Imperial Oil Limited

Good day, and welcome to the Imperial Oil Third Quarter 2025 Earnings Call. Today's conference is being recorded. At this time, I'd like to turn the conference over to Peter Shaw, Vice President of Investor Relations.

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our Third Quarter Earnings Conference Call. I am joined this morning by Imperial's Senior Management Team, including John Whalen, Chairman, President, and CEO. Dan Lyons, Senior Vice President, Finance and Administration, Cheryl Gomez-Smith, Senior Vice President of the Upstream, and Scott Maloney, Vice President of the Downstream. Today's comments include reference to non-GAAP financial measures. The definitions and reconciliations of these measures can be found in Attachment 6 of our most recent press release and are available on our website with a link to this conference call. Today's comments may contain forward-looking information. Any forward-looking information is not a guarantee of future performance and actual future performance, and operating results can vary materially depending on a number of factors and assumptions. Forward-looking information and the risk factors and assumptions are described in further detail on our third quarter's earnings release that we issued this morning, as well as our most recent Form 10-K. All these documents are available on CDAR+, EDGAR, and our website, so I'd ask you to refer to those. John is going to start this morning with some opening remarks and then hand it over to Dan, who's going to provide the financial update. And then John will provide an operations update, and once we're done that, we'll allow time for Q&A. So with that, I will turn it over to John for his opening remarks.

Thank you, Peter. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our third quarter earnings call. I hope everyone is doing well, and as always, we appreciate you taking the time to join us this morning. I'm really pleased to report another strong quarter. We generated cash flow from operations of nearly $1.8 billion and ended the quarter with approximately $1.9 billion of cash on hand. To our shareholders, we delivered over $1.8 billion through dividends and buybacks. Our strong financial performance and ability to return significant cash to shareholders was underpinned by higher volumes, including record crude production, and high refinery utilization. With planned turnaround activity now complete, we're positioned for a strong finish to the year across all of our assets. While crude has softened of late, our integrated business model is very resilient, and we generate substantial free cash flow over a range of oil price environments. As such, we will continue executing on our strategy and the plans we provided at our investor day earlier this year. During the quarter, we also announced a restructuring effort that is aligned with our well-established strategy and will further strengthen our leading position and our foundation for future growth.

I'll come back to this in more detail shortly. Let me share some highlights from the quarter.

At Curl, the bar has been raised again. with the team delivering 316,000 barrels per day gross, the highest quarterly production in the asset's history, a great step on our path towards reaching annual production of 300,000 barrels per day. At Coal Lake, Grand Rapids continued to perform well, and the new Lemmings Sag D development finished steaming, and we expect first production shortly. These projects support transformation at Coal Lake, where we continue to expect more than 40% of production by 2030 to come from advantaged technologies. Downstream utilization of 98% was significantly higher quarter over quarter, even with planned turnaround activity at Sarnia beginning in September. That turnaround is now complete and was executed below cost and ahead of schedule. Now I'd like to share more on our restructuring plans. On September 29th, we announced restructuring plans to further advance our well-established strategy of increasing cash flow and delivering unmatched industry-leading shareholder returns. We plan to further improve our industry-leading performance by centralizing additional corporate and technical activities in global business and technology centers realizing substantial efficiency and effectiveness benefits from scale, integration, and technology. This restructuring is consistent with our longstanding strategy to maximize the value of our existing assets, using technology and leveraging our relationship with ExxonMobil. With data availability and processing capabilities growing at an accelerating pace, The changes are designed to fully leverage global available expertise to maximize the benefits of current technology and accelerate the cost-effective deployment of new technologies to drive value and enhance financial resilience. Our world is evolving quickly. Technology is advancing in leaps and bounds. We see it all around us. And there's been huge growth in global capability centers. and we have to move with it. As a company, our legacy is defined by change and adaptation to ever-evolving business environments, technology, and customer needs. That ability to evolve is one of our greatest strengths. We have done it time and time again, and it is key to our success and leading position. These restructuring actions will further enhance our foundation for future growth and position us to continue delivering unmatched industry-leading returns and long-term value for our shareholders. At the same time, we remain fully committed to meet or beat the medium-term growth and expense reduction plans communicated at our Investor Day in April. Additionally, as a result of the restructuring, we have recorded a one-time restructuring charge expect to achieve a reduction in annual expenses of $150 million by 2028. Larger benefits are expected over the long term, as more fully leveraging the global scale and expertise of ExxonMobil will enable us to further enhance cash flow growth by driving productivity improvements across our operations, including higher production, reduced downtime, lower unit operating costs, as well as project planning and execution excellence. Our relationship with ExxonMobil is an advantage that others don't have and can't replicate. Now we will manage this transition through a rigorous process. We will be restructuring our corporate workforce, what we call above field, which will result in a reduction in the number of employee roles by the end of 2027. Then in the second half of 2028, we will further consolidate activities at our operating sites, primarily the Strathcona Refinery in Edmonton, to enhance collaboration, operational focus, and execution excellence. Through this transition, our focus remains on supporting our employees, operating with integrity, putting safety first, and executing our business strategy. Additionally, in view of the restructuring and our reduced office space requirements, we have signed an agreement to sell our Calgary campus, resulting in a non-cash impairment charge. And on that note, I'll turn it over to Dan to discuss our financial results in more detail.

