Chevron Corporation

Good morning. My name is Katie, and I will be your conference facilitator today. Welcome, everyone, to Chevron's fourth quarter 2025 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 requires assistance during the conference call, please press star then zero on your touchtone telephone. As a reminder, this conference call is being recorded. I will now turn the conference call over to the head of investor relations of Chevron Corporation, Mr. Jake Spiering. Please go ahead.

Thank you, Katie. Welcome to Chevron's fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call and webcast. I'm Jake Spiering, head of investor relations. Our chairman and CEO, Mike Wirth, and our CFO, Emer Bonner, are on the call with me today. We will refer to the slides and prepare remarks that are available on Chevron's website. But before we begin, Please be reminded that this presentation contains estimates, projections, and other forward-looking statements. A reconciliation of non-GAAP measures can be found in the appendix to this presentation. Please review the cautionary statement and additional information presented on slide two. Now, I will turn it over to Mike.

Okay, thanks, Jake. 2025 was a year of execution. We set records, started up major projects, and strengthened our portfolio. Production reached record levels globally and in the U.S., supported by key milestones and strategic actions, including completion of the Future Growth Project at 10 geese, adding 260,000 barrels of oil per day, startup of Valleymore and Whale and the ramp-up of Anchor in the Gulf of America, advancing toward our goal of 300,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day in 2026, achieving 1 million barrels of oil equivalent per day in the Permian, and shifting focus to free cash flow growth, and closing the HESS acquisition, creating a premier upstream portfolio with the highest cash margins in the industry. Additionally, in the downstream, we delivered the highest US refinery throughput in two decades, reflecting recent expansion projects and higher efficiency. This performance drove strong results, including industry-leading free cash flow growth. Excluding asset sales, adjusted free cash flow was up over 35% year over year, even with oil prices down nearly 15%. And for the fourth consecutive year, we returned record cash to shareholders, delivering on our consistent approach to superior shareholder returns. Chevron has been in Venezuela for over a century, and we remain committed to leveraging our deep expertise and longstanding partnerships for the benefit of our shareholders and the people of Venezuela. Since 2022, in full compliance with U.S. laws and regulations, we've worked with our Venezuelan partners to increase production in our ventures there by over 200,000 barrels per day through a venture-funded model to recover outstanding debt. We see the potential to further grow production volumes by up to 50% over the next 18 to 24 months. We're reliably delivering Venezuelan crude to the market, including our own refining system. There is significant potential in our assets and in the country. We're optimistic the future holds a more competitive and robust pathway to deliver value to Venezuela the United States, and Chevron. We've been a pivotal part of Venezuela's past, we're committed to the present, and we look forward to a continued partnership into the future. Our advanced assets in the Eastern Mediterranean continue to grow, and we're advancing multiple high-return projects to bring world-class gas resources to regional markets. Leviathan recently reached FID to further expand production capacity. Combined with a near-term expansion, gross capacity is anticipated to reach roughly 2.1 billion cubic feet per day at the end of the decade, contributing to a doubling of current earnings and free cash flow. At Tamar, the optimization project startup is in progress, increasing gross capacity to approximately 1.6 billion cubic feet per day. And Aphrodite has now entered feed, working toward developing a competitive investment in Cyprus. We expect these projects to build on the existing assets' top quartile reliability and unit development costs, further expanding our differentiated position. Before concluding, I want to provide a brief update on TCO. Earlier this month, TCO experienced a temporary issue on the power distribution system. Production was safely put in recycle mode while the team identified the root cause. Early production has now resumed. We expect the majority of the plant capacity to be online within the coming week and unconstrained production levels within February. Our full year 2026 guidance of $6 billion of Chevron share free cash flow from TCO at $70 Brent is unchanged. I want to reiterate our message from Investor Day. Chevron is bigger, stronger, and more resilient than ever. We're entering 2026 from a position of strength, and will continue building on our momentum in the years ahead. Now, over to Emer to discuss the financials.

