, as Helge said. This is of course – this has, of course, contributed to reducing our production in the quarter, in the fourth quarter. So I will come back to this later. We maintained a good performance for most assets on the NCS. We achieved the production of 1.39 million barrels per day here. Those figures are impacted by elements that you already know like reduced water injection at Gullfaks, riser issues and also delayed startup of the BP operated Skarv field. And the decline rate on the NCS, that has actually been lower than 5% in 2011. Internationally, we increased our production by 21% to 588,000 barrels per day. And during the year, we started up Peregrino in Brazil, Pazflor in Angola and Leismer in Canada. And we also increased the number of producing wells at Marcellus and Eagle Ford in the U.S. And we increased production at Shah Deniz in Azerbaijan and In Salah in Algeria. So all in all, these are record production numbers internationally for Statoil. So we are on our way. We delivered strong earnings in the fourth quarter. Our net operating income was NOK60.7 billion, and this is up 42%. And of course we benefited from high prices, but we also increased the oil production. We realized gains from divestments, and we saw derivative gains from the gas trading activity. So our net income in the quarter was NOK25.5 billion, and that is up NOK9.7 billion in the fourth quarter. We have made adjustments to reflect the underlying operations like we do every quarter. And this…

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Thank you very much, Torgrim and Helge. We will now turn to the Q&A session. For this session, Helge Lund and Torgrim Reitan will be joined by the Senior Vice President for Accounting and Financial Compliance, Kåre Thomsen. We will take questions both from the audience and over the telephone. I will first ask the operator to explain the procedures for asking questions over the telephone and then we will start out with the audience. Operator, will you please explain the procedure now.

Operator

Operator

Thank you, Ms. Nafstad. (Operator Instructions) Thank you, Ms. Nafstad.

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Thank you very much. We will then start out with questions from the audience. We will be passing microphones and I will ask you to please state your name and the name of your company before your post your question. So we will start out with John Olaisen and then Trond Omdal afterwards. John Olaisen – Carnegie: Thank you, Hilde. It’s John Olaisen from Carnegie. A lot of your competitors on the Norwegian Continental Shelf have started complaining about constraints among sub-suppliers, maybe particularly on the rig side. Is that something you’re seeing as well and could that be a constraint for you over the next few years and how would you address that issue, if that is an issue?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

I think, as I see it, this is a global oil and gas issue primarily, that in most areas of the segment the industry is running more or less at full capacity. I think we would expect that to continue. We expect the upstream investments to continue to increase on a worldwide basis perhaps in area of 10% to 15%. That will, I think, put additional pressure on both competence, human capabilities and capacity, and also on equipment. I refrain from going into discussing particular competitor dynamics within individual segment given our role at NCS. But the general direction of your question, I think, it’s fair to confirm there are issues related to bottlenecks on a worldwide basis for the oil and gas industry. I think we have historically at Statoil been good at getting the equipment that we need in terms of taking a long-term view and we will continue to do that. You have seen also that we have changed the way we work on not only fast track project but also in terms of addressing the rig needs including the Category D the approach where we have taken a longer term view. John Olaisen – Carnegie: Why don’t you increase exploration more in 2012 compared to 2011, given the success you had in 2011?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Well, this is reflective over the program that we have and we are already at a significant level and we feel that this is the right level compared to Statoil or the portfolio we have right now.

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Next question goes to Trond Omdal Trond Omdal – Arctic Securities: Trond Omdal, Arctic Securities. You said a couple of years ago on Russia that unless Russia invests quite heavily both on your model and stock, then they might struggle to maintain export capacity to 2020. The recent turmoil and constraints on export, is that a sign that Russia is struggling with maintaining that or is it more a force pressure? The second thing, do you see that also affecting the customers in terms of their negotiation strategies and the view on oil links versus that spot link isn’t necessarily – more spot isn’t necessarily always lower prices?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

