National Fuel Gas Company

2021 National Fuel Gas Company 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. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star 1 on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. If you require any further assistance, please press star 0. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Ken Webster, Director of Investor Relations, Please go ahead.

Thank you, Celine, and good morning. We appreciate you joining us on today's conference call for a discussion of last evening's earnings release. With us on the call from National Fuel Gas Company are Dave Bauer, President and Chief Executive Officer, Karen Camiolo, Principal Financial Officer, and Justin Lois, President of Seneca Resources. At the end of the prepared remarks, we will open the discussion to questions. The third quarter fiscal 2021 earnings release and August investor presentation have been posted on our investor relations website. We may refer to these materials during today's call. We would like to remind you that today's teleconference will contain forward-looking statements. While national fuel expectations, beliefs, and projections are made in good faith and are believed to have a reasonable basis, actual results may differ materially. These statements speak only as of the date on which they are made and you may refer to last evening's earnings release for a listing of certain specific risk factors. With that, I'll turn it over to Dave Bauer.

Thanks, Ken. Good morning, everyone. The third quarter was another strong one for national fuel with our upstream and midstream businesses continuing the positive momentum they established during the first half of the year. Seneca had a great quarter with production up nearly 50% on the strength of last year's acquisition and its 2021 drilling program. That growth in production, along with higher commodity prices, prove a nearly 70% increase in EBITDA from our combined upstream and gathering operations. The acquisition continues to impress, with both production and operating costs better than we expected. Online date for Lighty South. We've decided to move up some completion activity at Seneca.