Thanks, Mike. Chevron reported fourth quarter earnings of $2.8 billion, or $1.39 per share. Adjusted earnings were $3 billion, or $1.52 per share. Included in the quarter were pension curtailment costs of $128 million, and negative foreign currency effects of $130 million. Cash flow from operations was $10.8 billion for the quarter and included a $1.7 billion from a drawdown in working capital. In line with historical trends, we expect to build in working capital in the first quarter of 2026. Organic capex was $5.1 billion for the quarter and full-year organic capex was in line with guidance. Inorganic capex related mostly to lease acquisitions and new energies investments. We repurchased shares at the high end of our fourth quarter guidance range at $3 billion. Our balance sheet remained strong, ending the year with a net debt coverage ratio of 1x. Compared to last quarter, adjusted earnings were lower by roughly $600 million. Adjusted upstream earnings decreased primarily due to lowered liquid prices. Adjusted downstream earnings were lower largely due to lower chemicals earnings and refining volumes. Adjusted free cash flow was $20 billion for the year and included the first loan repayment from TCO and $1.8 billion in asset sales. Share repurchases combined with the HES shares acquired at a discount were over $14 billion. Looking ahead, we expect continued growth in cash flow driven by low-risk production growth, ongoing cost savings, and continued capital discipline. 2025 marked the highest full year worldwide in U.S. production in Chevron's history. Excluding impacts of the Hess acquisition, net oil equivalent production growth was at the top end of our 2025 guidance range of 6% to 8%. Production of TCO, the Permian, and the Gulf of America was in line with or better than previous guidance due to strong performance and disciplined execution. We expect volume growth to continue in 2026, as we see the benefits of project ramp-ups, a full year of HESS assets, and continued efficiency in our shale portfolio. A full year of Permian, above one million barrels of oil per day, and back in production, underpins the expected growth in shale and tight. Recent and upcoming project startups in Guyana, the Gulf of America, and the Eastern Mediterranean are anticipated to increase offshore production by approximately 200,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day. We expect TCO to grow 30,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, delivering near its original plan as the 2026 maintenance schedule has been optimized. In total, growth in these high margin assets is anticipated to contribute to a 7% to 10% increase in production year over year, excluding the impact of asset sales. Last year, we launched our structural cost reduction program as part of our continued commitment to cost discipline. Execution has exceeded expectations with $1.5 billion delivered in 2025 and $2 billion captured in the annual run rate. These results reflect a broad organization-wide effort to operate more efficiently, challenging how and where work gets done, streamlining processes, integrating advanced technology, and leveraging our scale across the supply chain. We've restructured our operating model to be leaner and faster, with a more intense focus on benchmarking and prioritization. And we're not done. We expect this momentum to continue as we aim to deliver on our expanded target of $3 to $4 billion by the end of 2026, with more than 60% of savings coming from durable efficiency gains. As Mike referenced, we're entering 2026 in a position of strength. Our diversified portfolio has a dividend in CapEx breakeven below $50 Brent and a deep opportunity queue with lower execution risk. Capital discipline remains at the core of our strategy as we focus on only the highest value opportunities. Our balance sheet is an excellent shape with significant debt capacity that provides additional resilience and flexibility. This disciplined approach allows us to manage through cycles, invest for the future, and consistently reward shareholders. Over the last four years, we've returned more than $100 billion in dividends and buybacks. As we showed you at our Investor Day, our track record of growing the dividend is unmatched across decades. Today, we announced a 4% increase in the quarterly dividend, in line with our top financial priority. I'll now hand it off to Jake.

That concludes our prepared remarks. Additional guidance can be found in the appendix to this presentation, as well as the slides and other information posted on chevron.com. We are now ready to take your questions. We ask that you limit yourself to just one question. We will do our best to get all of your questions answered. Katie, can you please open the lines?

Thank you. If you have a question at this time, please press star 1 on your touchtone telephone. To allow for questions from more participants, we ask you limit yourself to one question. If your question has been answered or you wish to remove yourself from the queue, please press star 2. If you are listening on a speakerphone, we ask you please lift your handset before asking your question to provide optimum sound quality. Again, if you have a question, please press star 1 on your touchtone telephone. We'll take our first question from Aaron Dyrum with Jacob Morgan. Good morning, Aaron. Good morning.

I was wondering, yeah, good morning, Mike. I was wondering if you could elaborate on a few of the moving pieces around TCO volumes in 2026, including the optimized maintenance schedule. And perhaps, Mike, you could just discuss the issue on the power distribution system and where you stand with some of the debottlenecking activities that could potentially result in an increase in your productive capacity at TCO.

Sure. Let me start with the power issue since that's been the most recent information there. The team proactively suspended production at the facility when an issue was identified in the power system. I'm really proud of the organization for taking that step, being willing to reduce production when they identified a condition that created a risk, and focusing on the safety of people, assets, the environment. with urgency to get the facility into a safe posture, immediately began working on root cause identification, and very quickly began implementing solutions to get production back online. Production has been resumed at the Korolev field. A number of the assets or power distribution assets have been taken out of service, have been brought back into service. We've actually got power now to one of the pressure boost facilities. and are in the process of beginning to ramp things back up to higher rates through the processing plans as outlined in my opening comments. Also, you know, in the news, just to close the loop on it, you know, we have two mooring berths back in service at CPC. We've been working for the last 30-plus days, maybe 30 to 45 days, through a single mooring berth. back into, you know, startup mode on TCO, and as I indicated, full field production capacity not far away. When you look at the full year guide where we said we expect to be near our original production expectations, two things I would point to. One is a maintenance optimization, which is timing of activity and optimizing downtime. And so, as we've looked at the schedule for this year, we've got a more optimal plan that will accomplish the maintenance objectives and reduce the amount of planned downtime that goes with those. And then the second thing gets to your question about de-bottlenecking. At our investor day, we shared some history at TCO that demonstrated over our years there in multiple projects, we've been able to steadily improve plant capacity beyond nameplate. We're working on that again now with the new project. And in fact, one of the pit stop that we took late in 2025 was to address, to retray a column or a portion of a column and address some issues that have been identified that we believe will allow us to push some more throughput through the plant. We've actually not run that at full capacity long enough to be able to speak to exactly what the impact of that is because of some of these other constraints that I just mentioned. But as we're back up and running, we'll certainly have a chance to test that. That and other steps that we take will lead to gradual de-bottlenecking, and we'll look to try to creep the capacity further upward. And we'll advise you as we've got, you know, run time and confidence that we can demonstrate that. We'll let you know what that looks like. Thanks, everyone.