I cannot comment on the people’s behavior in the gas market in Europe for reasons you would understand. But I have said on an earlier occasion and can repeat it now, as we see it and due to the reasons I explained earlier, with indigenous production in Europe declining and with anticipated increased demand for gas, I think Europe will depend on higher cost field developments including those in Russia. So there is a structural need in the market in our view on those kind projects to fulfill the needs of Europe and I think that is further sort of underlined by the increasing competition for energy resources from Asia and elsewhere. In terms of the current discussions with some of the major clients and how the structure of the markets will develop, we believe it will definitely move in a liberalized direction. We believe that there will be a continued significant element of long-term contracts. Exactly how those contracts will be structured will be a differentiated picture and I cannot speculate on individual situations now. But I would say that it is a reason that these contracts were developed in the sense that it created not only security of demand for us but also security of supply for the client. So it’s not obvious that renegotiations necessarily will lead to a fully liberalized contract-by-contract sort of attitude. The current contracts, of course, as you know, also come with some flexibility that we historically have given away that we will like to claw back because there is a value of that flexibility. So the market will change but I think there will be a significant element of long-term contracts still. Trond Omdal – Arctic Securities: Okay. Just a follow up, given the low – there are of course very low gas prices in the U.S. currently, but the forward curve now seems to narrow the spread and that spread seems to almost discount the exports that there seem to be a $4 per million BTU spread. It seems to be somewhat equivalent to what BG is paying on regas charges, liquefaction and transport. But are there additional strategic benefits of Statoil actually actively participating in LNG exports from North America or is it sufficient that other players are doing that to narrow the spread?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Well, as a starting point, I really like LNG in the sense – in terms of flexibility. Having said that, the way I look at it in North America is that in Western Canada, where you have huge shale resources that otherwise would have been stranded gas, is probably likely that there will be developed LNG facilities because the gas has no alternative use and therefore no alternative value. In terms of investing in LNG, liquefaction capacity in the U.S. that has an alternative market, then you need to feel as we see it reasonably confident that the spread between Europe in this case and the U.S., if you that as an example on roughly $4 per a million BTU and then you need to have some guts to do that, then of course if there is sufficient LNG capacity, export capacity being built in the U.S., it can even eventually of course impact the U.S. market and perhaps narrow the spread between Europe and the U.S. I think there’s also other questions related to that, including how much export capacity that the U.S. authorities actually will sanction in terms of the impact it will have on the gas market. So I think these are the reflections we have on these. We see that some projects are maturing. But it is not necessarily so that we will take part in that. Trond Omdal – Arctic Securities: (Inaudible) is it an alternative way to get access to the Asian LNG market for Statoil with equity cash?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Yes. But, I mean if you participate in that but then you really have to, as I said, you really have to believe in a consistent spread over many years in the area $4 per million BTU. These are rough numbers but just to give you an indication of that, I think is the risk reward sort of judgment that we and all the players have to take. And here, I think players will think differently about that.

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Okay. Next question goes to Haythem. Haythem Rashed – Morgan Stanley: Hi, Haythem Rashed from Morgan Stanley. Thank you very much for the presentation. Three questions, if I may. Firstly, just on the contracts, you mentioned a modernization of the contracts portfolio. Could you just provide a little color around this and I guess related to that and if you could comment on whether any sort of significant contract renegotiations have taken place in the last few things or if that’s something that you are sort of seeing? And secondly, at Greenland if you can provide an update there, post obviously the acreage you picked from Cairn in terms of whether you see this as sort of the starting point of increasing your foothold there and in terms of drilling activity and such like. And then thirdly just on production. I apologize if you’ve already sort of provided this number but if you could provide an estimate of the impact to gas production in 2011 from that sort of value optimization process that you talked about. And I guess if conditions remain sort of similarly weak in 2012, would that be a sort of sensible number to think about in 2012 in terms of volume impact? Thank you.

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Well, Torgrim, he has been a gas trader before this job, so he will – I’ll give the question to him. First on the contracts, I think you will understand that we cannot give much color to the current discussions that we have with our clients. We discuss with them at this stage, not with the markets. But I dwelled a bit and reflected a bit on some of the forces impacting those discussion and I think it’s not the right to do to speculate in the outcome. I think there is an interest on both parties to try to find solutions that are sort of more forward-looking and directed to the structure of the market we see moving forward. In terms of Cairn, the strategic logic of this from our side was that generally we believe that there will be an increased focus on Arctic areas over the next few decades, I think we have a natural role to play in that. We have already taken two licenses there together with Shell and the GDF and this license that we picked up here with Cairn is closely adjacent to this. So there is – that is the thinking behind that. You should expect that we continue to be active generally in Arctic or harsh offshore environments. You have seen us taking positions in Alaska and the Beaufort Sea, recently on the Flemish Pass and Orphan Basin and also we’re active in the Bering Sea. Of course, we feel that our experience in Norway sort of leads us to those opportunities. There is a certain element of longer term land grab here also in our thinking.

