Berry Corporation (bry)

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Berry Corporation Q1 2021 Earnings Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's number is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star then 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Todd Crabtree, Manager of Investor Relations. Thank you, and please go ahead.

Thank you, Brandi, and welcome to everyone. Thank you for joining us for BERI's first quarter 2021 earnings teleconference. Yesterday afternoon, BERI issued an earnings release highlighting full first quarter results. Speaking this morning will be Trem Smith, Board Chair and CEO, Fernando Araujo, Chief Operating Officer and Executive Vice President, and Kerry Bates, Chief Financial Officer and Executive Vice President. Tram will discuss our first quarter performance as well as our expectations for the remainder of 2021. Fernando and then Kerry will share further details on how we are addressing the operational financial aspects of our business. Before turning it over to questions, Tram will make a few concluding remarks. Before we begin, I want to call your attention to the safe harbor language found in our earnings release. The earnings release and today's discussion contain certain projections and other forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal security laws. These statements are subject to risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those expressed or implied in these statements. These include risks and other factors outlined in our filings with the SEC. Our website, dry.com, has a link to the earnings release and our most recent investor presentation. Any information, including forward-looking statements made on this call or contained in the earnings release and that presentation, reflect our analysis as of the date made. We have no plans or duty to update them except as required by law. Please refer to the tables in our earnings release and on our website for reconciliation between all adjusted measures mentioned in today's call and related gap measures. We will also post the replay link of this call and the transcript on our website. I will now turn the call over to Trem Smith.

Thank you, Todd. Good morning, everyone, and thanks for joining us today. Despite the dynamic environment in which we are operating, we are executing as promised and continue to focus on the fundamentals that create value. We had a great quarter. Production was up. OPEX was down. EBITDA and capital spending were better than expected. We generated $16 million in levered free cash flow, and we had nearly $100 million on cash on hand at the end of the quarter. Our liquidity position gives us flexibility on growth and returning capital to our shareholders. We restarted our dividend in the first quarter. It has been approved for the second, and we expect it to continue and grow at these price levels. I want to quickly address Governor Newsom's proposal to ban hydraulic fracturing in California as of 2024. This ban does not materially impact Berry's operations, and as defined, it does not affect our thermal diatomite production or future operations. However, this type of unilateral action by the governor is not in the best interest of Californians and does not bring the state closer to its goal of being net carbon neutral by 2045. Studies, including those overseen by the Governor's California Air Resources Board, otherwise known as CARB, have shown that Californians will still demand transportation fuels from hydrocarbons well past 2045. Therefore, this ban just shifts the state supply source from local producers who provide significant economic value locally and statewide through taxes, employment, etc., and operate using California's rigorous environmental and safety standards to foreign oil producers that do not share our social or environmental standards, nor contribute to the economy of the state. It is important to recall that this year, Berry will pay $40 million in greenhouse gas credits, and the industry as a whole pays more than $1 billion annually to help fund California's greenhouse gas reduction programs. We all want a clean and sustainable environment, and we support the state's goal of carbon neutrality by 2045. But to achieve this, we need to work together and find solutions that are equitable for everyone. Additionally, the California legislature continues to do its work. It is our belief that we can be part of the solution to provide equitable, affordable, and reliable energy by working with others. We have built relationships through the Western States Petroleum Association and developed coalitions with labor, as well as other industries, including lumber, agriculture, and water. This collaborative approach helped us successfully defeat Senate Bill 467, Senator Weiner's wide-ranging anti-oil bill. There are other proposed bills which we are actively monitoring that could impact our industry. More details can be found on slide 25 of our investor presentation. BERI is and will be a part of the energy solution. We continue discussions to increase our scale through M&A, and we have quantified more than three decades of inventory in our sandstone reservoirs alone that will help meet California's long-term energy demand and provide value to all stakeholders for decades to come. I will now turn it over to Fernando.