We'll take our next question from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs.

Morning, Mike and team, and thanks for the comments that Mike, if you could unpack Venezuela a little bit more, and specifically your just thoughts on the conditions of the assets on the ground and how much running room there is in terms of the resource there. You know, how big could this be in the context of Chevron's portfolio? And I think, Mike, you alluded to the fact that you might be thinking about this more in a self-funding model type of way. So anything you can unpack there, too, would be great.

Yeah, Neil, maybe I'll put a little bit of context around this just because I have had different discussions with people over the years, and I'd like to get everybody kind of level set on it since it's been more front and center recently than it has been historically. First of all, our operations there through the last month and all the things that have happened on the ground have continued uninterrupted. Our people are safe. We continue to work closely with our partners in Venezuela to get crude to the market. So we've not been impacted by any shipping issues or anything else that have been in the media. We're actually in four different joint ventures with Petabesa, three of which are producing assets since 2022. And there were some changes in the licenses out of OFAC under the Biden administration. We've grown production by over 200,000 barrels a day. Gross production now is up around 250,000 barrels And as Mark mentioned during the White House meeting, there's the potential for up to an incremental 50% production growth over the next 18 to 24 months as we get some additional authorizations from the U.S. government. The activity on the ground right now is entirely funded through the cash within those ventures. And so the current license agreement requires us to pay certain taxes and royalties that we're legally obligated to pay. It enables repayment of debts that we have, you know, still have debt balances that we're owed, and we've been steadily working those down. And then the additional cash goes back into the operations for normal operating costs. That has funded things like well workovers, basic maintenance on pumps and pipelines and compressor stations and the like, which have allowed us to improve production efficiency. as we have and would continue to, as I indicated, up to maybe 50% additional growth. So that's the current state of things. As I think everybody on the call knows, the resource potential in Venezuela is large. It's well established, and there's a lot of running room ahead. I can speak to the state of our assets, and we have worked hard to keep them safe and reliable and maintain them during this period of time. I think as you look at the performance out of other assets that we're not involved in, you can see that that may not be the case across the rest of the industry in the country as, you know, the production has kind of steadily eroded over, you know, the last decade or so. And so I think the opportunity to do some of the things we've done in some of these other operations is probably there. I think it's a little early to say what our longer-term outlook is, Neil. You should expect us to remain focused on value and capital discipline. It's a large resource that has the opportunity to become a more sizable part of our portfolio in the future. But we also need to see stability in the country. We need to have confidence in the fiscal regime. There was a hydrocarbon law that was passed just yesterday that we're in the process of of reviewing to understand how that applies. And so there'll be a number of signposts that we'll be watching. And as I try to remind people always, like anywhere that we invest, fiscal terms, stability, regulatory predictability are important. And so it'll have to compete in our portfolio versus attractive investments in many other parts of the world. With the right changes, we certainly could see our operations and footprint expand. in Venezuela. And, you know, we're working with the U.S. government and the Venezuelan government to try to create circumstances that would enable that.

Thank you, Neil.

We'll take our next question from Doug Leggett with Wolf Research.

Good morning, everybody. Mike, I wonder if I could just quickly take you back to Tengiz. And I guess it's really more of a macro question because I think you're aware that Kazakhstan seemingly has some fairly substantial compensation cuts planned in the summertime. And I don't know how much of that was supposed to be 10 gigs. I think it was a previous question from one of the guys asking about maintenance. But now that you've had this unplanned downtime, I'm wondering, does that kind of meet the compensation plan if you had any contribution to that? In other words, we should not expect any further cuts later in the year. I don't know if you can speak to that both on a macro and a Chevron specific level, please.

Yeah, Doug, I really can't. You know, that's a matter for the Republic and obviously OPEC Plus as they engage in their discussions, which we're not privy to. I'll point out that historically, because the TCO barrel is a pretty attractive barrel from a fiscal standpoint to the Republic, that what we've seen historically is if there are restrictions on production in the country, you know, those tend to affect the barrels that are less fiscally attractive to the government, and TCO doesn't have a history of being, you know, impacted to a great degree by that. And so, you know, I would point to that. I know history is not always a, you know, a prediction of the future, but that's how things have historically worked. And I just don't know what agreements or understandings there are within the country relative to OPEC. Thank you. Thanks, Doug.

We'll take our next question from Ryan Todd with Piper Sandler.

Great, thanks. Maybe on the Eastern Med, you've made a lot of progress in the Eastern Mediterranean over the last six months. Can you walk through kind of the drivers of the progress in the region, keys to Aphrodite development, getting that to FID, and then maybe additional opportunities in the region, including places like Egypt where we've seen some headlines involving yourselves of late?