Torgrim Reitan

CEO

On the – thank you for the question on the gas movements. I would have loved to tell you to the exact number, but then I will be beaten up by my traders when they get back because they will jump on to give that sort of information to the market. I will give you some hints on the sort of the size of it. This activity typically is done during the summer period from April to October. During winter, normally Troll is running on full speed. So the movement related to Troll is typically in the summer months. In addition, Oseberg, can we produce the production capacity on Oseberg can be produced over a few months. So that will typically be a winter production and so on. So we have done a bit, at least quite a bit. So it is sufficient to really make a difference into the production for the year. When it comes to 2012 I mean the impact can be absolutely noticeable and actually distort the production for 2012. When it comes to 2012 in all other terms, there is quite a lot of startups, exciting startups of the year. Skarv is coming, production capacity to Statoil around 50,000 barrels per day. Marulk is another one, 10,000. We have Skuld and Visund South which actually has a capacity of 65,000 barrels on our hands; Caesar Tonga with 12,000; PSVM in Angola with 20,000; Kizomba Satellites, around 10,000. So there’s a significant amount of new capacity production coming during the year. So it’s going to be a very interesting year production-wise for Statoil.

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Next question goes to Carl Christian and then I have Anne. Carl Bachke – RS Platou: Hi, Carl Bachke, RS Platou. You’re indicating a gross peak production in Johan Sverdrup of around 500,000 barrels per day. Is that peak or is it within the timeframe that you are indicating towards 2020 and then also then probably facing in other structures after that? And just second is the US$17 billion in CapEx including any capitalized exploration?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

On the plateau or in the Johan Sverdrup, it’s as far as I recall estimated plateau production, so it’s not before or after 2020. So it’s more to try to give you an estimate. This might be a wrong estimate. I think it’s a reasonably good estimate. It is what we have today.

Torgrim Reitan

CEO

When it comes to the $17 billion yes, it includes capitalized exploration. What we normally assume is that we capitalize a third, 30% to 35% of the exploration. In 2011, the capitalization was actually higher due to discoveries.

Hilde Nafstad

Management

Okay. Next question goes to Anne. Anne Gjøen – Handelsbanken Capital Markets: Thank you. Anne Gjøen, Handelsbanken Capital Markets. Three questions, first since you’re selling down in Gassled, could you tell the earnings contribution from Gassled on EBIT in fourth quarter and for the full-year 2011? Second question in relation to reserve replacement ratio and also the increase in your resource base, is it possible to give a split between the increase due to discoveries, acquisitions and revisions? And finally I think you mentioned, but sorry I didn’t quite catch it, about the international cash flow. Could you tell which country are now having positive net cash flow?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Well, if you take the Gassled and RRR, on the international cash flow, what Torgrim said was roughly NOK32 billion on EBITDA numbers from the international division. And of course, if you look at when we were in the investment period last decade and the decade before that was primarily in Nigeria, in Angola, in Azerbaijan and in Algeria. So I think those are good illustrations of where most of the cash flow comes from and then we are in a builder phase, as you know, in Brazil and in Gulf of Mexico and generally on unconventional. So I think that gives a reasonable sort of reflection around that.

Torgrim Reitan

CEO

Okay. Thank you. On Gassled, so what will happen is that mainly all of the cash flow and earnings from Gassled will not be part of the 2012 going forward. In 2011, this has contributed with somewhat slightly above NOK1 billion in earnings per quarter. So it’s a little more than NOK4 billion in the year in pre-tax earnings related to Gassled. This is in the 78% tax regime mostly. There are some of it uncosted, that is on the short tax part. And that means that the NPR segment going forward will be harder for you to estimate earnings related to it, because this was a very stable results from quarter-to-quarter and year-to-year. So what is in that segment now is oil and gas trading activity, gas marketing, refineries in general. So it will fluctuate more than it has done earlier. So just so you are aware. When it comes to the split on the additions on the reserves, I won’t give you explicit numbers, but on Brigham, around 400 million in addition. But if you look organic reserve replacement rate, that is above 1. If you look at the additions, it is actually quite a bit from increased oil recovery this year, which is very positive. Those are extremely profitable barrels. And it actually leads to that. The decline rate for NCS over the year is actually less than 5% this year. So this hangs together with that.

Hilde Nafstad

Operator

Okay. Thank you. We’ll now turn to questions from our audio conference. And the first question comes from Michael Alsford with Citigroup. Please go ahead Michael.

