Manav Gupta: No, my second quick follow up here was sometime back your operating partner has had taken over the sync curd operations from the entity, and you guys had both expressed confidence in terms of the synergy benefits of that. Where are we in that cycle in terms of the benefits that come from your actual operating partner taking over the sync curd project?
Brad Corson: Yes, thanks for that. And just to close out the other comment I was going to make on WCS and egress is as we see that TMX come online, we do see that as favorable supportive of a tighter differential. So as we look to next year, we do expect tightening versus where we are today. On sync crud benefits, as we’ve said, that’s a multi-year journey. And we’re working closely with [indiscernible] the operator to achieve a wide range of benefits starting with improved reliability, also reduced cost structure and we are seeing progress. You think about last year, last year’s production was a record high year for us and for the asset. So that’s an indication that we are making progress on reliability. We’re seeing less unplanned downtime events, which I think is positive.
We still see a big opportunity with operating costs, and that’s probably the biggest challenge ahead of us, and we’re working closely with Suncor to continue to look for opportunities to drive those cost structures down so that the asset could be more competitive on a cost basis. But we are seeing progress, but there’s still a long ways to go.
Operator: We’ll go next to, we’ll go next to Dennis Fong with CIBC World Markets.
Dennis Fong : First off, congrats Dave on your retirement and welcome Peter to the new role. The first question I have is more focused around Kearl. Obviously, that’s great to hear that the full deployment of Autonomous Hall has been completed across that asset. When we think about things, I know at your Investor Day you outlined a bunch of digital technology, including shovel and truck analysis, as well as other aspects that likely help support or are supported by AHS. How do we think about where pro production and productivity could potentially get to and how far have you or how much have you captured of that $1 barrel thus far?
Brad Corson: I’ll make a couple comments and then I’ll let Simon maybe add a little more color to it. First of all, in terms of the journey we’re on as you’re aware from our Investor Day and other discussions, our guidance for this year is 265,000 to 275,000 barrels per day. We are on path to achieve that, which is great recovery from some of the operational challenges we had last year and puts us back on track to this journey to 280,000. And as we said at our investor day, we expect to achieve 280,000 barrels a day next year. And then looking beyond that, although we haven’t put a specific timeline, we do see the potential to achieve 300,000 barrels a day. And certainly things like autonomous haul, leveraging technology are all integral components to achieving those higher volumes. But maybe Simon can add a little more detail around some of the other autonomous things we’re doing and other technology applications at the mine or elsewhere in the asset.
Simon Younger : I think, actually earlier in the year, I shared one example of where we’re looking elsewhere for benefits of autonomy. And I foreshadowed that we were, we were going to do a trial of autonomous dozers and in fact we’ve now done some of that trial work and got really encouraging results, particularly now in our tailings area. We think remote control dosing has some significant potential. So, we just continue to see enormous potential in this part of the business. But sort of bigger picture just to build a bit more on what Brad was sharing, that journey to 280,000 barrels a day next year for Kearl is really driven through two main levers. But the first is reliability and uptime and mainly there, it’s optimizing the scheduled work that we do in minimizing, reducing the amount scheduled work that we that we do, to just continue to increase incrementally the annual capacity and production of the plant.
And then the other key lever is productivity. And I would tell you that an enormous, underpiner of that is our digital efforts. And our digital efforts really are focused in three areas. It is analytics. What can we glean from and do with the data, the vast amounts of data that we have? So analytics is a huge driver. Productivity improvements, as we have talked about making our workers more productive, more effective by putting digital tools in their hands. And then applying digital technology, like the remote dosing that I mentioned. But, using drones for internal vessel inspections, things like that, which are making maintenance and scheduled work more efficient and quicker to do. So that’s the continued focus of our digital program. It is a huge driver of us getting, our journey — achieving our journey to 280,000 a day at the asset next year.
And then, of course, as Brad said, looking beyond that. Specifically, to the, autonomous haul, there was a question, I think part of the question was on that. I would say, we haven’t yet achieved all of the $1 a barrel, but I would say we have achieved the majority of that. And so, there is a little bit more to go. But I would also see there is upside relative to that as well. So I am sure you can tell we are very bullish on the autonomous technology.
Dennis Fong : Great. Appreciate that color and context. I guess a quick follow-up there on Kearl specifically. As we enter the winter season, I know you have highlighted a multitude of strategies to improve the winterization of the facility. Is there anything further that you have kind of gleaned or applied or added to the asset that could help again kind of continue the strength of operations that you have seen thus far and obviously, better temperatures? And as we kind of get into December, January and February, which are obviously challenging months, how are you going to further help to moderate any, I will call it, negative impacts around extreme colder temperatures? Thanks.
Brad Corson: I’ll let Simon kind of discuss that in more detail.
Simon Younger: I mean, I guess the key message there is, we again feel well-positioned going into this winter, based on the learnings that we had from the prior two winters ago, and then the successful application of those learnings and mitigations this past winter. There is not a huge amount new or different that we plan to do this year, although we do have, some additional equipment deployed. We have got an additional shovel in the mine that has stronger capability in the colder temperatures, and digging through the frozen ore. So I think that will be a help. We are we’re trialing, what’s known as grizzly bars on top of our crushers at one of the crushers to better handle the frozen lumps that come at us, during the winter months.
So there are a few things additional that we have got in our armory versus last winter, but by and large it’ll be a repeat dose of just applying all the learnings and the cold temperature protocols and the maintenance equipment preparedness that we applied last winter.
Brad Corson: And maybe just one reminder, after kind of experiencing those challenges and then applying the organization’s capability and kind of can-do mindset and putting some new procedures in place and other mitigations. The first quarter of this year was a record first quarter for the curl assets. So again, demonstrating that we had addressed those challenges and we’re back on track.
Operator: We’ll go next to Doug Leggett with Bank of America.
Unidentified Analyst: This is Clay on for Doug, so thanks again for taking the question. This one goes to the dividend, so maybe Brad or Dan, as we look at it by any measure, dividend coverage is very robust and you guys have hiked recently, but to be frank, if you hike, say 10% to 15% and do that for a while, we could be asking this question for quite a long time. So I guess why not take a bigger step towards right sizing that dividend coverage and at the same time close the gap versus your Canadian peers?