Yeah, thanks, Ryan. We are continuing to be very excited about the resource potential in the Eastern Mediterranean. You know, I used to get some questions back during, you know, the last year or so when there was a lot of kind of geopolitical uncertainty in the region. But, you know, this is a tremendous resource, all credit to Noble Energy for the way they developed both tomorrow and Leviathan. And, you know, across our core assets, on a gross basis, we've got over 40 TCF of resource. And this is comparable to our assets in Australia, which have been the focus of investors for a long time. But this is similar scale. In the near term, we're focused on safely bringing online projects at both tomorrow and Leviathan later this year. Tomorrow, we'll add about 500 million cubic feet a day of capacity, Leviathan about 200. And then the Leviathan expansion we just took FID on will take gross production there to 2.1 BCF by the end of the decade. So steady growth. Combined, those projects should increase production about 25% in double earnings and cash flow by 2030. And then, as you mentioned, Aphrodite just entered feet. We're working towards a competitive project in Cyprus. This is one that's been kind of on the drawing board for quite some time, and we've reached, I think, a good understanding with Cyprus on the development concept there. And so all of these, you know, lead to our confidence in the region. Last thing is we've got at least one exploration well I know that is going to go down offshore Egypt. We've got a large position in a number of blocks offshore Egypt further to the west in areas that are relatively underexplored and have been under some military exclusions historically. There's working petroleum systems onshore. And, you know, we've got reasons to believe they could extend offshore. So we're going to be testing that with shut seismic and going to be getting some wells down. So an important part of our portfolio. Good things underway now. And I think, you know, the running room on this one continues well into the future.

Thank you, Ryan.

We'll go next to Devin McDermott with Morgan Stanley.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Emer, you had some helpful comments and details in the slides on the cost reduction progress so far. And if we look at what's on deck for 2026, what's ahead still, I think some of the remaining improvement is really driven by some of the fairly material organizational changes that Chevron implemented last fall. And now that you're a few months into this new operating model, I was wondering if you could Talk about some of the early results that you're seeing so far, both on costs and operations. Any positive surprises or, conversely, kind of lessons learned or areas that are still a work in progress?

Okay. Thanks, Devin. Yeah, we've hit the ground running. We went live with the new organization in October, and the new operating model is live and well, and, you know, we're seeing that reflected in the early results that we've shown you today and the prepared comments. So we've saved $1.5 billion thus far on the cost reduction program. So some of that's coming from divestments. Some of that's coming from efficiencies and technology. And so you see the early results of the organizational impacts in the results already. The run rate's greater than $2 billion at the end of the year. So we're expecting the organizational efficiencies to add to the results that we're seeing thus far. So we're very confident in the targets that we've set and delivering that over the course of this year. And just a reminder, that's $3 to $4 billion. Look, in terms of the lessons learned, what I'd say is we're seeing results everywhere. Every team as part of this program has been benchmarking, has been looking for areas of improvement. So we've got a lot of programs that are looking at improving our competitiveness across every Some of the examples that I would call out, production chemicals, now that we have our shale and type portfolio and assets all together in one business, we've been able to look at that from an operational efficiency perspective, not only the optimized operationally, you know, the chemical treatments, but also the costs and the dosing. So that would be an operational lessons learned where the scale and the design of the new organization makes that easier to do, and the results speak for themselves. Another area, maybe in the technology space, you know, we've talked about this for a number of years, but AI is really starting to take off in terms of being used in every part of the business. And in the new organization, our supply chain team is set up a little bit differently, and they've really been using AI in a neat way to glean more intelligence around how to approach certain negotiations. And so that will be an example as well. So all in all, we're on track to deliver the three to four billion. I'm very confident in that. And this is overall OPEX reduction while we significantly grow. So we'll keep you updated on the progress. Thanks for the question.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Sam Margolin with Wells Fargo.

Hey, good morning. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe revisiting the Permian, you know, I think it was like the second half of 23 where you called out that productivity, well, productivity in the Permian on the operated side was inflecting higher. And, you know, now two years later, it seems like we're really seeing it flow through in capital efficiency. And so the question is like, when you get this kind of momentum in, Short cycle capital efficiency, you know, what does it do to your decision-making process? Not, you know, I don't want to spin you around on Permian Plateau, but just given the cost and productivity structure of your operation there, it feels like it's getting incrementally capital efficient to accelerate. So, you know, just in the context of what you're seeing performance-wise, you know, how do you feel about the Permian strategy?

Hey, Sam, I'll take this one. Yeah, well, what we're seeing is exactly what we set out to achieve, and that was to hold Permian at a million barrels a day. We've seen that for three quarters. And optimize on cash generation. And we're already seeing cash efficiency improve. We're at $3.5 billion of a capex growth. and that was something that we thought that it was going to take us some time, but the team has just done a terrific job. Every aspect of the factory there has seen efficiency and improvement. And now, you know, we're taking that further, given that our Sheilentide portfolio is together as part of a new organization in one business. And so we're seeing that capital efficiency extend to the back end extend to the DJ and extend to Argentina. One data point I'd give you just to illustrate it clearly is drilling rig efficiency. And since 2022, we've more than doubled our drilling efficiency from that point. And so we're drilling the development areas for much less. In terms of our decision-making right now, no change to our decision-making. I mean, Permian plays a role in our portfolio. We're focused on growing cash flow, not growing production, and the capital efficiency enables that. So I just finished by emphasizing all of these actions are improving returns.

Thank you, Sam.