Michael Alsford

Analyst · Michael Alsford with Citigroup. Please go ahead Michael

Good afternoon. A couple of questions, firstly on the unconventional business, I think you gave, if I heard correctly, a sort of a target where you would like to get to on production by 2020, I think 300,000 BOE per day. Could you maybe give a bit more color as to what that split is versus the gas and the sort of liquid rich and liquid plays in the unconventionals? And also maybe a bit more color as to what you would expect in 2016 from that business, again the split between sort of gas and the liquid rich plays? And then just secondly, just on exploration, I think you talked about sort of 20 high impact wells over the next few years. Could you maybe give a bit more color as what we should expect from exploration over the next six months or maybe any indications of some high impact wells that you’ll be drilling within portfolio? Thank you. Citigroup: Good afternoon. A couple of questions, firstly on the unconventional business, I think you gave, if I heard correctly, a sort of a target where you would like to get to on production by 2020, I think 300,000 BOE per day. Could you maybe give a bit more color as to what that split is versus the gas and the sort of liquid rich and liquid plays in the unconventionals? And also maybe a bit more color as to what you would expect in 2016 from that business, again the split between sort of gas and the liquid rich plays? And then just secondly, just on exploration, I think you talked about sort of 20 high impact wells over the next few years. Could you maybe give a bit more color as what we should expect from exploration over the next six months or maybe any indications of some high impact wells that you’ll be drilling within portfolio? Thank you.

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you, Michael. I’ll take the exploration part. Perhaps you make and go about the gas oil thing, Torgrim. On the exploration, roughly as we indicated, next three years, 20 high impact wells, as we see it today. We have a couple of them in Norway, King Lear and Crux. One more I think, I cannot recall them. And then we’re drilling in Tanzania, as we speak. There’s also a high impact well in the East Coast of Africa. We are drilling also wells in over the next few years in Indonesia, and Brazil, and Gulf of Mexico. So, those are the key areas.

Torgrim Reitan

CEO

All right. On the unconventional and the split, I will not give an exact split but I will give you some directions to it. First on Marcellus, rig count is reduced slightly. But there are – we have 400 wells waiting for transportation out to the interstate pipelines, the high pressure systems. Those are marginally cost-wise extremely cheap to put into production. So those are there. There will still be quite a bit of rig activity in the area. So, we find what we have actually quite encouraging when it comes to flow rates and marginal costs. But I think there is one thing that is extremely important to bear in mind us well and that is, that you have to take care of your gas and that is what we have done in Europe for 30 years. We have marketed, found the places where we get the best paid, where we get the best money out of the gas. So we are going to do that as well in the Marcellus. So we were the first company that secured transportation capacity to Toronto, to Canada, so we are selling gas into the Toronto area. And we have that capacity and we took to full capacity and there’s a lot of other companies that really would like to ride on our back on that one. So in that area, the price is $0.50 higher than on the southern side of the border which again is higher than the Henry Hub. So with low prices, value chain, value creation is extremely important. When it comes to the liquid parts, we are encouraged by the Brigham acquisition. We’ll base the acquisition on a set of number of rigs and we have plans to increase the number of rigs in the Bakken play. So based on what we have said earlier, probably somewhat reduction in gas and some increase on the oil side in the longer perspective. The good thing about the unconventionals in the U.S. is that we are able to adjust.

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

I think if you go back and look at the statements when we moved into this resource, you will see a reasonable indication that is still valid in terms of production. Short-term, I don’t think estimate that what is happening in the gas market has a meaningful impact on the production numbers, because we already have them producing the wells at a very, very low costs. Of course, longer term, it will depend on how the gas prices is developing and we have indicated all together of these three resources around 300,000 barrels per day as you suggest. Michael Alsford – Citigroup: Okay. Thank you very much for your help. Thanks.

