Chevron Corporation

Good morning. My name is Katie, and I will be your conference facilitator today. Welcome to Chevron's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question and answer session, and instructions will be given at that time. If anyone should require assistance during the conference call, please press star and then zero on your touchtone telephone. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference call over to General Manager of Investor Relations of Chevron Corporation, Mr. Jake Spearing. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Katie. Welcome to Chevron's first quarter 2023 earnings conference call and webcast. I'm Jake Spearing, General Manager of Investor Relations. Our Chairman and CEO, Mike Wirth, and CFO, Pierre Breber, are on the call with me. We will refer to the slides and prepared remarks that are available on Chevron's website. Before we begin, please be reminded that this presentation contains estimates, projections, and other forward-looking statements. Please review the cautionary statement on slide two. Now, I will turn it over to Mike.

All right, thanks, Jake. Chevron delivered strong financial results again last quarter, the seventh consecutive quarter with return on capital employed greater than 12%. This enabled another record for cash return to shareholders while maintaining a strong balance sheet. Since our investor day two months ago, we've remained focused on executing our plans, achieving important milestones on our project in Kazakhstan, continuing to build activity levels in the Permian, positioning Bayou Bend to be one of the largest carbon storage projects in the United States, and safely and reliably delivering oil, products, and natural gas that help power the global economy. Next week, we'll publish our corporate sustainability report. I encourage you to review it on our website. as we provide updates on the ESG topics that matter to our business and our stakeholders. In closing, while commodity markets remain uncertain, our approach is unchanged. Capital and cost discipline applied to advantaged assets in both traditional and new energy businesses and steady returns of cash to shareholders. You can see that consistency in our actions and our results. Now over to Pierre to discuss the quarter.