We'll take our next question from Paul Chang with Scotiabank.

Hey, guys. Good morning. Mike, can you discuss how you see the opportunity set in two of the OPEC countries, Libya and Iraq, where a lot of your competitors seems to believe that the opportunity sets have much improved and making waves? We haven't heard from Sherphon. And also that, comparing to your peers, Your LNG size or portfolio size is much smaller, and how that fit into your long-term? Do you have a different view comparing your peer on the LNG business?

Thank you. Okay, Paul. A couple of questions there, I guess. First of all, you might have seen we recently signed an MOU in Libya. You know, We're a little bit underweight, relatively speaking, Middle East versus some other parts of the world, and that's been intentional. The types of contracts and the terms that have been on offer in the Middle East, broadly speaking, for the last decade or more, have not been very competitive versus some of our alternatives. And so you've had a lot of service-type contracts, and, you know, in a world of limited human resources and limited capital resources, we need to deploy these to what we believe are the highest return opportunities. And it's been tough for a lot of those to compete within our portfolio. So we've not gone into Iraq. It's been a decade or more since we've last really had any kind of a serious look at Libya. Those things are changing. And I think in part, you know, when we saw President Trump make a visit through the region earlier this year, we saw a notable uptick in inbound inquiries and a desire to engage not just in those two countries but in any number of other countries that would like to see American companies invest in their economies. And so, you know, the resource potential in some of these countries is undeniable. Iraq and Libya are two of the largest resource holders in the world. And so we're engaged in discussions in both of those countries. They've been reported in the media. to look at everything from existing producing fields and coming into those to operate and grow, also looking at exploration opportunities as well. Improvements in fiscal terms have been critical, pairing discovered resources with exploration opportunities to make things more attractive, and so we need to see compelling outcomes. value opportunities there if we're going to invest. We intend to stay disciplined on capital and seek the highest returns. My quick response to Alan G. Paul, I think I've spoken to this before, is we're a global player. We need to be in projects that compete. And a lot of things that we've passed on around the world, similarly to my comments about some of these Middle East opportunities, they just don't deliver the returns that we're looking for. And so We've got some U.S. offtake where we don't need to put capital to work because we have a large gas position. We've got a strong, you know, credit position. And we can get attractive throughput rates and let somebody else deploy the capital into those businesses. So we'll have some LNG offtake from the U.S. And, you know, we'll continue to look at opportunities. We're not opposed to adding, but it's got to deliver competitive returns. Thanks for the question, Paul.

We'll take our next question from Steve Richardson with Evercore ISI.

Hi, thank you. I was wondering if we could maybe just dovetail on those comments just there on changing fiscal terms internationally and the opportunity. It just feels like you've positioned the company arguably really well to win in a low commodity price environment and with a ton of leverage to the upside, as your sensitivities suggest. So that's it, but the opportunity set just keeps on getting bigger. I mean, we're just talking about Venezuela, talking about some of these opportunities in the Middle East. You've got a revamped exploration program. So Can you just follow up on that in terms of how do we think about, you know, maintaining that leverage to the upside while developing some of these future opportunities, and how do you, you know, instill that discipline in the organization, if you could?

Yeah, Steve, I mean, we've steadily worked to high-grade our portfolio. We've looked to add very strong and competitive assets to our business, and we have divested ourselves of positions that are not bad assets, but they fit better for somebody else than they do for us. And so, In doing so, I think we've strengthened the company. You've seen our break-even has come down. You see that we're able to operate at lower cost because we're actually in fewer positions that have more scale. They've got longevity, so we can apply technology to these assets. And I think you can expect us to continue to do so. We want to grow, you know, gradually over time, but demand for our products isn't growing at an enormous rate. You know, demand for oil has grown arguably 1% a year, give or take. Gas has grown a little bit more strongly than that. And so, you know, we've got volumetric growth a little bit above that last year, this year, because we've got some acquisitions and projects started. But over time, we've got to grow cash flow. And that's the focus. We've got to drive break-evens down because we're in a commodity business. We can never forget about that. And we've got to apply base business excellence to everything that we do. So we've got to drive value out of these assets. We've got to work them better. I'll give you, you know, As you look now at what we're doing with the Permian, the DJ, the Bakken, and Argentina, all as part of one organization, and I see people, practices, technology, standards being shared across those businesses. We're steadily driving the kind of improvement that Emer was addressing in her response to Sam across that entire portfolio. And so we've consciously positioned the company, as you say, to have the resilience that I talked about. I said we're bigger, better, and more resilient than ever. That means we can ride through the cycles in an even better position than we could in the past. And we've got, you know, a balance sheet that provides ballast if you get into a long cycle. And, you know, we've got this track record of continually raising the dividends, steadily buying shares back through the cycle, and being able to reinvest in the business to strengthen it over time. And that's the playbook going forward. Thank you, Steve.

We'll take our next question from Barrage Borkatario with RBC.

Hi, thanks for taking my question. Just a follow-up on portfolios. I've been touched on a couple of times, but we've seen a bunch of headlines on you maybe looking to sign deals in various countries. I was just wondering, is this a concerted step up in your efforts, or is this largely initiated by you know, resource-rich countries and reverse inquiries. Some perspective there would be helpful. And one of the things just to note on is your portfolio has become more concentrated over time, which is good and bad depending on the situation. So I was wondering if that part of your thinking is looking to diversify and how you're thinking about the portfolio there. Thank you.