Thank you, Tram. In Q1, we continue to create value by optimizing the performance of our current asset base and by generating meaningful growth from our oil-rich conventional place. For 2021, we expect almost 90% of our total production to be oil. Also, I'm proud to report that we continue to achieve excellent environment, health, and safety results in Q1. In fact, we just passed the one-year mark without recordable incidents as a company. Also, we did not have any vehicle incidents for the second quarter in a row. We will continue to dedicate the necessary resources to ensure the safety of our employees and contractors, to safeguard and respect the environment, to meet all regulatory commitments, and to maintain the quality of our infrastructure. Moving to performance. Production in Q1 averaged 27,100 barrels equivalent per day. This is 2% higher than Q4 2020. Our California oil production, which constitutes 81% of the total, also increased quarter on quarter by 3%. As previously stated, in 2021, we intend to keep production essentially flat year on year. Q2 production will be adversely affected by plugging and abandonment activity in thermal diatomite wells and by the timing of putting new wells on production. This P&A activity will allow us to optimize our base production and recompletion program in Q3 and Q4. We expect to see a slight production growth in the second half of the year with a higher exit rate compared to last year. For most of Q1, we operated with two drilling rigs, drilling 45 new producers, all in thermal sandstone reservoirs in California, and five delineation wells. In April, we added a drilling rig in Utah. We saw an opportunity, an attractive opportunity, to drill and complete 7 to 10 wells in our predictable conventional assets in the Uintah Basin. Our plan in California is to pick up a third drilling rig in June, targeting additional thermal sandstone wells. I want to highlight our drilling activity in the hill property in the San Joaquin Valley. These are vertical wells targeting the predictable Tulare formation. where actual production is exceeding our type curves by close to 20%, resulting in very attractive returns. As a result, the acid is currently producing at a 30-year high. I also want to highlight the excellent results from our work over activity. This is a new focus area for Berry in 2021. These activities are yielding a rate of return in excess of 100%, with 46 wells brought back into production in Q1. Our plan is to maintain an aggressive work-over campaign throughout the year. Next, let's turn to operating expenses, and this is a great story. In Q1, we averaged an operating expense of $14.40 per BOE. This is a $4.11 per BOE improvement when compared to the 2020 annual average. We reduced non-energy OPEX by about $1 per BOE compared to last year's average. Our internal cost-cutting campaign is resulting in sustainable savings in most line items within our operating structure. Our energy OPEX was reduced significantly compared to last year, mainly because of the one-time price spike that we saw in electricity sales during the winter storms in February. As you may remember, our energy OPEX includes fuel gas purchases, which are mostly hedged, offset by electricity sales from our cogeneration plants in California. Now let's turn to capital. CapEx in Q1 was slightly lower than expected at $24 million. We maintain our planned level of activity. However, our drilling costs came in under budget. We reduced drilling costs by changing well designs and improving the rig's operating efficiency. Our capital program in 2021 remains unchanged in the $120 to $130 million range. In terms of well permitting, we have enough permits in hand to execute our capital program in 2021. After Kern County recertified the environmental impact report in March, the county resumed responsibility over oil and gas land use permits. In response, we aggressively sought county permits and now have applications for our entire 2022 drilling program pending approval. The Lawrence Livermore technical study on high-pressure cyclic steam operations in the thermal diatomite reservoir is complete and is under review by the Newsom administration. We are waiting on CalGEM to release this study. We anticipate the opportunity to further work with CalGEM to obtain new permits to obtain new permit approvals for future thermal diatomite operations. Remember, our 2021 plans currently do not include new thermal diatomite development. And with that, I'll turn it over to Kerry.

Thanks, Fernando. We were off to a very strong start executing our 2021 plan. We continue to manage controllable costs with non-energy op-ex per BOE down 11% compared to the fourth quarter of 2020 and adjusted G&A down 10%. Furthermore, our gas hedging strategy is working. We protected 85% of our first quarter gas purchases from the historical price spike driven by winter storm URIE. Our gas hedge prices were less than $3 in MMBTU when market prices exceed $100 per MMBTU for a few days. Additionally, we have realized a significant unseasonable pickup in electricity sales driven by the high gas prices due to the tight natural gas supply. Finally, our Rockies gas sales revenue were nearly as high in the first quarter as they were in all of 2020 due to the winter storm. While we certainly can't count on gas and electricity sales impact from these unceasingly high prices every quarter, we can rely on having stable gas purchase costs with our hedging strategy, which in turn provides stability, visibility to our overall cost structure. Oil prices continue to rise in Q1, with Brent averaging $61 a barrel in the quarter. You may recall last year we put on significant oil hedges in place for 2021 when we planned for a two-year down cycle due to the uncertainty of how long COVID-19 and oil price war would last. Despite the unfavorable impact from our first quarter oil hedges, we still achieved EBITDA of $52 million, and we continued to build cash with $16 million of levered free cash flow even with an increased capital compared to 2020 and reinstating our dividend for the first quarter. Our cash grew from $80 million a year into nearly $100 million at the end of January, which we maintained at the end of the first quarter. With this performance, we are still in excellent position to continue to return capital to our shareholders, and in fact, the Board recently approved the second quarter dividend of $0.04 per share. On another liquidity note, last week we completed our scheduled semiannual RVL borrowing-based redetermination, which resulted in reaffirmed borrowing-based and companies' elected commitments of $200 million. As of quarter end, we had liquidity of $292 million consisting of cash on hand and the RVL borrowing availability. As a reminder, we primarily use the RVL facility to manage working capital fluctuations and and have no outstanding borrowings on the line today. For 2021, we still expect our total average production to be relatively flat year over year, but with higher year-end exit rate. However, for the second quarter, we are reshuffling the development schedule a bit as we focus on maximizing our capital efficiency and, as a result, expect to see relatively flat production in the current quarter with an accelerated pace in the second half of the year. We currently aren't making any changes to our capital guidance, but we are pleased with the capital efficiency in Q1 and look to continue to build on that success for the rest of the year. All in all, it was a strong quarter, which demonstrates that the way we manage our costs and our natural gas hedging strategy ensures that we are generating the best margins by being the low-cost producer of oil in California. Our TEN-Q will be filed later today if you want to take a deeper dive into the financials. Now I'll turn it back over to Trim for final remarks.

