Murphy Oil Corporation

Hello and good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Murphy Oil Corporation's second quarter 2023 earnings conference call and webcast. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question and answer session. If at any time during this call you need assistance, please press star zero for the operator. I would now like to turn the conference over to Kelly Whitley, Vice President, Investor Relations and Communication. Kelly, please go ahead.

Thank you, Operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us on our second quarter earnings call today. Joining us is Roger Jenkins, President and Chief Executive Officer, along with Tom Morales, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, and Eric Hambly, Executive Vice President, Operations. Please refer to the informational slides we've placed on the investor relations section of our website as you follow along with our webcast today. Throughout today's call, production numbers, reserves, and financial amounts are adjusted to exclude non-controlling interest in the Gulf of Mexico. Slide two. Please keep in mind that some of the comments made during this call will be considered forward-looking statements as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. As such, no assurances can be given that these events will occur or that the projections will be attained. A variety of factors exist that may cause the actual results to differ. For further discussion of risk factors, see Murphy's 2022 Annual Report on Form 10-K on File with the SEC. Murphy takes no duty to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. I will now turn the call over to Roger Jenkins.

Roger? Thank you, Kelly. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for listening to our call today. To return to slide three, Murphy continues to deliver a strong value proposition. Our ongoing execution excellence ensures that we remain a long-term, sustainable company. We operate safely with a focus on continual improvement in our carbon emissions intensity. Our offshore competitive advantage is reinforced with our significant recent project success at Khaleesi-Mormont Samurai Fields in the Gulf of Mexico. Murphy also has a diverse exploration portfolio recently expanded with our new country entry into Cote d'Ivoire. We continue to generate strong cash flow, and we have been able to more than double our longstanding dividend from 2021, as well as significantly reduced debt over the last 24 months. On to slide four. Our stated priorities of deliver, execute, explore, and return remain our focus as we advance through 2023. We're in excellent shape to advance Murphy 2.0 of our capital allocation framework with a targeted debt reduction goal of 500 million in the second half of the year, as well as stock buybacks. The goal of Murphy 2.0 will be enhanced by using proceeds from our non-core asset divestiture in Canada. We continue to execute our priorities operationally as production exceeds the operating production range due to strong well performance in the second quarter, or the second quarter in a row rather, in addition to our highest oil production rate in two years. The team brought online a total of 27 operating onshore wells across the Eagleford Shale and Tupper Mountain in the second quarter at or ahead of plan. and also completed Gulf Mexico facility maintenance ahead of schedule. Additionally, I'm pleased that we received government approval for the Lac Da Vang Field Development Plan in Vietnam this quarter. Regarding our exploration strategy in the second quarter, we initiated a new country entry in Dakota Devar. We're also progressing plans to resume drilling on the Murphy-operated Oso Exploration Well in the Gulf of Mexico late in the third quarter. With consistent operational performance, and decreasing capex for the rest of the year. Free cash flow generate will support our strategy to return funds to shareholders through our capital allocation framework. On the slide five, a strong quarter for us. In the second quarter, we had 184,000 equivalents per day and exceeded guidance by over 6,000 barrel equivalents from a better than expected well performance plus 1,400 barrels equivalent per day from lower realized Tupper Montney royalty rates. Oil production of 99,000 barrels equivalent today, which was some 5,000 barrels per day above guidance, grew by 10% over the second quarter of 2022, reflecting production beats in our oil-weighted Eagleford Shale and Gulf of Mexico assets. We realized $73.54 per barrel for our oil, while I realized the NGL price was $19 per barrel. and that gas from Murphy was $1.92 per thousand cubic feet for the quarter. Now I'm going to turn the call over to our CFO, Tom Morales, for an update on our financials and sustainability efforts.