Canadian Natural Resources (CNQ) Q2 2023 Earnings Call Transcript

For the period ending June 30, 2023

August 3, 2023 11:00 a.m. ET

Prepared Remarks

Questions and Answers

Call Participants

Prepared Remarks:

Operator

Good morning. We would like to welcome everyone to the Canadian Natural Resources’ 2023 Second Quarter Earnings Conference Call and Webcast. After the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session; instructions will be given at that time. Please note that this call is being recorded today, August 3, 2023 at 9:00 a.m. Mountain Time.

I would like to turn your meeting over to your host for today’s call, Lance Casson, Manager of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.

Lance Casson

Good morning, everyone. And thank you for joining Canadian Natural’s second quarter 2023 earnings conference call. As always, before we begin, I would like to remind you of our forward-looking statements, and it should be noted that in our reporting disclosures everything is in Canadian dollars, unless otherwise stated, and we report our reserves and production before royalties.

Additionally, I would suggest you review our comments on non-GAAP disclosures in our financial statements.

With me this morning and Tim McKay, our President; and Mark Stainthorpe, our Chief Financial Officer. Tim will first speak to how Canadian Natural is targeting strong production in the second half of 2023, following the completion of planned turnarounds and through our strategic growth plan. Additionally, he will touch on some highlights of our ESG achievements from our 2022 stewardship report to stakeholders that was released today, followed by specifics on our safe, reliable, and world-class operations. Mark will then summarize our financial results, our strong financial position, free capital generation, and significant returns to shareholders so far this year. To close, Tim will summarize our call prior to opening up the line for questions.

With that, I will turn it over to you, Tim.

Tim McKay

Good morning, everyone.

In the second quarter, we achieved quarterly production of approximately 1.19 million BOEs/d day, which included natural gas production at approximately 2.1 BCF per day with liquids production at approximately 847,000 barrels a day, both reflecting the operational impacts of the wildfires in Western Canada, third party pipeline outage, as well as planned turnaround activities in the quarter. The wildfires in Western Canada resulted in some assets being shut in at various times through the months of May and into July. There is no significant damage to our assets and essentially all the production impacted by the wildfires has now been restored, and we continue to actively monitor the situation. We’d like to thank our field personnel, their families, as well as first responders, emergency response agencies for their efforts over the past few months.