Black Stone Minerals LP

Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining us and welcome to Blackstone Minerals first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. After today's prepared remarks, we will host a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star one to raise your hand. To withdraw your question, press star one again. I will now hand the conference over to Natalie Liddell, Vice President, Corporate Planning. Natalie, please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning to everyone. Thank you for joining us for Blackstone Minerals' first quarter 2026 earnings conference call. Today's call is being recorded and will be available on our website along with the earnings release, which was issued last night. Before we start, I'd like to advise you that we will be making forward-looking statements during this call about our plans, expectations, and assumptions regarding our future performance. These statements involve risks that may cause our actual results to differ materially from the results expressed or implied in our forward-looking statements. the cautionary information about forward-looking statements in our press release from yesterday and the risk factors section of our 2025 10K. We may refer to certain non-GAAP financial measures that we believe are useful in evaluating our performance. Reconciliation of these measures to the most directly comparable GAAP measure and other information about these non-GAAP metrics are described in our earnings press release from yesterday, which can be found on our website at www.blackstoneminerals.com. Joining me on the call from the company are Tom Carter, Executive Chairman, Taylor DeWalch, Co-CEO and President, Fowler Carter, Co-CEO and President, Steve Putman, Senior Vice President and General Counsel, and Chris Bonner, Senior Vice President, Chief Financial Officer and Treasurer. I'll now turn the call over to Taylor.

Thanks, Natalie. Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us. As detailed in our earnings release last night, we delivered a strong first quarter, highlighted by higher production across our middle position. Outperformance was driven by increased natural gas activity in the Louisiana Hainesville and Shelby Trough, along with strong oil production in the Permian. Looking ahead, we view 2026 as a year of production growth compared to 2025 as development across our core areas continues to ramp, and we maintain our production guidance outlined in February. Our multiple development agreements in the Hainesville and Bossier expansion play are progressing well, and we remain positioned for meaningful production growth over time. We are seeing continued delineation and also increased activity across the broader Shelby Trough, which reinforces confidence in our long-term inventory profile and growth outlook. This outlook is bolstered by our constructive view on the long-term natural gas backdrop. We are witnessing the industry react to this structural demand growth, which is supported by accelerating LNG export growth, increasing power demand, including data center driven load growth, and continued strength in US industrial activity. These demand drivers continue to highlight the Gulf Coast as a key market for natural gas, where we maintain a significant acreage position and development agreements with direct proximity to premium demand centers. Additionally, we continue to closely monitor the potential long-term implications of supply disruptions in the Middle East and how that could add incremental demand for secure U.S. molecules. We believe each of these drivers, coupled with premier natural gas assets in close proximity to the Gulf Coast and infrastructure projects to transport those molecules, positions us well to benefit from the structural demand over time and provide significant value to our unit holders. With that, I'll turn it over to Fowler to walk through additional details on the commercial front.