Thanks, Kerry. As Kerry and Fernando demonstrated, we had a fruitful quarter, and we are well positioned for the rest of the year. I want to briefly touch on our Environmental, Social, and Governance Efforts, or ESG. We recognize the importance of this work to all our stakeholders and the growing interest by our investors. We are designing our ESG strategy to focus on those initiatives that are most material to Barry and value-adding to our shareholders. And these priorities will guide our future investments and reporting. Our ESG reporting will be solely focused on the areas that are measurable and achievable, help Barry meet its business goals, and are based on real data and science. For information on our ESG approach and initiatives, More information can be found on the 2020 annual report. We look forward to continuing our work in this area and welcome stakeholder feedback. In closing, I believe that for the energy transition to be successful, we must recognize some realities exist. Populations continue to grow locally and worldwide and are putting increased stress on the environment we live in. People expect to, at the very least, maintain their current lifestyles, if not improve them over time. and do not expect to go broke in the process. If we are to be successful in providing Californians with affordable, equitable, and reliable energy, we need a solution that includes all forms and sources of energy. Wind, solar, biomass, hydro, hydrogen, oil and gas, for example, and all of the above energy solution. Now I'll open it up for questions.

At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number 1 on your telephone keypad. Again, that is star, then the number 1. We will pause for just a moment to compile the Q&A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Leo Mariani with KeyBank.

Hey, guys. I was hoping to provide a little bit more detail on your commentary. around second quarter production. You guys talked about it being flat here with one key before you start to see outsized growth in the second half. I just wanted to clarify, it sounded like maybe there was a bunch of work over activity that was taking place you know, some wells offline, and you also mentioned reshuffling, you know, of the schedule. Are we just going to see not a lot of wells turned on as well in the second quarter where it's more pushed to the back half? Just wanted to make sure I kind of understood the operational dynamics there behind it.

Hello, Leo. This is Fernando. Our expectation for Q2 is, again, to keep production essentially flat compared to Q1. In Q2, we have some planned downtime associated to PNA activity in the thermal diatomite reservoirs, and this is affecting production. But at the same time, we have picked up a third drilling rig in Utah. We're currently drilling Utah wells, and we'll be drilling 7 to 10 wells in Utah. But we won't see this production until early June because of the completion process. that we're doing, the completions and the frags that we're doing, we do those by pad. So we won't see that production until June. At the same time, we expect to increase production in Q3 as we'll be picking up a third drilling rig for California. And at the same time, we'll be optimizing our base production in a thermal diatomite reservoir after we finish the PNA campaign in Q2. And then on the workovers, you know, we completed 46 workovers in Q1, and our expectation is to complete about 200 workovers throughout the year. And we're seeing some excellent results, and we'll continue to do that for the rest of the year. But, again, our expectation is to have our exit production at the end of the year to be higher production compared to last year's exit production.

