Our strategic themes
Operational excellence
- Operating in a safe, efficient and sustainable way at all times.
- Promoting an inclusive performance-driven culture focused on continuous improvement that empowers employees.
- Building a track record of consistent top-tier operating capability and performance.
- Leveraging our engineering, technical and subsurface expertise to realise operating efficiencies and maximise return on investments.
Capital efficiency
- Operating within a strict cost framework.
- Allocating capital in a disciplined way focused on delivering investor returns and capital to fuel our growth plans.
- Generating material free cash flow of c.$800 million between 2023 and 2025.
- Deleveraging our balance sheet to become a lowdebt business by 2025 with less than $1 billion net debt and under 1x gearing.
Business growth
- Growth from our existing assets, including new production from discovered resources, production from undeveloped parts of fields and near-field exploration.
- Leveraging our deep expertise in two ways: to identify low-risk investments with potential for fast commercialisation, high returns and rapid payback; and create future optionality from significant prospective resources.
- Leveraging our strong reputation as a trusted partner and ethical and responsible operator to secure value-accretive opportunities to diversify our asset base.
Strategy in action
Operational excellence
Enhancing drilling performance
Top-tier drilling performance is being achieved during our ongoing programme in Ghana. The cost of wells in this programme has averaged c.$56 million, around 20% lower than wells drilled during the 2018–2020 programme. This cost saving has been delivered by significantly reducing nonproductive rig time, simplifying well designs and more effective contracting. Our well engineering, subsurface and operations teams are building an excellent track record for efficiently delivering complex wells on schedule and on budget with results in line with expectations.
Average Ghana well costs in 2023
c.$56 million
Capital
efficiency
Deleveraging our balance sheet
We have made significant progress in reducing our debt and addressing our debt maturities. During the year we purchased portions of our Notes due in 2025 and 2026 and in November 2023 we entered into a $400 million five-year notes facility agreement with Glencore (see page 24). These developments, together with our expected cash generation through to 2025, will allow us to fully address all outstanding 2025 Notes and positions us for a successful refinancing of the 2026 Notes.
Year-end 2023 net debt
$1.6bn
2022: $1.9bn
Business
growth
Increasing production at Jubilee
Following the completion of the Jubilee South East project, gross production from our Jubilee field in Ghana grew from c.70,000 barrels of oil per day (bopd) at the start of the year to c.100,000 bopd. This increased production is a result of the three‑year c.$1 billion investment we and our partners have made to bring previously undeveloped reserves to production via the Jubilee South East project. Sharing the value we create is core to our purpose and we are pleased to have delivered this growth through collaboration with a number of local suppliers. In particular, a significant proportion of the complex Jubilee South East offshore infrastructure was fabricated by local companies in Ghana, whose workforces are over 90% Ghanaian. Over the next few years, we plan to maintain this increased level of production through active reservoir management and infill drilling.
Forecast 2024 Jubilee gross production
c.100,000 bopd
