ConocoPhillips Q1 2022 Earnings Report

ConocoPhillips EPS Results

• Actual EPS: $3.27
• Consensus EPS: $3.24
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$0.03
• One Year Ago EPS: $0.69

ConocoPhillips Revenue Results

• Actual Revenue: $19.29 billion
• Expected Revenue: $18.36 billion
• Beat/Miss: Beat by +$929.66 million
• YoY Revenue Growth: +82.70%

ConocoPhillips Announcement Details

• Quarter: Q1 2022
• Date: 5/5/2022
• Time: Before Market Opens
• Conference Call Date: Thursday, May 5, 2022
• Conference Call Time: 10:34AM ET

ConocoPhillips (NYSE:COP) (NYSE: COP) is a Houston-based international energy company focused on exploration and production of oil and natural gas. Formed in 2002 through the merger of Conoco Inc. and Phillips Petroleum Company, the firm operates as an independent upstream company that explores for, develops and produces crude oil, natural gas and natural gas liquids across a portfolio of global assets.

The company’s activities span conventional and unconventional resources and include onshore and offshore operations in multiple regions around the world. ConocoPhillips produces and markets hydrocarbons to a broad set of customers and participates in field development, drilling, reservoir management and midstream arrangements necessary to bring production to market. In 2012 the company completed a major corporate reorganization that separated its downstream and midstream businesses into Phillips 66, enabling ConocoPhillips to concentrate on upstream operations.

ConocoPhillips serves markets in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and other regions through a mix of wholly owned and joint-venture assets. The company emphasizes portfolio management, operational efficiency and technology-driven reservoir development in its strategy. As of mid-2024, Ryan M. Lance serves as chairman and chief executive officer, leading the company’s focus on delivering production growth, managing capital allocation and addressing operational and environmental performance across its global asset base.

ConocoPhillips Q1 2022 Earnings Call Transcript

Key Takeaways

• Management highlighted the war in Ukraine’s disruption to supply chains and commodity volatility, emphasizing the stabilizing role of U.S. energy exports in supporting allies’ energy security.
• Q1 results featured record production of 1.747 MM boe/d, $7 billion in cash from operations, adjusted earnings of $3.27 per share, and a 15% ROCE (21% cash‐adjusted).
• The company increased its 2022 shareholder distributions by $2 billion to a $10 billion target, reaffirming its commitment to return at least 30% of CFO through buybacks and variable cash returns.
• Portfolio actions included integrating the Shell Permian assets, divesting Indonesian assets, acquiring an extra 10% of APLNG, and publishing a net-zero-by-2050 energy transition plan.
• Capex guidance was raised to $7.8 billion due to extra low-cost drilling and inflationary pressures, production guidance was adjusted to ~1.76 MM boe/d, and net debt reduction is on track for $5 billion by 2025.

Presentation

[Mark Keener, VP of Investor Relations at ConocoPhillips]

During the call, we'll make forward-looking statements based on current expectations. Of course, actual results may differ due to the factors described in today's release and our periodic SEC filings.

[Mark Keener, VP of Investor Relations at ConocoPhillips]

Finally, we'll also make reference to some non-GAAP financial measures today. Reconciliations to the nearest corresponding GAAP measure can be found in this morning's release and on our website.

[Mark Keener, VP of Investor Relations at ConocoPhillips]

With that, let me turn the call over to Ryan.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Thank you, Mark.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Before we get into the results for the quarter, I'd like to touch on a couple of other items that are top of mind for us.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

The first is the war in Ukraine. In a world already ravaged by the pandemic, this unprovoked invasion is having tragic consequences, as we all see in heartbreaking detail in the news every day. The bravery of the Ukrainian people is inspiring, and we pray for a peaceful resolution at the earliest possible moment.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

This deeply troubling war is also disrupting supply chains at a time of recovering global economic growth and energy demand. It is affecting every aspect of the global economy and impacting the energy security of our allies in Europe, and it's driving significant volatility in commodity prices.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

We are fortunate that the United States has abundant resources to ensure our own energy security.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

These resources also provide vital geopolitical benefits. Secure U.S. energy exports serve as a market-stabilizing factor, enabling our allies to better withstand energy blackmail by hostile and unreliable resources.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Like the rest of industry, we've quickly restored activity levels from the lows driven by the pandemic-related energy price collapse, despite lingering service and supply chain shortages, infrastructure permitting delays, and lag time required for workforce and equipment redeployment.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