Okay, thanks for the color. I just wanted to kind of jump in on the regulatory side here. I guess it seems like there's been a pretty significant delay in the kind of final results of the Lawrence Livermore study that's given to you guys. Have you guys heard any update with respect to the potential timing on that? And also just sticking with the regulatory front, just wanted to get a sense of what you guys think of the potential traction that 2,500-foot setbacks might be having in the state. And if you think that is approved, what do you think the impact to Barry would be? Obviously, you guys have got some more rural operations concentrated in Kern County and Just thinking along the lines, there might be a bunch of local control and perhaps Kern County is allowed to do their own thing on setbacks.

Leo, this is Tram. First part of the question is the activity and conversation between WSPA and each individual company and CalGEM on generally keeping permitting in general on course in the state is very active at the moment. Lots of help being accomplished with the Kern County EIR in place now. There's some clarity around how to expedite permits, and we're taking full advantage of that. Part of that conversation is CalGEM is trying to usher through the governor's office where that final approval of the high-pressure cyclic steam study needs to occur. And that's up to them, Leo. We're not going to predict anymore what the governor is going to do. We do not incorporate those thermal diatomite wells, as Fernando very clearly stated, in our plans. And we manage our thermal diatomite production very well. And as you know, it's not a huge component of our overall production. So we're good. And It's also, in the meantime, we have plenty of sandstone reservoirs to be drilling and lots of opportunity there. On the rest of it, with the 2,500, you'll remember that Senate Bill 467, Scott Wiener's bill, was killed in committee. That was the effort this year for the 2,500-foot setbacks. The governor responded by coming out with his edict, his executive order to – start a rulemaking process to eliminate fracking by January of 2024, and that there is no other legislation that we're aware of that's in process that would deal with any kind of setbacks this year. So that is a moot discussion at this point. We do monitor that, of course, and we pay attention. And just in general, for those that may be asking coming up, At the moment, there don't appear to be significant oil production impactful legislation in process, which is pretty good. I learned yesterday there are 2,700 bills in the state legislature at the moment and going through a process, and very happy to say that none of them impact oil and gas production at the moment.

Okay, that's a great update. And just lastly for me, you mentioned it in your prepared remarks. Do you guys still see just M&A as a critical focus for the company here in 21? And do you guys have confidence that you might be able to procure a deal this year? I know you're very focused on looking at conventional assets.

Yeah, Leah, this is Kerry. I think we've made it very clear that scale is very important for us. We continue to turn every stone and look forward to finding something that works and works for our current shareholders, works for our balance sheet, and as soon as we do, we will let everybody know. But it's a top priority of all of us.

Okay, thanks.

Your next question comes from the line of Charles Mead with Johnson Rice.

Morning, Charles. Good morning, Jim. Hey, I wanted to go back to some of your regulatory comments, Jim, because I think I might have been confused or maybe a little less than clear on something. You mentioned in your press release that the current nuisance proposal, as it's currently defined, doesn't affect your thermal diatomite program, but But are we to make the inference that it does affect your sandstone, your thermal sandstone, which is the bulk of your flame?

Hey, Charles, I can always count on you to ask the question for clarification. Just to make it very clear, it has no impact on our sandstones, period, okay? And I just – because thermal diatomite comes up so often – We tend to maybe overstate the impact of any of these pieces of legislation on it. Okay, so I really appreciate your take in asking this question. The reason we're excited that we've quantified over three decades of sandstone locations is trying to put that whole question to bed. Okay, does that help?

Yes, it does. And do I understand correctly that it's because you're not relying on any fracking for that thermal sandstone.

That's correct. The sandstones have moderate, like 20% porosities, which is great, but they also have huge permeabilities. So there's no need to frack any of those or even come close to something called fracking there.

So then maybe the last little bit of cleanup on this front end – Obviously, fracking is the activity that has the target on its back. But is there, in any of this Newsom's ideas, are there things that we should be on the lookout for that might be in somebody's list of things we don't want to see that would affect your thermal sandstone?

Not that we're aware of at all, and we do monitor that. There's nothing on the horizon there. Got it, got it.

And then, all right, thank you for that. And, you know, hopefully I'm not the only one who needed that clarification, but in any case, I appreciate it. The one follow-up, if I do have a follow-up, you talked about the, you talked about, you know, the Western States Petroleum Association and, you know, in other, not only other oil and gas producers, but also other kind of maybe extractive industries or industries. that are maybe simply frustrated. Is there a wider picture you can paint for us, either among the California oil producers or other California industries, whether it be forestry or things like that? Is there any kind of broader response that's maybe starting to come into shape against some of this – Some of this extremism or some of this kind of excessive progressive stuff coming out of Sacramento?