Yeah, Baraj, so look, business development is part and parcel of what we do every day, week, month, and year. There are times you're in a pretty sparse environment in terms of opportunity, and there's times when it's more target-rich. What I would say is – and this tends to kind of work on a long cycle sometimes – what we see today are more attractive opportunities, frankly – than I think we've seen in the past. And I spoke to the Middle East, so I won't repeat that, but we do see a lot of interest in that part of the world, and it's reflected in these more competitive fiscal terms. And so I don't think we've necessarily changed our appetite or our level of diligence and activity in the BD environment. We just see a more attractive suite of opportunities out there, we'll continue to be very selective and pick and choose. I hear your comment about portfolio high grading and concentration, if you will. At the core, we run big things big. We like large positions that have lots of running room. We like to apply technology and base business excellence to drive value through those assets. When you're in a position with a lot of smaller assets spread all over the world, Your safety exposure, you've got a lot more surface area on safety, environmental issues, compliance issues. You just go down the list. And so you deploy a lot of your great people to manage those things across assets that can be small and out there kind of in the tail of a portfolio, having large positions where you can put your best people to work on assets that really matter. is something that I believe is important. And so I recognize you could get too concentrated. I don't believe that we are. And as I mentioned earlier, we're a little underweight in the Middle East, which is an area we wouldn't mind having some more exposure if we can find it in a competitive, you know, financial standpoint. Thank you, Viraj.

We'll take our next question from Manav Gupta with UBS.

Hi. Good afternoon. You have a very strong refining portfolio, and there are two tailwinds we see to that refining portfolio. One is your competitors' closing capacity in California, leaving you with one of the biggest footprints out there and above mid-cycle margins. And second is the possibility of using some of those Benin, Israel, and Evi sour barrels in your refining systems, Gulf Coast and other places. Can you talk a little bit about those two possible tailwinds to your refining margins? Thank you.

Yeah, Manav. Thanks for... I'm bringing up something near and dear to my heart, the downstream business, where I spent a lot of my career. First off, where you ended on Venezuelan crude, we've been bringing about 50,000 barrels a day, give or take, into our Pascagoula, Mississippi refinery on the Gulf Coast. We can take another 100,000 barrels a day into our system, both at Pascagoula and on the West Coast, where we've got cooking capacity at El Segundo. So I think you should expect to see us, assuming it competes against alternatives, to be running more Venezuelan crude in our system over time. In California, it's an interesting situation. We have a very strong downstream position there. We've got scale. We've got complexity in terms of conversion capacity. We've got flexible crude sourcing, advanced logistics, a very strong retail brands to integrate the business. And so we're as competitive as anybody, and I would argue advantage really versus the rest of the competitors in California. You're seeing some refineries close that is going to take capacity out of the system. And already, you know, we've got a market there that is geographically and logistically isolated. It's isolated by specification as well. And as a result, California pays higher fuel prices than the rest of the country by simple market forces being at work there. There's – we've seen decades of what in my opinion has been, you know, poor energy policymaking that has made it more difficult to invest. The irony is we have places in the world like Venezuela that are trying to become more attractive to investment as places like California enact policies to become less attractive to investment. is unfortunate as someone who spent a lot of time in that state, but it highlights the need for policy that enables investment and for competitive terms and a regulatory environment. And so we'll see how things play out in California over time.

Thank you, Manav.

We'll take our next question from Alastair Sim with Citi.

Thanks very much. Reserve replacement this year obviously benefits from HESS, but you're also taking on the new production and that means reserve life has dropped again. And it's now a lot lower than it was five to six years ago. The question is, how do you think about the suitability of this metric to your business and really as a guide for investors in your business? Thank you.

Hey, Alistair, I'll take this one. Yeah, I mean, RRR, our reserve replacement ratio, in a business that has depletion, is an important metric. It's not the only metric that we look at when we think about the depth of our inventory or the quality of the portfolio. And last year, in addition to the RRR that was associated with the inorganic growth, you know, with closing Hess and bringing Guyana in, and back into the portfolio. There are also, you know, some of that did come from organic ads as well. So extensions, discoveries, and project sanctions. So it's a blend of both. Look, with RRR, it can be lumpy. So some years, you know, you can get kind of a flurry of things happening at one time. And so what we look at is we look at the one year, but we also look at the longer term trends as well. We look at the competitive metrics And, you know, when we take all of that into consideration, we had a great year in 2025 on RRR, and we lead the peer group in both five and ten years. Thanks for the question.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Jean Ann Salisbury with Bank of America.

Hi. Good morning. You all had said at the investor day that you had started to test the chemical surfactants in other basins outside of the Permian. Have you gotten any early results back from the DJR Bakken, and do you anticipate that it's going to work as well there?