Hilde Nafstad

Operator

Next question goes to Jason Gammel from Macquarie. Go ahead please, Jason. Jason Gammel – Macquarie: Yes, thank you very much. I just had a couple of questions on the forward progress, for your Johan Sverdrup. First of all, do you view the need for any more appraisal wells over the set of discoveries before you’d be able to move into front end engineering? And can you also talk about it when you move into front end engineering whether you’ll be operating that process? And finally, where are we at in terms of the unitization discussion?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Well, there will be appraisal wells drilled at Johan Sverdrup. We will attack this as a partnership so that we can have an efficient project development and start that as early as possible. We have indicated that we believe that we are able to get these up and producing not at full capacity, but start producing in 2017. That is still the plan. And it’s very important that we distinguish between the efficient project development and the unitization process which is a hardcore negotiation. The other is where the partners are to work together to make an efficient project development. The operator issue is not yet decided but we have signaled that this is in our core area. It’s our core capabilities. It’s close to where we have the majority of our resources and we have signaled the clear sort of ambition and intent to fight for that operatorship and that’s still valid. Jason Gammel – Macquarie: Thanks very much. Just a quick follow-up on that, would you still view 2013 as the most likely timeframe for a final investment decision?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Well, I think we need to come back to that. But it’s as – it goes without saying that if we’re going to have it producing in 2017, we have to be efficient in the front end part of the project and make sure that we are efficient in the early phase of the project to be sanctionable within that timeframe. Jason Gammel – Macquarie: Thanks very much.

Hilde Nafstad

Operator

Next analyst we have Brendan Warn from Jefferies. Brendan Warn – Jefferies: Right. Thanks. Just a couple of questions, just one, if I can get a clarification on what you said about the rig count in the Marcellus. You had about 36 rigs operating back when we’re up in Canada. Just to confirm, what that’s come down to and what sort of number of wells are being drilled still to hold acreage? Just second question, I guess related to your operated Brazilian field Peregrino, I appreciate that production looks to be ramping up well. But can you give you some insights on operating costs and then some of your production – actually I won’t use the word issues but just that you’re the only sort of disclosable operator from that field? And just lastly, I guess in terms of vision, positioning in Asia, can you make any comments, obviously with it coming to a strong balance sheet and your strong position in Europe, if you can make any comments on what you’ve seen, what it would look like if you didn’t enter a region such as Asia in terms of gas?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Well, when it comes to Peregrino, I can confirm that the field is ramping up accordingly to our plans. It’s a good field. It has been complex, I think, project development, but it works as anticipated. We, as you may know, built a very complicated value chain also including using the terminal that we have at Bahamas to blend. All of that is working well. And we do not give specific production numbers on individual fields, but of course, one of the advantage with Peregrino is that it is outside the very strict local content requirements that you have on the new pre-salt resources so the flexibility we have in using the market in the best possible way is bigger. When it comes to Asia, I think you can think about this in different ways. Indirectly, Statoil is already heavily exposed to Asia even though we have a small physical position because both our key products, oil and gas, is heavily exposed to Asian markets and more and more also on the gas side. We have steadily but regularly built up partnerships in Asia. We have a Chinese partner in Brazil. We have a Thai partner in Canada. We have a trading organization in Singapore. We have storage in Korea. I met with our partner there earlier this morning. We will not enter into Asia for the sake of Asia. We will enter it on the upstream side if we find a project where we think we can add value and create value. And that can be either through exploration or through schemes where we can use the value chain sort of experience we have particularly on the gas side. So that is, I think, the direction I can give. Perhaps you want to comment on the rig side on Marcellus, Torgrim.

Torgrim Reitan

CEO

Yes. So that is slightly reduced. So the number is around 30 rigs currently and I expect it to be reduced somewhat further towards the yearend but still sufficient to the take care of the activity that we want to do currently in that. Brendan Warn – Jefferies: Okay. Thanks a lot guys.

Hilde Nafstad

Operator

Next analyst is Nitin Sharma from JPMorgan. Go ahead please, Nitin. Nitin Sharma – JPMorgan: Hi, two questions if I may, please, the first one in relation to U.S. on conventional resource. Your growth in that space has been aggressive in last few years. Looking forward should we now expect more in organic growth or are you focusing now more on development effort you already have? So that’s the first one. The second is in relation to the provision for disputed PSA provisions that you have in your D&P international. Could you please give us more color on these provisions, i.e. timeframe for these disputes, the mechanism for resolution? And should we be in near-term expect a recurrence of these disputes, i.e. these provisions in coming quarter? Thank you.

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

I leave the PSA question to Torgrim. He is the PSA expert. I can say on U.S. conventional, the approach that we have taken is that we believe that these resources will be important for the long-term energy supply and mix. We want to have an industrial role. We have done it step by step, as I said earlier in my presentation. I think you should expect moving forward that we have a key focus on high grading the positions we already have, making more out of the resources in terms of operational efficiency, using technology, making even better in terms of HSE practices and so on and so forth, and then that you should expect us to continue to build land possessions as we’re doing, have been doing historically. But that will be smaller step-by-step sort of transactions that will not be visible on a corporate level, but that is to build a resource base beyond 2020 and 2025.

