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spk05: Sure. Thanks, Brad. Yeah, look, you know, a reliable and growing dividend is the kind of bedrock of our cash return strategy and where it all starts. And we've done, you know, pretty significant increase over the last few years and on a growth basis, I think. caught up with, well, on a growth basis, exceeded most of our peers. And look, we continue to want to grow the dividend. Obviously, it's a trade-off. You don't want to get ahead of yourself and have to cut and things like that. But I think fundamentally, you're correct. There is room to grow. And Obviously, as we deliberate that, we look at our future prospects and everything else, and we set those levels. So we take your point, you know, looking for more dividend growth, and that'll certainly come over time. And we're highly aware of, you know, what our competitors do in terms of increases and yields. And that obviously reflects our thinking and, you know, their actions and yields, you know, you know, affect us in a way that, you know, probably the way you want it. If they're going higher, you know, we would tend to follow that. of course, looking at our unique situation and what we see as our future cash flows. But you're right, we're very resilient. We put out a $35 and less investor day breakeven day, including, I'm sorry, at our investor day, a $35 WTI breakeven, which includes sustaining capital and dividends. So our dividend is super secure and you're absolutely correct. We have room to increase it.
spk06: Look, it's one of those good problems and we appreciate the thoughts My really quick follow-up is on CURL. So third quarter volumes were obviously very strong. And you look on page for the midpoint of guidance for the full year. Just wondering if you can give a quick update on October volumes and address if there's any tension between volumes and wide differentials as you execute the rest of this quarter.
spk02: Yeah, thanks.
spk03: Well, we continue to be committed to our full-year guidance for CURL. You know, the third quarter performance I think is demonstrative of our capability to achieve that. October has been a strong month for us so far. You know, there's still, I guess, five, six days to go relative to the latest volumes that I've seen. But, you know, we expect to be somewhere in the 280s for this month, which also reflects you know, some very minor kind of routine plan maintenance that we executed. And we see continued, you know, strength as we move into November, December.
spk02: Great. I'll leave it there. See you in Houston next month, Brad. Yeah, you bet. Thank you. Look forward to it.
spk01: We'll take our next question from Menno Hulschoff with TD Securities.
spk07: Thanks, and good morning, everyone. I'll start with a question on the 2024 outlook. I do understand that you're in the midst of the budgeting process, but would you be able to give us the broad strokes on planned turnaround activity within upstream and downstream for the coming year?
spk02: Yeah, we're not, you know, in a position to discuss all those details yet.
spk03: That'll be part of our normal guidance and, you know, we're in the process of finalizing all of our plans for next year. But, you know, as we think more broadly about it, you know, we're expecting, you know, a pretty typical turnaround year next year. I don't think anything kind of extraordinary. So, you know, I'd say that that'd be the planning, rough planning basis now. And then, you know, as we get to the end of the year, we'll give more specifics on each of the assets, the target timing, duration, cost, but just a little bit too premature to share those details with you.
spk02: Thanks, Brad. Totally understandable.
spk07: Maybe I'll just follow up on line five. It's been pretty quiet on that front for a while. And just going back over some of some of the comments from past conference calls. You've talked about contingency plans and constantly refreshing the different scenarios. Can you just give us an update on what you're hearing there? And what's your best guess on how this plays out?
spk02: Yeah, you know, I think you characterized it right from the beginning.
spk03: It's been pretty quiet. You know, there's continued progress by Enbridge. to kind of install the new pipe, work through all the technical and permitting considerations there. We continue to be optimistic that there won't be any interruptions of service. We do have contingency plans in place, but You know, I'd say even as I sit here today versus a year ago or two years ago, we're becoming increasingly comfortable that there won't be any interruption.
spk02: You know, there's obviously things well outside our control, but it has been quite quiet. Thanks, Brad. I'll turn it back. Okay. Thank you.
spk01: We'll take our next question from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs.
spk08: Yeah, thank you, and I'll add my congratulations, Dave. You will be missed, and Peter, wish you lots of luck in the new role. A couple questions here. The first is just around the SIB. Can you just go through the thought process behind the decision around the billion and a half dollars, similar to last year, and just... thoughts on whether if the commodity price stays up here, it's possible to do this again in the spring. Last year was a little tougher. Earlier this year was a little tougher because of the large deferred tax payment. But I don't think you have the same thing in one queue of 2024. So thanks.
spk03: Yeah, thanks for the question. You know, I would – I would like to answer that question, but I promised to Dan that I would let him answer all the SIC questions because he loves talking. Absolutely. Over to you, Dan.