Thanks, John. We had two identified items In the third quarter in our corporate segment, first, restructuring plans that John mentioned resulted in a charge of $330 million before tax in the quarter with an unfavorable earnings impact of $249 million after tax. This charge largely consists of employee severance costs, which will be paid out over the next two years as we migrate activities to business and technology centers and achieve efficiency. Second, following an extensive marketing effort and after careful consideration of the current status and the anticipated outlook for large properties in the Calgary real estate market, we signed a sales and purchase agreement to sell our Calgary campus, which is expected to close in the coming months. Consistent with this, we recorded a non-cash impairment charge of $406 million before tax with an unfavorable earnings impact of $306 million after tax in the quarter. The sales and purchase agreement includes a leaseback arrangement to support Imperial's needs over the next several years. Turning to our underlying third quarter results, we recorded net income of $539 million. However, excluding identified items, the ones I just described, net income for the quarter is $1 billion $94 million, down $143 million from the third quarter of 2024, driven by lower upstream realizations, partially offset by higher refining margins. When comparing sequentially, third quarter net income is down $410 million from the second quarter of 2025, but again, excluding identified items, net income is up $145 million, primarily due to strong operational performance. Now, shifting our attention to each business line and looking sequentially, upstream earnings of $728 million are up $64 million from the second quarter, primarily due to higher volumes and realizations. Downstream earnings of $444 million are up $122 million from the second quarter, mainly reflecting higher margins and volumes. Our chemical business generated earnings of $21 million, consistent with the second quarter. Moving on to cash flow, in the third quarter, we generated $1,798,000,000 in cash flows from operating activities, excluding working capital effects. Cash flows from operating activities for the third quarter were $1,600,000,000, which includes a $149,000,000 unfavorable impact from the previously mentioned restructuring charge. Taking this into account, normalized cash flow was about $1,750,000,000 in the quarter. As John mentioned, we ended the quarter in a strong position with about $1.9 billion of cash on hand. Now shifting to CapEx, capital expenditures in the third quarter total $505 million, $19 million higher than the third quarter of 2024. In the upstream, third quarter spending of $353 million focused on sustaining capital at Coral, Cold Lake, and Syncrude. In the downstream, third quarter CapEx was primarily spent on sustaining capital projects across our refining network. Our full-year outlook remains consistent with our previously issued guidance. Shifting to shareholder distributions, in the third quarter, we continue to demonstrate our longstanding commitment to return surplus cash to our shareholders, paying $366 million in dividends and returning almost $1.5 billion through our accelerated share repurchase program under our normal course issuer bid. We anticipate completing our NCIB program before year end. Finally, this morning, we announced the fourth quarter dividend of 72 cents per share in line with our third quarter dividend. Imperial remains committed to a reliable and growing dividend as demonstrated by 31 consecutive years of annual dividend growth. Now, I'll turn it back to John to discuss our operational performance.