Torgrim Reitan

CEO

Okay. On the production sharing agreements, this is related to Angola and Nigeria. So, first a few words on those contracts, those are contracts between the companies and the country. And it stands above the law in the countries, so it is there to protect us, to facilitate investments into regimes where stability is asked for. These, I mean, the assets we have in these countries are generating fantastic cash flows and amazing profitability. So, the governments in those country would like to take more of the profit than is sort of justifiable through the production sharing agreements and so on. And we dispute that and so on. So we don’t think this is right. So, what we have done in the fourth quarter accounting-wise, we take a careful approach to this so we have made accruals related to these two elements, NOK1.5 billion and that covers a longer period of time so that is 2011 and also before 2011. And then you asked, should we expected a similar – what should we expect going forward? Well, you should expect us to be careful when it comes to how we treat this in our accounts. So if this is not resolved then we will keep on accruing for this going forward. Nitin Sharma – JPMorgan: Thank you.

Hilde Nafstad

Operator

We have Lucy Haskins from Barclays Capitals and after that we will unfortunately have to draw the line. Please go ahead, Lucy. Lucy Haskins – Barclays Capital: Good afternoon. Could I ask a follow-on question in terms of your exploration plans for this year? Do you have a feel for what risked and un-risked resources you may be tapping through your sort of high impact wells and perhaps a little bit more of granularity in terms of when we might expect the result from the King Lear prospect that you suggested would be one of the sort of big plays for you? And then the second question is actually about (inaudible) and whether your enthusiasm for that play is beginning to ebb somewhat?

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

On Iran, I cannot comment specifically on the news report. What I can say more on a general basis is that all our project has to fulfill our investment criterias financially and also other important criterias to us and that project is, of course, all the time evaluated on the same basis as other projects in our portfolio. In terms of King Lear, I cannot recall exactly what the pace on that – perhaps you know...

Torgrim Reitan

CEO

Well, King Lear is spudded. That is going on, so that we will revert to that in due time.

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

It’s a complex well. Lucy Haskins – Barclays Capital: Since you may be sort of trying to access through your exploration program this year?

Torgrim Reitan

CEO

Lucy, excuse me, could you repeat that? Lucy Haskins – Barclays Capital: Sorry. What will be the risked and un-risked resource number that you’ll be hoping to sort of target through your exploration program this year?

Torgrim Reitan

CEO

Well, in general, we won’t give un-risked and risked numbers for this year alone. What we did was in New York in June, where our team actually put out what is the risked resources and un-risked potential in the portfolio that we have at hand currently. And as far as I recall, it was 30 billion in un-risked and 6 billion barrels in risked resources. So that a sort of some key numbers. What is extremely important to us is to continue to access new acreage that can fuel high impact wells for the long terms and what we have done this year is acreage in Angola pre-salt, Indonesia, Switzerland, Norway, Canada, which are the main areas. So we’ll see. Lucy Haskins – Barclays Capital: Well, keep up the good work anyway in terms of the exploration sectors of last year.

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

Thank you.

Hilde Nafstad

Operator

Thank you very much, Lucy. And that will have to conclude our Q&A session. Today’s presentation and the Q&A session can be replayed from our website in a few days and transcripts will also be available. Any further questions can be directed to the Investor Relations department. And I will now hand the floor over to Helge Lund who will make a few closing remarks.

Helge Lund

Chief Executive Officer

I have six to seven minutes now running closer. So just very quickly, our aim was really to reconfirm the strategic direction of the company and try to provide more granularity and facts on where we are in terms of executing the plan. Hopefully, we have sprung surprises on you during this session. My assessment of where we are as a CEO in Statoil now is that 2011 was a good year for Statoil. It was more stable operationally. We improved well on safety and had good progress on the strategic front. Perhaps the most important thing that happened for us last year was the fact that we succeeded in exploration and we turned a corner when it came to reserve replacement. And I think that gives us a good basis for executing on the plan. And I think if I can use Statoil terminology we’re even more confident now we can deliver on the 2020 perspective. This has not any more to do with resources. It has to do with our ability as a management team and with our people to execute on that plan. So that is where we are today. So thank you for your attention and hope you will continue to follow the company. Thank you.