The answer is a qualitative yes. That's very true. The coalitions that you may not think of naturally are coming together quite quickly here because of the number of jobs, the issues around the regulatory environment, etc., For example, all those industries that you just mentioned require land use permits, for example, and all of them are going through a similar process and as frustrated, et cetera, as anybody. So when you start seeing restrictions and bans and things coming out of the governor's office, all those industries see a threat to themselves and therefore come together as a natural coalition. Then you also, we're seeing very active, I'm a co-chair of an energy working group for something called B3K, which is how Kern County itself, remember, the size of the state of New Jersey with lots of renewables and lots of oil, is going to become carbon net neutral by 2045. The coalition that's obvious there includes, by the way, some renewable industry, wind and solar, as well as the counties, the unions, the firefighters, the police, those that are impacted by the reduction in revenue, should any of those industries be impacted. So the answer to your question is the coalescing of coalition partners is happening quite rapidly now, which I'm sorry it had to happen, but I'm glad to see it happening.

That is helpful detail on the situation. Thank you, Chairman.

You bet. Thanks, Charles. Take note of that question.

And as a reminder, if you would like to ask a question, please press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. A count that is star, then the number one. Your next question comes from the line of Nicholas Pope with Seaport Global.

Morning. Morning. I was hoping – I mean, it was a very – there's a lot of noise in the – in the operating expense line item, and I was hoping maybe we could get a little bit into that. On lease operating expenses, that's $62 million. I guess how much of that is attributed to the workover increase that you guys had during the quarter, and do you all expect to kind of continue that through the rest of the year? And also... You know, I'm just – because of the big move in the natural gas derivatives, I'm trying to just make sure I got kind of – I'm understanding the apples of the apples on how that relates to kind of the current guidance you all have for the full year.

Thanks. Yeah, Nick, this will be Kerry. I'll jump in just a little bit on the financial side, and I'll let Fernando fill in any holes. But overall, workovers are primarily capitalized for us and not in your operating expense. And we've highlighted that in the past, but this is kind of a new program. But they're primarily capitalized. The big number in the LOE is fuel, unhedged fuel. So when we saw, again, you've got MMBTU over $100 for an extended period of time. that shows you kind of why we do a hedging strategy. I think that's the perfect example of why we do the hedging strategy. But I think that really the noise around, if you're looking for noise in the LOE, it would have to do with the unhedged fuel. But I think from our point of view, that's the reason we continue to have a hedging program on natural gas and keeping about $3 in MMBTU as best we can. And we're actually in very good shape through October this year. and starting to add considerably the next year to eliminate that. I don't know, Fernando, you have any? I think from a non-energy OPEX, things are considering going well, and again, costs are being realized.

Yeah, just to put a little color around the non-energy side, in Q1, as you saw, we lowered our non-energy OPEX by about a dollar a barrel compared to last year's average. And we believe that most of these cost reductions are going to be sustainable, as we've seen reductions in every major category. Really, the reductions are a combination of several things, including renegotiating contracts with our vendors, also changing some operating practices, also implementing some facility solutions to reduce LOE long-term, and also by engaging the field staff in our business, and they're coming up with ideas to reduce operating expenses every day. In fact, in Q1, they came up with over 200 ideas to reduce operating expenses. So we've had great success, and we believe it's going to be sustainable in terms of lowering our non-energy operating expenses.

Nick, does that give you the color you're looking for?

Yeah, that's helpful. And also, just kind of further on that point, the guidance that you gave for operating expenses last quarter, that's $1,725 to $1,855 per BOE, what is that comparable to on – what am I comparing that to on these line items right now?

So you're talking about our annual guidance and looking at our annual guidance? Yeah. We're obviously well below that at this point in time. And the reason for that is, as we talked about first quarter, really the anomaly was the sale of electricity in the first quarter. That is usually minimal in the first quarter. We primarily see major sale of power in June, July, August, September, kind of the hot season, the air conditioning season. But because of winter storm URI, the amount of gas that moved east versus traditionally moving west this time of year, it caused a supply problem on natural gas. It caused some of your major power producers in here to reduce their capacity here. They leaned on cogens and PPAs to offset that. That raised, you know, rising tide rises all boats, right? That's what we saw across our platform, and I think probably other producers and other people with cogens and PPAs saw the same thing. So, Nick, that's the biggest driver of why we're considerably below guidance at this point in time. We expect second quarter natural gas sales, I mean, power sales to be kind of historical, and we don't see a big blowup in natural gas sales. In the second quarter, and I will say that, in the second quarter, we do look to the third quarter and, again, with natural gas tight across North America and a hot summer could cause some more sparks. But, again, another reason we're hedged. Does that help?