Thanks, Dan. I want to take the next few minutes to share the key highlights from our operating results. Upstream production for the quarter averaged 462,000 oil equivalent barrels per day, up 35,000 barrels per day versus the second quarter, and up 15,000 barrels per day versus the third quarter of 2024. This quarter marks a new crude production record for the company. Now I'll cover highlights for each of the assets, starting with Curl. Curl set a quarterly production record averaging 316,000 barrels per day, up 41,000 barrels per day versus the second quarter, and up 21,000 barrels per day versus the third quarter of 2024. This marks the highest quarterly production ever for Curl, surpassing our previous best set in the fourth quarter of 2023. The strong volumes were driven by a combination of high ore quality and our optimization efforts associated with ore selectivity, and we're also realizing reliability gains from upsizing and design improvements of the hydrotransport lines. Curl continued to progress on unit cash costs, and that is quickly becoming one of my favorite parts of our story. Unit cash costs at Curl were $15.13 US per barrel this quarter, a decrease of nearly $4 US per barrel compared to the second quarter, helped by the absence of our planned turnaround, but also improved reliability, recovery, and or selectivity. When compared to the third quarter of last year, we achieved a decrease of over $2 US per barrel. The third quarter's strong performance contributed to our year-to-date unit cash cost of $17.89 US per barrel. With year-to-date unit cash costs down over $2 US per barrel, we are realizing the benefit of our strategy that is focused on growing volumes with lower unit cash costs. Moving next to Coal Lake. Coal Lake's production averaged 150,000 barrels per day, up 5,000 barrels per day versus the second quarter of 2025, and up 3,000 barrels per day versus the third quarter of 2024. I would like to take a moment to draw your attention to unit cash costs at Coal Lake. The current cost in the third quarter was $13.38 U.S. per barrel. and that is supporting year-to-date costs of $14 U.S., which is down $1 U.S. per barrel versus the same period last year. While we have certainly benefited from low gas prices, we continue to make progress on structural cost reduction initiatives and our strategy to transform Coal Lake to a high proportion of technology-advantaged production. Consistent with that, our Lemmings Sag D project remains on track Having recently completed steam circulation, we expect to see first oil in the coming weeks with production ramping up over the next year. And looking to the future, we have an abundance of high quality in situ opportunities in our portfolio. At Aspen, we continue to progress the eBird pilot with startup remaining on track for early 2027. In addition, our Clark Creek and corner assets provide us with further long-term growth opportunities. These three assets have the potential to support up to 150,000 barrels per day each of advantage production during their estimated 25 to 50-year operating life. And to round out the upstream, I'll cover Syncrude. Imperial's share of Syncrude production for the quarter averaged 78,000 barrels per day, which was up 1,000 barrels per day versus the second quarter, and down 3,000 barrels per day versus the third quarter of 2024. In early September, Syncrude began its planned 50-day corker turnaround and was able to complete it ahead of schedule and under budget, with work wrapping up at the beginning of last week. Syncrude also continued to utilize the interconnect pipeline to import bitumen and gas oil to ensure high upgrader utilizations. and this enabled an additional 6,000 barrels per day, our share of Syncrude Sweet premium production. Now moving to the downstream. We delivered strong operational results while progressing our planned turnaround at Sarnia. Refinery throughput averaged 425,000 barrels per day, equating to a refinery utilization of 98%. This exceeded last year's third quarter throughput by 36,000 barrels per day, and it's exceeded the second quarter 2025 throughput by 49,000 barrels per day, primarily driven by lower turnaround impacts and strong reliability at all sites. As we mentioned in the second quarter earnings call, we started up the Strathcona Renewable Diesel Facility and are already realizing benefits of backing out more expensive imported products and replacing them with our own low cost of supply. We continue to optimize production based on hydrogen availability. Earlier this week, we successfully completed our turnaround at Sarnia, ahead of schedule, and below budget. With our turnaround activity complete for the year, we are expecting a strong fourth period. Petroleum product sales in the quarter were 464,000 barrels per day, which is down 16,000 barrels per day versus the second quarter of 2025, driven by lower export volumes, harshly offset by higher jet and asphalt sales. Overall, we continue to see robust demand in Canada, with gas and diesel comparable to the third quarter of 2024 levels, and jet showing stronger demand. Turning now to chemicals, earnings in the third quarter were $21 million, consistent with the second quarter. Compared to the third quarter of 2024, earnings were down $7 million, driven by weaker polyethylene margins. While challenging market conditions persist, our integration with the Sarnia Refinery continues to add value and provides resilience to low price margins.

