Occidental Petroleum
Q2 2022 Earnings Call
Aug 03, 2022, 1:00 p.m. ET
Contents:
- Prepared Remarks
- Questions and Answers
- Call Participants
Prepared Remarks:
Operator
Good afternoon, and welcome to Occidental's second quarter 2022 earnings conference call. [Operator instructions] Please note, this event is being recorded. I would now like to turn the conference over to Jeff Alvarez, vice president of investor relations. Please go ahead.
Jeff Alvarez -- Vice President, Investor Relations
Thank you, Jason. Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for participating in Occidental's second quarter 2022 conference call. On the call with us today are Vicki Hollub, president and chief executive officer, Rob Peterson, senior vice president and chief financial officer, and Richard Jackson, president, operations, U.S. onshore resources and carbon management.
This afternoon, we will refer to slides available on the Investors section of our website. The presentation includes a cautionary statement on slide two regarding forward-looking statements that will be made on the call this afternoon. I'll now turn the call over to Vicki. Vicki, please go ahead.
Vicki Hollub -- President and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Jeff, and good morning or good afternoon, everyone. We achieved a significant milestone in the second quarter as we completed our near-term debt reduction goal and activated our share repurchase program. At the beginning of this year, we established a near-term goal of repaying an additional $5 billion of debt, before further increasing the amount of cash allocated to shareholder returns. The debt we completed in May brought the total debt repaid this year to over $8 billion, surpassing our target at a quicker pace than we had originally anticipated.
With our near-term debt reduction goal accomplished, we initiated our $3 billion share repurchase program in the second quarter and have already repurchased more than $1.1 billion of shares. The additional allocation of cash to shareholders marks a meaningful progression of our cash flow priorities as we have primarily allocated free cash flow to debt reduction over the last few years. Our efforts to improve the balance sheet remain ongoing, but our deleveraging process has reached a stage where our focus is expanding to go to additional cash flow priorities. This afternoon, I'll cover the next phase of our shareholder return framework and second quarter operational performance.
Rob will cover our financial results, as well as our updated guidance, which includes an increase in our full year guidance for OxyChem. Starting with our shareholder return framework. Our ability to consistently deliver outstanding operational results, combined with our focus to improve our balance sheet, have positioned us to increase the amount of capital returned to shareholders. Considering current commodity prices expectations, we expect to repurchase a total of $3 billion of shares and reduce gross debt to the high teens by the end of this year.