ConocoPhillips

Welcome to the third quarter 2023 ConocoPhillips earnings conference call. My name is Liz, and I will be your operator for today's call. 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 phone. I will now turn the call over to Phil Gresh, Vice President, Investor Relations. Sir, you may begin.

Thank you, and welcome to everyone to our third 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 Lower48, Andy O'Brien, Senior Vice President of Global Operations, Kirk Johnson, Senior Vice President, Lower48 Assets and Operations, and Will Giroux, Senior Vice President, Corporate Planning and Development. Ryan and Bill will kick it off 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 make 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'll 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. And before I turn it over, just want to flag for today, we'll do one question per caller. So with that, let me turn it over to Ryan.

Thank you, Phil. And thank you to everyone for joining our third quarter 2023 earnings conference call. It was another solid quarter for ConocoPhillips as the team continued to deliver strong underlying performance across the portfolios. And we have achieved several additional project milestones in our international portfolio in early October. Now, before I get into the details, I wanted to address the topical news in the industry, which has been the M&A headlines in recent weeks. This is not a surprise to us. We have long said that we expect to see further industry consolidation. ConocoPhillips remains steadfast in our returns-focused value proposition and cost-to-supply principles. which creates a high bar for M&A. And as a reminder, we've been actively high grading our own portfolio over the past several years. And as a recent example, we're pleased to have closed on the acquisition of the remaining 50% of Surmont in early October. An opportunity came along to acquire this asset at a very attractive price that fit our financial framework, an asset we can make better through our full ownership, and an acquisition that makes our 10-year plan even better. Surmont is a long life, low declining, and low capital intensity asset that we know well. We achieved first steam from pad 267 in the third quarter, and production is expected to start in the first quarter of 2024. This is our first new pad edition since 2016. And as we said at our recent analyst meeting, we can leverage existing infrastructure to add additional pads with very limited capital requirements in the years ahead. Now moving to global LNG, we've also continued to progress our strategy, securing 1.5 MTPA of regas capacity at the gate LNG terminal in the Netherlands. This will take our total European regas capacity to 4.3 MTPA. We have now effectively secured destinations for nearly half of our Port Arthur LNG offtake commitment in the first six months. since we sanctioned the project. Now elsewhere in the international portfolio, we started up our second central processing facility, CPF2, in the Montney. And in Norway, we just announced that we have started up three project developments ahead of schedule in October. This includes the company-operated Tommeliten Alpha-A subsea tieback project at Equifisc, which is nearly six months earlier than originally planned, as well as two non-operated projects. Finally, in China, our partner started at Bohai Phase 4B ahead of schedule in October. So as you can see, our diversified international portfolio continues to be a strong differentiator for our company. Shifting to results, we have record global and lower 48 production in the third quarter. And we raised our full year production guidance to account for the closing of the Surmont acquisition. All this while achieving continued capital efficiency improvements as our full-year capital guidance remains unchanged. We also continue to deliver on our returns to our shareholders. We increased our quarterly ordinary dividend by 14%, consistent with our long-term objective to deliver top quartile increases relative to the S&P 500. We have distributed $8.5 billion in dividends and buybacks year-to-date, and we remain on track for our $11 billion full-year target. And we did this while funding the shorter and longer term organic capital growth opportunities that we see across the entire portfolio. The team continues to execute well. Our deep, 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 third quarter performance in more detail.