So to wrap up,

I'm very pleased with the strong operational and financial performance in the quarter, highlighted by the record quarterly liquids production in our upstream, best ever quarterly production at Curl, and strong refinery utilization of 98% in our downstream. With our planned turnaround activity complete, we're focused on a strong finish and remain confident in our guide We continue to return surplus cash to our shareholders in a timely manner and still expect to complete the accelerated normal course issuer bid by the end of the year. As mentioned earlier, our restructuring plan advances our long-standing strategy of maximizing the value of our existing assets. The plan positions Imperial to continue delivering industry-leading shareholder returns over a range of market conditions. We are transforming from a position of strength, leveraging the rapidly advancing technology environment, the growth in global capability centers, and our relationship with ExxonMobil. I've described what is changing as part of our restructuring. It is equally important to highlight what is not. Our governance and leadership structure is not changing. What we are doing is fully aligned with our strategy. Our strategy is not changing, and our growth plans are not changing. We remain a proud Canadian company, an industry-leading, technology-focused energy company contributing significantly to the country and our shareholders. And throughout this transition, we remain committed to supporting our employees the communities where we operate, and responsibly producing the energy and products Canadians rely on. In closing, let me say the combination of our financial position, strong operating results, and our strategic initiatives to further strengthen our efficiency and effectiveness give me confidence in the future of Imperial and our ability to further enhance our industry-leading position I am very pleased with the strong results our team has delivered, and I want to thank them. And as always, I'd like to thank you once again for your continued interest and support. Looking ahead, we are planning to issue our annual guidance for 2026 in mid-December. And with that, I will now move to our Q&A session and pass the floor back to Peter. Thank you, John.

As always, we'd appreciate it if you could limit yourself to one question plus a follow-up so that we can get to all the questions. So with that, operator, could you please open up the line for questions?

Thank you. If you would like to signal with questions, please press star 1 on your touchtone telephone. If you're joining us today using a speakerphone, please make sure your mute function is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, that is star 1 if you would like to signal with questions. And the first question will come from Manav Gupta with UBS.

Good morning, guys. Girls keep setting new milestones. I mean, production volume was significantly better than our expectations. And I don't think I've seen a $15 op cost out there. So help us understand what's driving these improvements and how is this asset positioning imperial extremely well for times to come ahead.

Thank you, Manav. And I may make a few comments and Cheryl can chime in as well. Thank you for that comment. And as I said, you know, Curls, the unit cost performance there, the reliability, the performance of the asset has certainly become one of my favorite parts of the story. It is very key to our success and our future for sure. And, you know, as we look at where we are right now, I think we're really well positioned to meet the midpoint of our annual guidance. The team continues to set new records. We had a best second quarter, best ever second quarter. Now we've had the best ever quarter in the third quarter. But it is important to note there's variability quarter to quarter. And, you know, we need to keep that in mind as we go forward as well. But this quarter, we had very strong volumes with our high ore quality, our optimization efforts, as well as reliability gains. Honestly, I couldn't be prouder of this team and be more optimistic about this asset and the importance of it to our business. We're on track to deliver on our commitments and around a future of 300,000 barrels a day for this asset and a unit cost target of $18 a barrel in 2027. Cheryl can comment a bit more, but thank you for the comments. This is a very important part of our business for sure, and we're very pleased with the performance of this asset.

Thanks, John. So a little bit more in terms of what's made the difference, and I'm going to go back to some of the messages that I shared when we had Investor Day. Curl continues to have a relentless focus on optimizing scope and collaborating lessons learned, and this is including implementing creative ideas. We continue to integrate lessons learned and technology, drive better decisions via data and analytics, as well as leverage our global learnings and benchmarking. In short, we're maintaining this continuous improvement mindset. The work and the success that we've had to date gives me confidence to continue to outperform while maintaining our facility integrity, as well as our strong risk management.

Thank you. My quick follow-up is on the refining macro. Looks like the diesel markets are very tight and whatever channel checks we are doing is indicating that the Russian refineries have taken a significant hit and it will take a long time for those markets to normalize. And so I wanted to understand in the next three to six months, how do you see the refining market out there? Do you think the strength in diesel cracks can continue? Because if that's the case, your fourth quarter numbers in the refining side have definite upside from where we are. So if you could comment on that.