Yeah, so the $1,440 is what's comparable per BOE for the quarter. Yes. Yeah, got it. Okay. Yeah. That is helpful. Okay. You've also mentioned previously this greenhouse gas cost that I think is in – right now it's in current liabilities. I think it's a $40 million payment. Is that right?

That's somewhere – Yeah, roughly $40 million, yep.

And what is the cash – is that a cash outlay in 4Q, and is that something that is going to be ongoing in – In future years?

Yeah. So most of our GHG we pay on a – you never know. It's just a regular ongoing. Over the last couple of years, we've been able to negotiate a deferred payment on those, and that deferred payment is what we're realizing this year, and it is going – It will go throughout really the first three quarters of this year. So you'll see it a little bit. It was done in Q1. You didn't notice that much. You'll see some more of it in Q2 and in Q3. And it will go through our accounts payable side. So you'll see it in working capital on accounts payable.

Got it. And on an ongoing basis when it's not, you know, this negotiated deferred payment, Where does it normally show up? Is that an LOE kind of line item? Where is that normally?

It's taxes other than income taxes.

Got it. Okay. Perfect. That's all I had.

Thanks, guys. Have a great day. Bye.

Your next question comes from the line of Devon Mathis as a Berry stakeholder.

Good morning. I should have said Assemblymember Devin Mathis in there. I apologize. Good morning, Devin. I just wanted you guys to expand a little bit. I know the partnerships with the different industries are going quite well. I've seen that firsthand. And do appreciate your time on things like the CP trip and other stuff, really having those collaborative conversations. What is that looking like from your end, looking at, you know, going obviously talking about second quarter staying flat, but, you know, second half of the year things rising fast. Because I've got to think about sustainability for constituents and what that's going to look like in the overall San Joaquin Valley economy as a whole, but also realizing that we do need a diversified portfolio. So it's very refreshing to hear you all talk about it, and I've seen you on the ground doing it. Could you expand on that a little bit and what that looks like from your end?

Sure, Devin. By the way, thank you for joining us this morning. I think you're the first assembly member to join us for the call and to speak up. I really, really personally appreciate it. And the answer to your question is we would like For a lot of reasons that we can list here today, we would like to be able to grow Barry's presence and production in California to provide an oil source. There's plenty of oil here. There's plenty of oil in the San Joaquin. I would like to start eliminating foreign imports into the state so that we end up with more employment and pay more taxes, et cetera, et cetera, to the state, to the economy itself, which doesn't happen with the foreign imports, as you know. And at the same time, in my experience, there's no place that you can work without a diversified source of anything, and that includes energy, to make it affordable, equitable, and reliable. And California, of course, needs that more than ever now. There's plenty of room for renewables. There's plenty of room for biomass. There's plenty of room for all of the above, as I said at the end. So, but to allow oil to manage, there's no reason the oil is declining in the state. It's just a matter of people investing and having confidence to invest in the state. Berry has that confidence, and we'd like to see more of it to hold the production at least flat, if not grow it for the overall state. And Berry is going to do its part, of course, as you've heard. But that's at the expense of imports. not at the expense of diversification of energy sources for the people of California.

Does that make sense, Devin? No, it does. And I think, you know, the group, I mean, obviously the materials and the meetings I sit in, we hear quite a bit about, you know, California oil is clean oil, and we need to look at that as a better option versus imports. I wish my colleagues... on the other side of the aisle understood that. And it sounds like, you know, we have defeated quite a bit of legislation over the years. And to see and hear those numbers, I don't think people realize the gravity of the fact that we started with over 3,000 pieces of legislation this year and whittling 300 of those away before you've even hit appropriations is a huge thing. But no, I think the partnerships are great. I think the communication is going well. And I think to your credit and to the group's credit, it shows the dividends by defeating these things out the gate before they get to rear their ugly heads up. So thank you guys for what you do on that side.

Thank you, Devin. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you, Devin.

And there are no further questions at this time. I will now turn the call back over for any closing remarks.

I want to thank everybody for their time today and look forward to talking to you again at the end of the second quarter. Have a good day, everyone. Thank you.

This concludes today's conference call. You may now disconnect.