As a result, total U.S. oil and gas production is growing meaningfully despite these headwinds. ConocoPhillips will continue to do our part as we fulfill our triple mandate of reliably and responsibly meeting energy transition demand, delivering competitive returns on and of capital, and achieving our net-zero ambition.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Now, the other topic I'd like to touch on are the leadership changes we announced a couple of days ago.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

I suspect you all saw the release on Monday, but for those who might have missed it, Tim will be transitioning from leading our Lower 48 business, which he's done incredibly well since we combined companies a little over a year ago, to serving in an advisory role to myself and the entire leadership team. Tim has truly been an industry visionary, founding Concho almost 20 years ago and growing it into one of the Permian's largest and best-run companies before joining ConocoPhillips.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

He's also been instrumental in driving value realization as we've integrated the assets into the company. I'm appreciative that we'll continue to benefit from Tim's significant experience and strategic relationships in this new capacity, and of course, as a member of our board.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

I'm also very pleased to welcome Jack Harper, who most of you know, to our leadership team as Executive Vice President of our Lower Forty-eight business. Jack is an experienced, proven leader who will help ensure that our Lower Forty-eight business fulfills its key role in delivering on our triple mandate. Reflecting now on the quarter, once again, we've made significant progress working on all levers across the company. We efficiently and safely delivered our capital scope globally and successfully integrated the Shell Permian assets.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

We also took important steps to further strengthen our balance sheet and continued to upgrade our portfolio with the sale of our mature Indonesian business and the acquisition of an additional 10% stake in our long-life, high-quality APLNG business. We're running well and with very strong financial performance. Now, building on two very successful Permian transactions, we have truly transformed ConocoPhillips.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

We're a premier E&P company with a large, low cost of supply, low GHG intensity resource base, returns-focused strategy, and a balance sheet strength to thrive through the price cycles of the evolving energy transition. In underscoring this last point, we also recently published our plan for our net-zero energy transition, which is available on our website.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

I'm going to let Bill cover the Q1 results, but before turning the call over to him, on the topic of returns, I want to highlight the fact that for the second consecutive quarter, we've again increased our targeted 2022 shareholder distributions, this time with an incremental $2 billion or 25% increase to be distributed through the blend of share repurchases and additional variable cash return.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

We continue to make significant strides in all elements of our triple mandate.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

As you know, we have now a 5+ year track record of returning well over 30% of our CFO to our shareholders. The increased $10 billion target for 2022 further demonstrates our commitment to return significant value to investors through the price cycles.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Now let me turn the call over to Bill, and he'll cover the results for the quarter, starting with our returns on capital.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

Picking up where Ryan left off, we generated a return on capital employed of 19% on a trailing twelve-month basis. That's 21% on a cash-adjusted basis. We understand and appreciate that return on capital matter to our investors, and we are fully focused on delivering to our shareholders. In the Q1 of 2022, we generated $3.27 per share in adjusted earnings.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

That's driven by strong realized prices and production of 1,747,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, a record level of production since we became an independent E&P 10 years ago.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

It's bolstered by our two highly accretive permanent acquisitions over the past 18 months. Lower 48 production averaged 967,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day for the quarter, including 640,000 from the Permian, 208 from Eagle Ford, and 97 from the Bakken. Operations across the rest of our global portfolio also ran well, allowing us to generate $7 billion in cash from operations, excluding working capital in the quarter.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

We also continue to enhance our low cost of supply, low greenhouse gas intensity portfolio, closing on both the sale of our Indonesian assets and the acquisition of an additional 10% of APLNG, taking our ownership there to 47.5%. Both of these transactions enhance our overall margins going forward.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

Illustrating this point, we realized roughly $500 million in cash distributions from APLNG in the Q1, and we've already received $400 million so far in the Q2. While the full-year distributions will continue to depend on prices going forward, if you assume Brent averages $100 per barrel for the year, we would expect roughly $2.3 billion of total distributions from APLNG in 2022.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