Sure, I'll jump in and take that. Yeah, we have certainly seen the same things right out the door right now with the global supply-demand balances and then the sanctions out there propping up diesel margins. And so, you know, as long as those sanctions continue and the disruptions occur in the global market, we think that that's a possible outcome for us. The way we manage our business is making the products that we see margins out the door on and With all of our maintenance work behind us this year, we see high utilization numbers for the balance of the fourth quarter. And combined with the margins that we're seeing, especially in the diesel channel, we're looking forward to a positive fourth quarter.

Thank you. And we'll take a question from Greg Party with RBC Capital Markets.

Yeah, thanks. Good morning. Thanks for the rundown, John and Dan. I wanted to come back to the restructuring just to better understand how the transition is going to work. So you've done the sale lease back on the building, which means that the staff that will be retained presumably is going to be at Quarry Park. Sounds like you'll be at Quarry Park. And then I'm just trying to understand that if the transition is going to occur over essentially 26 and 27, have the folks that no longer have a role Are they still in the building, or has that transition kind of moved? I'm just trying to better understand how the dynamics are going to shake out.

Well, thanks, Greg. Let me cover that. You know, if you step back from this, what we're doing, I would say, and I'll get to the specifics of your question. We've been assessing this opportunity over a couple of years, and it really builds on the transformation journey that we've been on for more than a decade, frankly, of you know, gradually outsourcing work to global capability centers and leveraging technology to improve efficiency. In the past, you know, you've seen that over the last decade in terms of our organization size. We're doing just as much or more in terms of what we're operating, what we're executing, but with less people doing it in a more efficient manner. So in the past, we did this opportunity-by-opportunity base on an opportunity-by-opportunity basis or organization-by-organization basis. Now we've looked at this from a company-wide perspective, and as we've kind of crawled and walked, we see the opportunity to run as we move forward. And I share that just to highlight there's been a tremendous amount of planning put into this, and we have a detailed plan for how we will execute this over the next two years. So in terms of, you're right, this transition will occur over a two-year period in terms of the workforce transformation piece of it. And then the The consolidation of operating sites will happen after that in 2028, so an overall three-year period. We have detailed plans in place for the outsourcing of work to global capability centers, but another important part to consider is part of this efficiency gain is outsourcing work, but there's also about 40% of the reduction is pure efficiency gain. There will be less people required to do the work as we capture the scale that we can get in these global capability centers. So we have a two-year transition for how we'll capture those efficiencies and outsource the work to these global capability centers. Our organization, we are right, the office, while we have entered into a sale and purchase agreement on the office, that includes a lease back for us where we will stay in Quarry Park through 2026 and 2027 and the first part of 2028 until we move most of the staff to consolidate them at operating sites at that time. So nobody will have to move and you will see a transitioning, a reduction in our workforce over that two-year period, 26 and 27. At the end of 27, we will get to you know, the desired outcome that we have communicated. And then in 28, we will move people after we've achieved that reduction. John, I hope that answers your question.

Oh, my goodness. Yeah, no, I mean, John, you're always well prepared. No, no, that's incredibly thorough. Maybe just to come back to what Cheryl was talking about with respect to CURL. So in, you know, C dollars, a little over 20 bucks is looking very, very good. I'm wondering if you could just maybe break it down between kind of volume versus input costs versus just perhaps the elimination of absolute costs or structural costs that have now been taken out of Curl as a consequence of, you know, fewer people, digitalization and so forth. Because obviously we had very weak natural gas prices and in the third quarter, but not sure that that's really a factor at all in terms of performance you put up.

I mean, I'll start, and then I will hand over to Cheryl Gregg. Thanks for the question. I mean, and it is a really good point you make. It is a combination of both. We are working both the denominator and the numerator in that. So we have been reducing our absolute costs, you know, what we call capturing structural efficiency. So not just reducing in the short term, not pushing things out, but actually structurally reducing our costs, costs that we can reduce and will remain reduced. And we do that with a very laser-like focus on maintaining integrity, safety, and all of those things that are most important to us. You know, you've heard me talk about in the past being the most responsible operator, and that involves, you know, safety performance, your integrity, your reliability, but also your cost structure. So we do those things in concert, ensuring that we maintain integrity, reliability, and safety, but also reducing our structural costs. So there has been millions and millions of dollars in structural savings identified, but obviously you have seen the barrels go up as well. And so it is the combination of both. And the team continues to work on both parts of that equation, which is really important, you know, given the magnitude of the improvements we've seen and what we want to continue to do as we go forward. I'll pass over to Cheryl to elaborate a little more.

