Denbury Inc.

Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Denberry's second quarter 2022 results conference call. My name is Monta, your operator for today's call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question and answer session. To ask a question at that time, please press star 1. I would now like to turn the conference call over to your host for today's call, Brad Whitmarsh, head of investor relations. Please proceed, sir.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I hope you've had a chance to review our news release this morning and the supplemental materials that are available on our website at denbury.com. I want to remind everyone that today's call will include forward-looking statements that are based on our best and most reasonable information. There are numerous factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from what is discussed on today's call. You can read our full disclosures on forward-looking statements and the risk factors associated with our business in the slides accompanying today's presentation, our most recent SEC filings, and today's news release. Also, please note that during the course of today's call, we may reference certain non-GAAP measures. Reconciliation and disclosure relative to these measures are provided in today's earnings release as well. This morning, our prepared comments will come from Chris Kendall, President and CEO Mark Allen, CFO, David Shepherd, COO, and Nick Wood, SVP of Carbon Solutions. Our prepared comments should go around 20 minutes, and then we'll follow up with Q&A. With that, I'll turn the call to Chris.

Thanks, Brad. Good morning, and thank you for joining us on today's call. Last quarter, I highlighted how dynamic the beginning of the year had been, both in terms of the macro environment as well as specifically for Denbury. These dynamics became even more pronounced through the second quarter. The combination of multi-year highs in oil and gas prices, tight physical oil markets, continued supply chain disruptions, and inflation at levels not experienced in the past 40 years presents meaningful challenges for any company to navigate. Despite all of the business challenges, our teams at Denberry have done an amazing job both in executing our plans and also in mitigating the impact of those matters out of our control. As a result of their efforts, we are on a solid path to achieve every one of the goals we established to start the year. Our second quarter results highlight the strength of our business. With high commodity prices and solid production, we generated more than enough cash flow to fund investments in our oil business and CCUS development, pay off our remaining debt, and initiate a share buyback program. Considering the company's continued strong cash flow outlook and our confidence in our strategy, our board recently authorized a $100 million increase to the buyback program, replenishing our availability level to $250 million. I'm extremely proud of our technical and project execution, and David will share more on the results we are seeing with success in multiple projects from valuable opportunities in our existing fields to the Greenfield CCA EOR project. This operational execution is anticipated to deliver strong production growth in the fourth quarter of this year, and I'm certainly excited to see the impact on our business next year with CCA. In our EOR operations, we are on track to inject more industrial source CO2 this year than ever in our history. In fact, at our current rate of over 4 million tons per year, we will inject the equivalent emissions of one million cars, a remarkable milestone that underscores the incredible decarbonizing potential of this business while producing the energy our world dearly needs. Our carbon solutions team continues to make great progress, and Nick will provide more color later in the call. Executing upon our vision of building a broad sequestration network leveraging Denberry's currently operating CO2 pipeline system, the largest in the United States, will result in a one-of-a-kind sequestration system with superior scale, flexibility, and reliability. We're also closely watching the new congressional proposal to substantially increase 45Q CCUS tax credits. The proposed 70% increase would drive a significant step change in carbon capture in the U.S. Multiple new industries would be incentivized to capture their emissions, including cement and steel manufacturers and even some gas-fired power generators. While our focus remains on the incredible business opportunity available under the current 45Q credit levels, we are optimistic that CCUS policy incentives, either under this proposal or otherwise in the future, will continue to increase to levels that put this country on a path to making a meaningful difference in carbon emissions. Denbury is a highly valuable and unique company. The EOR-focused oil business on its own is an attractive, long-lived asset, which will be further enhanced by the startup of the largest EOR flood in our history at CCA. Looking to the near future, Denbury's assets and collective skill sets are a perfect fit to lead in CCUS, which now has the necessary public policy support to incentivize rapid development of capture projects. We are extremely excited about the future. And now I'll turn the call over to Mark.