Yes, thanks. I'll take this one. So, we've been primarily focused on Permian, and in fact, we've increased the treatments from about 40% of the new wells being treated at the first half of 2025. to almost 85% will be treated this year. And we're striving to hit 100% in 2027. So it has been more of a focus in the Permian. And I just point out we're testing our proprietary chemical technology, but we're also testing the combination of that with other commercially available chemicals. So cocktails as such, we're trying out different things depending on the development area. We showed in Investor Day some of our results. What I'd say is we're now realizing 20% improvement in 10-month cumulative recovery on the new whales. So we have even more information than what we shared. So we're really excited, and we expect that's at least a 10% recovery uplift when we think about it over the full life of the whales. And what we've also learned is we can apply these technologies not only to the new wealth, but the existing wealth. And what we've seen in almost 300 of the treatments that we've done in existing wealth, that we've arrested decline by 5% to 8%. So all in all, very encouraging. The programs to scale in other parts are underway, though. We don't have results that we can share with you today. We did do some treatments in Bakken in the fourth quarter. We expect to see some of that soon. We have pilots underway in the DGA in Argentina as well. And so we'll share the results. I mean, we publish the results. They're verifiable. We give you the paper references so that you can see for yourself. But we will share all of that in due course. But we're really, really excited. And what I would also say, this is one technology program amongst a set of programs that's really focusing on doubling shale and tight recovery. We've got a simulation program that is very, very deep. We've also got an effort to leverage the unmatched data position we have around our shale and tight wells using AI to glean insights into how to design wells, develop wells, and increase recovery. Very comprehensive, and we anticipate we'll have some results for you this year. But right now, we're just focused on getting the treatments out to those other Sheehan-type basins.

Thank you, Jeananne.

We'll take our next question from Betty Jean with Barclays.

Good morning. This is a good follow-up to Jeananne's question. I want to ask about the Bakken specifically, since you've been there for a couple quarters now. How's it performing relative to your expectations with the cross-learning between the two teams? And how do you think about the Bakken position overall today?

Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Betty. Look, we're pleased with the Bakken. We're applying best practices, as Emer mentioned, from other parts of our portfolio. We're looking at things that Hess had been doing. in the Bakken to apply those in the DJ, the Permian, and Argentina. We've already optimized our development program to reduce capital spending, better utilize existing infrastructure, maximize value. We've moved from four rigs to three with a similar drilling output. We've optimized the workover fleet, renegotiated some of the key supplier contracts, working on advanced chemicals with some optimism. We're implementing long lateral development in 60% of the wells this year and up to 90% in 2027. So driving value there, we're going to, you know, Hess had a target and we will hold that to, you know, level it out around 200,000 barrels a day, plus or minus, and really focus on cash flow. So similar to the way you've heard us talk about the DJ and the Permian, we think we can drive a lot of asset productivity efficiency technology and free cash flow growth in this asset as well.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Jeff Jay with Daniel Energy Partners.

Hi, guys. I was just really struck by the margin improvement sequentially in U.S. upstream. And I know there's a lot of moving parts, but it looks like realizations are down over $3 on a daily basis that, you know, costs, you know, the margin was actually up. And I guess I'm wondering if there's a way you can help me understand how much of that are the structural cost savings and production optimization efforts you guys are doing and kind of what the pathway for that looks like going forward over the next year or so.

Yeah, Jeff, I'd point to a couple of things. Number one, you know, we've been bringing on new production in the Gulf of America. These are high margin barrels. And so when you bring that into the mix, you start to see the margin expand Number two, as we've moved to a plateau in the Permian and I also mentioned the DJ and the Bakken, that's 1.6 million barrels a day. As you start to drive efficiency and productivity and technology across that kind of a production base, you can see a real impact of that. The third contributor then are some of these structural reductions that we're making. in our organization in more efficient support of people to these businesses, consolidating all of our shale assets into one organization. So I'd say there are multiple levers there. But your broader point is one that I think is important. I mentioned earlier that, you know, we're in a relatively low growth. It's a growth business, no doubt about it. But the demand for energy globally grows gradually. We need to focus not only on growing volumes in order to meet that demand, We've got to continually work on expanding margins, and that's through value chain optimization. It's through all these other things that I just talked about. And so margin expansion is something that in my background in the downstream, we worked hard to expand margins through things we can control. You can do that in the upstream too. We've got people focused on that, and we're seeing the results, as you point out.

Thanks, Jeff.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Bob Brackett with Bernstein Research.

Good morning. A follow-up around Venezuela. You've mentioned bringing Venezuela heavy into Gulf Coast refineries and having some capacity on the West Coast. Do you have a sense of how much heavy from Venezuela could be absorbed by the U.S. without impacting heavy light dips or without backing up Canadian heavy?

You know, Bob, good analysts do great work on that. you know, markets are wonderful things. And what's going to happen as you bring more of these barrels in, as you say, you're going to kind of back out what's currently feeding the system. They're going to redistribute around the world and kind of a new equilibrium will establish. And light heavies will reflect that. Flows will reflect that. I don't have a simple rule of thumb I can give you or a kind of a simple way to describe that. I'm pretty sure you can get down into the details and model that better than I'm going to be able to describe it to you. But You're right. It's going to shift these things around.

Thank you. We'll take our next question from Philip Jumworth with BML.