Sure. Thanks, John. And, Greg, what I would say is this is a very good example of the AND equation, as John mentioned. So in this space where we're looking at unit cash costs, we're leveraging scale, looking at structural cost savings as well as incremental production. When I think about incremental production, it leverages the relatively high fixed cost structure at Curl. So this is a powerful lever in terms of lowering our unit cash costs. And as John mentioned, we continue to focus on reliability, maintenance optimization, deployment of digital solutions to improve our productivity and lower absolute costs. Several of the things we highlighted at our investment day in terms of automation, robotics, remote activities. So it's a yes and. in terms of how we get there.

Understood. Thanks very much. Thank you, Greg.

And we'll take a question from Dennis Fong with CIBC.

Hi, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. My first one is just related to your in-situ pipeline, Aspen, Clark Creek, and Corner. Thank you for kind of the rundown. Obviously, Ebert is a focal point in terms of the go-forward strategy is just kind of solidifying and understanding the development potential and the result for the pilot, the primary driver for kind of moving on to the next steps. And maybe what else would you like to see beyond kind of further prove out of the technology for you to feel comfortable moving forward with Aspen, I guess, first, or any of these three in-situ projects?

Thank you. Thank you, Dennis, for the question.

I'll start again, and I'll ask Cheryl to chime in as well. I think if we look at this future in-situ portfolio, we remain very bullish about it. The resource base is significant and of high quality. And we believe we have the technology in Ebert to unlock that resource base at lower unit cost, lower emissions than even the technology we're using today. So we have decided to do the pilot. We feel quite confident in the technology. We've done a lot of lab testing on it. But given the scale at which we want to deploy it, we felt it was valuable to do the pilot. The main things we're going to be looking for in the pilot is the solvent recovery, and the production uplift that come from those. So that's the main thing, and we'll start up the pilot in 2027. So that's from a technology perspective. But we're going in pretty positive about it, but it's important to prove that up, I think, through a real-life pilot in the field. We feel very good about the resource. We will continue to do some delineation work around that, but we've done a lot already, and we feel very comfortable in that space. And I think the other part is just the overall investment environment. You've heard us in industry talk about that, the importance, and we've been on record with that at the government, and we're working closely with the government around that, simplifying regulations, shortening project approval timelines, and those type of things. That's important as we consider future investment and growth in production. And then the other aspect is egress, and we feel very good about that, particularly for Aspen. As we look out the next decade and we listen to what the pipeline companies are talking about in terms of deep bottlenecking projects with Trans Mountain, Enbridge has announced projects that they've been talking about, we feel very good that there's egress going to be available for the next decade or so. So we're doing some work on the technology. There's an investment climate piece that we continue to involve work with the government on. We think there's egress. So overall, we're very bullish about the opportunities.

I'll just add a couple other comments, Dennis. We've drilled the three wells. And as John mentioned, we're on target for an early 2027 startup. We're going to run the pilot to validate production uplift. You hear John mention solvent recovery as well as overall operability. The other thing I'd highlight is the pilot is intended to de-risk this technology, and it's a very similar approach to what we took for SA-SAGD. So I think we're well on track there. And I'd echo the comments that John made, which is we're looking forward to Ebert technology. This is what we're looking for in terms of being a game changer for our institute developments going forward.

Great. Great. Really appreciate that context from both of you. I want to shift focus back maybe towards Cold Lake. Obviously, you have the Lemming SAGD project with the targeted startup here. And I just wanted to think a little bit more. How should we be thinking about the Mohican SAGD project? as well as if you wouldn't mind highlighting any of the future SA-SAGD project opportunities that exist within that field and maybe what that potentially looks like, both from an op cost perspective as well as a production perspective and level, if there's any further updates from what you guys highlighted at the investor day.

Thanks. I'll make a few broader comments, Dennis, and then Cheryl can come in again as well. You know, our plan that we laid out for 165,000 barrels per day at Coal Lake in the next few years, we still feel very good about that plan. We're committed to that plan. And there's a number of things that contribute to that. You know, there's low-cost base optimization projects such as our laser technology. There's infill drilling using the unique compact rig that we have there to do infill drilling. That's a part of it. We're applying warm flow in a number of areas. We've got the Lemming SAGD project that I just spoke about. Grand Rapids is going extremely well as well. So it's all of these building blocks and components that contribute to our confidence of getting to 165,000 barrels per day. Now, the Mexican SAGD, I'll let Cheryl come back and talk more about that. That's obviously very important, but that's a 2029 startup with a peak production of about 30,000 barrels a day. But it's all of these building blocks that contribute to it and also, you know, the transition, the transformation really that we're making at Coal Lake, moving to these advantage technologies and seeing ourselves continue to see in 2030 about 40% of our production coming from that advantage technology. And I'll let Cheryl say a bit more specifically on Mahican and so on.

