Canadian Natural Resources Limited (NYSE:CNQ) Q4 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Tim McKay : Sure, yes. In the steam flood area of Primrose, as you’re aware, we are doing that solvent pilot there. And yes, it does look encouraging. And so what it does for us is by lowering our steam demand, and let’s just say our steam demand is roughly reduced by 50%, it frees up capacity to expand into more areas. So you can do more areas at the same time. So what that does, because we have the excess capacity available at Primrose, but we don’t have the excess steam capacity, you can actually use that extra steam capacity that you make available to increase production. So it’s just — it’s an opportunity, but we’ve got, I guess, a little more time before we go forward on it, but it does look very encouraging. And so hopefully, that answered your question, Dennis?

Operator: Your next question comes from Mike Dunn with Stifel FirstEnergy.

Michael Dunn : Just had a question about your operating costs, specifically with related to electricity in Western Canada here. Can you — one of you gentlemen, maybe frame for me, maybe, Mark, maybe what the year-over-year impact was either 2022 versus 2021 on your electricity costs in Western Canada or even second half ’22 versus first half ’22?

Tim McKay : Yes, Mike, I don’t have those numbers in front of me. What I can say is — as you’re aware, it significantly changed over the year. And — but I don’t have those numbers available. I think you can follow up with Lance to get those, but I don’t have our power prices in front of me today.

Michael Dunn : Okay. Maybe just a follow-up, but I know lots have come off here year-to-date versus Q4. Is that looking material to your OpEx in terms of a quarter-over-quarter change?

Tim McKay : Yes. I wouldn’t say it’s all material, but similar to last year, as natural gas and power prices increased, we’re seeing that same effect coming down in the first quarter. So power prices, to your point, have come off as well as natural gas. And they’re somewhat interrelated, right? It will help us on the operating cost side going in so far this year.

Michael Dunn : Okay. Great. Yes. I think I have a good handle on your natural gas impact on OpEx, but I’ll follow-up with Lance.

Operator: Your next question comes from Roger Read with Wells Fargo.

Roger Read : Maybe come back to the question about capital structure and maybe thinking about it from a standpoint of maybe a mid-cycle pricing. What’s the right way to think about the capital structure and cash returns to shareholders? So what I’m trying to get at is, how did you really determine $10 billion is the right number, what are your base assumptions on commodity prices and the WCS differential? And how should we think about this on a not just sort of the immediate of ’23, but maybe in a little longer time frame?

Mark Stainthorpe : Roger, it’s Mark. We think of it on a lot of different cases and make sure that we’re evaluating it on different price points. And we do that to make sure things like our dividend is sustainable through all cycles. So when you look at a debt level of $10 billion, again with the company our size and the type of reserve base, and then you can look at history of like 2020, again, we talked about it today, but we were call it, $10.7 billion higher in debt and could manage through those lower commodity price cycles. So when you continue to evaluate what your debt levels look like against those metrics, as we continue to grow, you’re able to actually sustain higher debt levels, but we feel it’s the right place to be in a conservative spot like we are at about $10 billion.

So we look at and evaluate capital structure and free cash flow and sustainability of things like our dividend at all different price points. As you recall, we have a very low breakeven given the low decline in age of our assets and low-cost structure.