Vicki Hollub: I’d just like to build on what Ken was saying about the visionary vendors. What’s been very helpful for us is that, as we went through and interviewed the various vendors, and then selected those that we felt like were more visionary. We also found that these more visionary companies also were very committed to making this work, because what they realize and what’s important to them is to do something that benefits the world. And if you look at the CO2 going into the atmosphere today, it’s about 35 gigatons. And of that 35 gigatons going into the atmosphere, 8 comes from — and that’s 23% comes from transportation. And that’s what Richard was getting at earlier. It’s really hard to do anything to decarbonize transportation, unless it’s a sustainable aviation fluid, SAF, like he mentioned, which is not completely emission free or using our carbon reduction credits.
And when you look at 8 gigatons, that means thousands of these Direct Air Capture facilities must be built. And no matter what model you look at, that’s credible around, the globe with respect to climate transition and climate change, there’s no model that would show that you can cap global warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees without dealing with getting more CO2 out of the atmosphere, both for transport and just because there’s too much in the atmosphere today. So that makes this is a necessary technology and one that’s important, as I said, for the world. And it’s important to distinguish between the CO2 that goes into the atmosphere from power generation. Power generation can be addressed, by wind and solar to some degree, and, ultimately, fully, if we — if a low battery or some sort of, industrial battery can be designed and built to aid it.
But this Direct Air Capture is not a replacement for wind or solar. That’s for a totally different type of, CO2 emission. So with that, just, now, get on Neil to your second question.
Neil Mehta : The follow-up is just around 24 capital considerations. I will get it on the fourth quarter call, I recognize. But can you just talk about the bridge from ’23 to ’24? And last quarter, you annualized, it looks like, $6.4 billion of CapEx. Is it crazy to say that’s a good starting point? Any thoughts around that would be great.
Vicki Hollub: No, it wouldn’t be crazy to say that. I’d go back to what Rob said in his script, and that our upstream oil and gas, especially in the U.S., will have the same activity level next year that it’s had this year. In addition to that, we’ll have $100 million for incremental for a Battleground in 2024, and we’ll run those 2 drill ships in the Gulf of Mexico. So I think that gets you to where to that or above as you go in and total all of that, and we’ll have more guidance on that, hopefully, the first part of next year.
Operator: Next question will come from Paul Cheng with Scotiabank.
Paul Cheng: Two questions on — maybe this is for Richard. Have you seen any meaningful inflation rate in the construction side. And also that the higher interest rate impact your growth plan and the business model? That’s the first question.
Richard Jackson: Sure. I’m going to start, I’m assuming the inflation is oil and gas, but we need to go more broadly. We can help with that. I’d say a few things and maybe this goes back a little bit to the prior question as well. As we sort of hit the end of this year, a couple of things that we’ve been doing and seeing success is really optimizing our resources, so specifically rigs and frac. If you’ll kind of follow our trajectory over the last two quarters, we’re down 2 rigs in the 2 to 3Q and then down another 2. And that’s really allowed us to optimize with our contractors the right rigs, the right crews and seeing some early returns for that with quite a bit better foot per day in both the Rockies and the Delaware. I think as we hit the kind of the fourth quarter, we’re not ready to project anything into next year, but we are seeing some areas of improvement, I’d say across our rigs, also things like oil country tubular goods, sand, fuel.
These things are leading to a little bit of softening which we hope can play forward. But our focus really has been on that optimization on efficiency. So maybe I’ll stop there and make sure we answer that question.
Paul Cheng: Yes. And can we also expand not just on the oil and gas, but also to the low carbon business that we’re seeing the inflation rate are very different and it’s actually heating up? That looks like a lot of people moving in that direction. And also that the high-end vision, also want to look at is on the low carbon venture then how’s that impact on that business model? And that may as well ask my second question, which is, you have signed some deal with financial institute that’s buying the CDR. Can you share that what kind of term, you said offtake and you said fixed price and you said fixed price. What type of pricing that we may be referring to right now? Thank you.
Richard Jackson: Great. I think the way we’ll do this, maybe Ken can start a little bit on inflation as it relates to DAC. And then, certainly, I want to have Mike talk about the market and what we’re seeing with offtake. I think that’s an important part of our message.
Ken Dillon: Hi, it’s Ken. Yes, we did see increases in the STRATOS cost estimate, mainly related to general industry inflation, so not specifically because of the DAC. But we also increased cost as a result of incorporating learnings from the [CEIC]. And I would say it was probably 50-50 in terms of impacts of moderate inflation on DAC, and it’s just general industry inflation, steel prices, materials, etcetera. We’re now at the point of the project where we’re basically locked in pricing. So we feel pretty good, and the optimizations were designed to give us improved efficiency for the DAC long-term, included heat recovery systems, solid handling upgrades, filtration systems upgrades and electrical upgrades also. So, a number of things, not only inflation, I would say, and definitely not specific to DAC.