Thanks. Good morning. On chemicals, I mean, you made no secret about wanting to get bigger in this area. Obviously, you need a willing buyer and seller price that works, plus it's tough to do deals at the bottom of the cycle. But The question is, how do you view the benefits to Chevron of owning more of CP Chem? Are there things you could do differently versus the current JV structure, whether it's operational or strategic? And are there other avenues to get larger in pet chems beyond this?

Yeah. So, look, CP Chem is a well-run company, and I want to give them full credit. And it's been a well-run company for a long time. We've been very pleased with our performance. Investment in that company, we've been pleased with our relationship with our partner, and it's been a good vehicle for us. We think the long-term outlook for chemicals is positive. We're in a tough part of the cycle right now, but with the growing middle class and growing global population, the products that CP Chem needs are increasingly going to be in demand around the world. We've got a couple of projects underway that will be highly competitive when they come on next year. We'll see how this cycle plays out. I think it's still got some time to go. We would like more exposure to the sector, but, you know, as you say, you've got to have two people that want to do a deal. Are there other ways we could do things? Yes, we can look at things. You know, I'd remind you we also have a very large aromatics position in North Asia at GS Caltech, one of the largest aromatics plants on the earth. And so we'll look for the right ways to increase our exposure to petrochemicals over time.

Thank you, Phil. Thank you. We'll take our next question from Paul Sankey with Sankey Research.

Morning, all. Mike, good to hear that you're not modeling the heavy light spread constantly. Mike, if I could ask you a couple of specifics. on Kazakhstan, which you've already referenced, but was the power outage, what caused that? Was that just an upset? And secondly, the specifics of the loading, was that going to military activity, I guess?

Yeah, so look, the investigation is ongoing on the power outage, and I don't want to speculate on it. The team's gathering new information each day. We've got our subject matter experts from in-country, from outside of country. We've got OEMs from all the various vendors that we work with involved in this, and they're making good progress, but I'm not going to comment on it at all. I think it's a mechanical issue. I can say that, but beyond that, I don't want to say anything more. It's not a sabotage or cybersecurity or anything like that. On the loading berth, it's been well publicized. There's three offshore single-point moorings at the Novorossiysk terminal or offshore at Novorossiysk. One of those was out for maintenance. Two were in service. One of those two was hit by a submarine drone back in December as part of the military activity in the Black Sea. So that's what took CPC down to one loading berth. It is, you know, we're back up to two loading berths now, and there's a third one that is slated for some big maintenance work and will be back later this year. Historically, the Caspian pipeline and that terminal have been very, very reliable. And I think if you look at it in the fullness of time, the uptime and the reliability record has been very good. Notwithstanding that, when you're pinched back like that, it's frustrating. And a lot of people have been working very hard at TCO and all the shareholders at CPC to address these issues. Thank you, Paul.

Thank you. We will take our final question from Jason Gabelman with TD Cowen.

Yeah, hey, thanks for taking my question. I wanted to ask about the balance sheet as it relates to M&A. You know, in the past, you funded acquisitions primarily through shares, and there are some assets on the market in Kazakhstan that can make sense to acquire, though it seems like maybe that acquisition would need to be funded by cash instead of stock. So with that in mind, and maybe in a broader sense, how do you view using cash to fund acquisitions, you know, not of the HESS size, but of some of a smaller size like Reggie and Noble versus using equity given the current balance sheet? And kind of related to that, I noted that on the front of the earnings release, you put debt-to-cash flow instead of net debt-to-cap flow. It looks like that's maybe a preferred debt metric. Is that so? And if so, why the change?

Thanks. Yeah, Jason, let me talk about transactions, and I'll let Emer talk about ratios and metrics. When we do a deal, you're negotiating with a counterparty, and the consideration is part of the negotiation. And there are times when your counterparty prefers cash. There's times when they prefer equity. There's times when they may want a mix. And so that's a matter of negotiation. On large-scale M&A in our sector, where you can have a long time between deal signing and close, i.e., a deal which is closed after a pretty long cycle, using equity hedges commodity price risk on both sides of the transaction. And if you enter into a deal in one commodity price environment and you close it in another and you've got a lot of cash in the deal, you can find out that you find yourself where one party feels like the deal got a lot better for them and the other feels like it got a lot worse. And so equity and transactions like that tend to be preferred by both counterparties because it's a way to hedge out some of the commodity price risk. Smaller deals that close faster and are of a different nature, you can find cash is preferable. And so we, look, we'll work with whatever consideration makes sense in a negotiation. We're flexible and, you know, we've bought things with cash over the last many years and we've done We've done equity deals. So it really depends on the circumstances. Eva, do you want to talk about metrics?

Yeah, there's a number of metrics out there to look at the debt ratios. And so what we've done here is we've just moved towards what our rating agencies look at and what many of you look at in terms of ratios. So we're just trying to be consistent. I mean, we still look at net debt ratio, but overall the message is our balance sheet isn't in really good, really good shape. And we're in a position of strength. Thanks for the question.

I would like to thank everyone for your time today. We appreciate your interest in Chevron and your participation on today's call. Please stay safe and healthy. Katie, back to you.

Thank you. This concludes Chevron's fourth quarter 2025 earnings conference call. You may now disconnect.