spk05: Sure. Hey, look, you know, our philosophy is not super complicated. You know, as we generate the cash, we, you know, the free cash flow, we return it. You know, so that's really, you know, kind of where the 1.5 came from. And I would say, you know, I wish we round, you know, we don't go to a precise number. So, 1.5 is a good round number. It makes sense based on our cash balances and cash flow. Regarding, you're correct, that we do not have a big makeup payment. Like, we had that very unique situation last year. That is not expected to be the case this last year, unless in a good world, prices go to $200 or something. Maybe then we'd have that, but not likely to happen. So, as we look to next year, you know, Our commodity prices stay strong. Our cash generation stays strong. You know, we generate free cash flow. Our base plan is to return that to shareholders. So I think, you know, so we'll see where those numbers go. But that's really an unchanged philosophy. You know, it's a continuation of what we've been doing for a while.
spk08: Okay. That's helpful. And it's good to see the return of capital. Follow-up is on pathways. It's been quiet from our perspective as an investment community around this. I know, Brad, you spend a lot of time on this, so maybe you can peel back the onion a little bit for us and help us understand, are we getting closer to FID? What are the gating conditions here? And is it fair to assume in the base case this gets to FID in 2024? Thank you.
spk02: Yeah. Thanks for that question.
spk03: And, um, yeah, I guess interesting perspective that it's been quiet, uh, you know, from, from your standpoint, it sure hadn't been quiet from my standpoint or the rest of the pathways team, because there is an extraordinary amount of work underway. And, um, Maybe I'll break that into a couple of key components that all need to come together to achieve an eventual FID. First of all, there is a lot of work underway to progress the engineering side of the project. This is a big, multi-billion dollar project. And that requires significant pre-engineering work, which we've now essentially completed and positions us to move into kind of more feed engineering studies. There's a significant amount of environmental studies that need to be conducted across the pipeline right-of-way route that's planned. There's the networks progressing. You know, there's multiple components to capturing the carbon. So in our first phase, there's nine key assets and capture projects across the six companies. And each company is doing their own engineering and project planning for that work. And that's progressing. And then on the sequestration side, you know, we've worked with the Alberta government. and been awarded poor space that now we need to do additional technical work so that we can demonstrate that we can, you know, safely and reliably store the carbon that we would expect to capture and transport to that site kind of in the, in the cold lake region. So all that work is progressing and, and you know, there's, a few hundred folks working on that across the six companies. And then secondly, I would just say on the indigenous engagement side, which is critically important for us to have a sustainable partnership with the many indigenous communities that are along the you know, the route and part of our operations. And so in recent months, we've been actively engaging them to understand their needs, their desires, you know, as we look at how we can build, you know, a sustainable partnership with them. We've had engagements with over 20 communities so far. And then And then lastly, I would say that the third other kind of key element of this is, of course, kind of all the fiscal work that we're doing with both the federal government and the provincial government. And that is to ensure that we have the right policies in place the right funding mechanisms in place so that these projects can be economic for our shareholders to ensure that they deliver the environmental benefits that are consistent with the government's aspirations for net zero by 2050. And so there are regular engagements now with the Alberta government and the federal government around all the details around those plans. We have yet to finalize those discussions on the fiscal mechanisms and the fiscal kind of support that will be necessary for these projects to go forward. But I would say those discussions have advanced materially over the last couple months. So I'm quite pleased with the progress we're making. there's still a long ways to go. As I said at the beginning, this is a big project, big investments, you know, has implications for decades to come, but it's critically important, you know, for our industry to be sustainable, critically important for Canada to achieve its net zero ambitions. So we're all focused on making it a success. Um, you know, the next key milestone for us would be, uh, You know, once we have all of the fiscal mechanisms in place, once we have the engineering work completed, then we will be looking to place an order for the main pipe that we would need for the trunk line for the, you know, 300-kilometer project. And, you know, we hope to be in a place that we can place that order sometime next year. is kind of our current planning basis. Okay. So I hope that gives you a little more color and so kind of a reflection of just how much activity is underway.
spk08: That's great. Thank you, Brad. Always appreciate it.
spk01: Thank you. This does conclude the question and answer portion. I would like to turn the call back over to Peter Shaw, Vice President, Investor Relations, for any closing remarks.
spk04: Thank you. So on behalf of the management team, I would like to thank everybody for joining us this morning. Also sharing the thanks to Dave as we've worked over the last several weeks for a smooth handover. If you have any further questions or follow-ups, please don't hesitate to reach out to anyone on the investor relations team. We'll be happy to answer any of your questions. And with that, thank you very much and have a great day.
spk01: This does conclude today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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