Sure. Maybe I'll cycle back with Grand Rapids. We're very pleased, Dennis, with our results from Grand Rapids thus far. Specific to that effort, the next three pads are currently in development. This will fully leverage our plant capacity and offer inventory-sustained production at low capital. Now, switching to Mahegan, this will be our first commercial clearwater SACD development. John mentioned a 2029 startup. And one of the things that's an enabler, and projects take time in the development, is we have to convert the Mahican plant, which is currently a cyclic steam facility, to a solvent-enabled SA-SAGD plant. All that in mind, we're on track to deliver, I'd say, more than about 50,000 barrels per day from SA-SAGD advantage production by the 2030 timeframe. The other thing maybe I'll leave with is we do have a pipeline of future SA-SAGD projects as I look at 2040, 2050, and we'll take those in due course.

Great.

Thank you very much, Cheryl and John. Really appreciate that color on both of those items.

Thank you, Dennis. And we have a question from Doug Leggett with Wolf Research.

Thanks. Good morning, everyone. Thanks for having me on. John, I wonder if I could ask a really simple follow-up on Carol. Given the sustained efficiency improvements you've seen, the consistent production performance, what would you say today is the production capacity trajectory for Carroll in terms of where it is now and where you think it can get to? That's my first one. My follow-up is a quick one. It's probably for Dan. It's always for Dan. Same question every quarter. You leaned on your balance sheet a little bit this quarter and you've accelerated the timeline for your buyback. Is there any intention in the current environment for an SIB before the middle of next year?

Thanks, Doug. Yeah, let me take the Curl one.

You know, again, I couldn't be more proud of this team and the improvements that have been made at Curl over a number of years. And I I remain confident that we'll continue to make improvements at Curl in terms of unit costs, you know, reductions and volumes uplifted. I think our story is very consistent, though, with right now the way we think about it. It's very consistent with our investor day. We believe we have a strong foundation that supports potential for 300 plus thousand barrels per day. You know, we talked about at that time the number of days that we're seeing of a greater than 300,000 barrel a day days. You see the quarter that we just had in the quarter that also builds that confidence. Right now, our focus is really how do we move it to 300,000 barrels a day? And I would just say the confidence in that is growing all the time. And we talked about that in the investor day. So we have a pretty clear path to get the asset to 300,000 barrels a day with bitumen recovery projects, continued focus on individual equipment performance, extending our turnaround intervals and the reduction duration. Feel very good about that. But we're not done at 300. We're very much focused on what's the potential beyond that. We believe there is potential beyond that. And we're continuing to work and develop those plans. And we'll share them as those get matured.

Thanks, John. Do you want me to take the second one?

Yeah. Hey, Doug. So just to kind of address your question, as you said, as we've said here, we fully plan to complete our accelerated NCIB by year end, consistent with what we said a few times. And then, of course, looking into next year, the soonest we can renew that is late June of 26. And, of course, we plan to renew our NCIB. And then your question is really around the first half of 26. And, you know, as I said before, you know, our ability to return cash in that period really just depends on commodity prices, right? It depends on the crude prices and cracks. And, you know, what we've said for a long time is, you know, as we generate surplus cash, we'll return it in a timely way. That still remains our principle. So it's really just going to be dependent on what the commodity markets give us in the first half of next year.

Okay, well, from your mouth to God's ears. Thanks, guys.

Thank you, Doug.

And that does conclude the question and answer session. I'll now turn the conference back over to Peter Shaw for closing remarks.

Thank you. And on behalf of the management team, I'd like to thank everyone for joining us this morning. If you have any further questions, please don't hesitate to reach out to the IR team, and we'll be happy to answer those. With that, I'll say thank you very much and have a great day.

Thank you. That does conclude today's conference. We do thank you for your participation.

Have an excellent day.