ConocoPhillips

Welcome to the second quarter 2023 ConocoPhillips earnings conference call. My name is Liz and I will be your operator for today. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. During the question and answer session, if you have a question, please press star 1 1 on your touchtone telephone. I will now turn the call over to Phil Gresh, Vice President, Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, Liz, and welcome to everyone to our second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. On the call today are several members of the ConocoPhillips leadership team, including Ryan Lance, chairman and CEO, Tim Leach, advisor to the CEO, Bill Bullock, executive vice president and chief financial officer, Dominic Macklin, executive vice president of strategy, sustainability, and technology, Nick Olds, executive vice president of Lower 48, Andy O'Brien, Senior Vice President of Global Operations, Kirk Johnson, Senior Vice President, Lower 48 Assets and Operations, and Will Giroux, Senior Vice President, Corporate Planning and Development. Ryan and Bill will kick off the call with opening remarks, after which the team will be available for your questions. A few quick reminders. First, along with today's release, we published supplemental financial materials and a slide presentation, which you can find on the Investor Relations website. Second, during this call, we will be making forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Actual results may differ due to factors noted in today's release and in our periodic SEC filings. We will make reference to some non-GAAP financial measures. Reconciliations to the nearest corresponding GAAP measure can be found in today's release and on our website. So, with that, I will turn the call over to Ryan.

Thank you, Phil, and thank you to everyone joining our second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. It was certainly another busy quarter for ConocoPhillips. In April, we hosted our analyst and investor meeting in New York City, where we laid out our 10-year strategic and financial plan. And we committed to you that we would keep working to make the plan even better. And we've done that again this quarter. We executed an agreement to purchase the remaining 50% of Surmont, which we expect to close in the fourth quarter. Sermont is a long life, low decline, and low capital intensity asset that we know very well. In the current $80 per barrel WTI price environment, we expect incremental free cash flow from the additional 50% interest to approach $1 billion in 2024. We expect first production in early 2024 from pad 267, our first new pad since 2016. And we see the bottlenecking potential at the facility to further improve our cash flows. We also continue to progress our global LNG strategy. In the quarter, we finalized the acquisition of our interest in the Qatar-Northfield South joint venture. And in North America, we executed agreements for 2.2 million tons per annum of offtake at the Saguaro LNG project on the west coast of Mexico. And in Germany, we can confirm we have secured a total of 2.8 million tons per annum of regasification capacity at German LNG. And while it's only been a few months since FID at Port Arthur, we are further progressing our offtake placement opportunities in both Europe and Asia. Now shifting to the quarter, while commodity prices were volatile, ConocoPhillips continued to deliver strong underlying performance. Once again, we had record global and lower 48 production, and we raised our full year production guidance for the second straight quarter. This was achieved through continued capital efficiency improvements as the midpoint of our full-year capital guidance remains unchanged. We continue to deliver on our returns-focused value proposition. We have distributed $5.8 billion through dividends and buybacks year-to-date, putting us well on track to achieve our planned $11 billion return of capital for 2023. And we did this while funding the shorter and longer-term organic growth opportunities that we see across the entire portfolio. So in conclusion, our deep and our durable and diversified asset base continues to get better and better. And we are well positioned to generate competitive returns and cash flow for decades to come. Now let me turn the call over to Bill to cover our second quarter performance in more detail.