Nalcor expects to hit payback milestone in 2019

Nalcor Energy’s oil and gas division expects to be self-sufficient within two to three years and to have paid back all monies received from the provincial government within five years, a senior company executive says.

Jim Keating, vice-president of oil and gas for Crown-owned Nalcor, says the company will no longer require infusions of cash from the province by 2016-2017.

“In that period, Nalcor Energy oil and gas will be self-sufficient,” Keating told delegates at the 2014 NOIA conference in St. John’s Friday.

“That means we will be able to fund all our investments, all our costs, from that point onward. No more reliance on equity or transfers from the government.”

Keating says that another milestone — this one for “government payback” — will follow, around 2019.

“Effectively that’s the point when we’ve made every dime the government of Newfoundland and Labrador has committed to Nalcor in oil and gas, we’ve made it back,” he noted.

“And from that point it’s pure additional revenue for the province.”

The Newfoundland and Labrador government’s energy plan requires oil companies to allow Nalcor to buy equity in their projects.

Nalcor must pay its share of development and operating costs, but also receives its share of the profits generated.

Capital expenditures are expected to peak at $252 million for Nalcor in 2015, before declining in subsequent years as fields come on stream.

Nalcor expects net cash flow from its oil investments — after all deductions, including capital expenditures, operating costs and royalty payments — to break through the $300-million barrier in 2020, and remain above that marker for several years.

Nalcor has a 4.9 per cent interest in Hebron; five per cent in North Amethyst, West White Rose and South White Rose Extension; and 10 per cent in the Hibernia Southern Extension.