Turning back to focus on the Q1. In addition to the $7 billion in CFO, we generated $1.4 billion from the sale of our remaining 93 million shares of Cenovus. This $1.4 billion fully refunded the share repurchases of our $2.3 billion total returns to shareholders in the quarter.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

We also made significant strides toward our $5 billion debt reduction target, executing a successful refinancing through which we reduced our total debt by $1.2 billion. We decreased our annual interest expense by about $100 million and extended our overall debt maturity by three years. Also, in April, we called our $1.3 billion note, which was due in 2026.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

We'll have achieved approximately half of our $5 billion debt reduction target by the end of May. With the progress we've made in the first two quarters of this year and our remaining natural maturities, we'll reduce our debt by $3.3 billion this year. We are now positioned to meet our overall $5 billion reduction target in 2025. That's one year earlier than our prior projections.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

As you will have noted, we also invested roughly $1.8 billion back into the business in the Q2 of the year. While this is ratable with the $7.2 billion full-year capital estimate we provided last December, we're increasing our guidance to $7.8 billion. About half of the increase is due to additional low cost of supply drilling and completion activity in some of our partner-operated areas in the Lower 48.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

The rest is modestly higher inflation, as we believe supply chain constraints will be prolonged as a result of the ongoing conflict in the Ukraine. From a production standpoint, we've adjusted our full-year target from an approximate 1.8 million barrels of oil equivalent per day to roughly 1.76 million per day.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

That's reflecting the net impact of closed A&D activity through this point in the year, as well as some expected impacts from weather and well timing. We've had a strong quarter to open the year.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

We've returned $2.3 billion to our shareholders and ended the quarter with $7.5 billion of cash and short-term investments. We further enhanced our low cost of supply portfolio, and we strengthened our balance sheet. Of course, our operations around the globe are well-positioned to deliver on our commitments through the rest of this year and through the energy transition that's ahead of us. With that, let's go to Q&A.

[Operator]

Thank you. We will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you have a question, please press zero one using your touchtone phone. If you wish to cancel your request, please press zero two.

[Operator]

If you are using a speakerphone, you may need to pick up the handset first before pressing the numbers. Once again, if you have a question, please press zero one using your touchtone phone. We have a question from Jeanine Wai from Barclays. Please go ahead.

[Jeanine Wai, Senior Research Analyst at Barclays]

Hi. Good morning. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for taking our questions.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Good morning, Jeanine.

[Jeanine Wai, Senior Research Analyst at Barclays]

Good morning, Ryan. Our first question maybe to you is, we know you're committed to returning at least 30% of cash flow every year in, year out. Can you talk about how you decided on the new $10 billion level for the total return this year?

[Jeanine Wai, Senior Research Analyst at Barclays]

I guess, just assuming strip prices, that equals to 35% of at least our forecasted cash flow, and that's below the 2021 level of 38%, and it's below the 5-year average prior to that. We know cash balances look very, very strong and they're growing throughout the year, and that'll probably be supplemented by some divestiture proceeds as well.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Yeah. Thanks, Jeanine. No, we look at this quarterly review with the board quarterly. We take an informed view of what we think the macro and the outlook for commodity prices is going to be for the rest of the year.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

I'd say we're, you know, we moved to $10 billion because we certainly felt like commodity price outlook is going to be probably above $90 a barrel and depending on where things end for the year and that support is going from $8-$10 billion. Again, that's anchored in our commitment to return at least 30% of our cash flow back to our shareholders.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

As you noted correctly, over the last, you know, 4-5 years, we've delivered even more of that and prepared to do that should the markets support that as we go forward.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

The other thing I can say is you can see that, cash is rebuilding on the balance sheet a little bit, as a result of the, you know, the check we wrote at the end of the year. We have a desire, we want to put some more cash on the balance sheet to do that. At the same time, we want to keep funding our stable capital program.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

As we looked at it, we certainly thought we could afford to move into $10 billion, and that's supported by even if prices were to fall below $90 for whatever reason, or if they continue to stay strong, investors should expect, calculate our cash flow, and you should expect to get a minimum of 30% of that back as we go through the year.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

That's been our commitment for many, many years now, and we're just living up to that commitment via these strong prices we see in the market.

[Jeanine Wai, Senior Research Analyst at Barclays]

Okay, great. Thank you for that color. Our follow-up question is, maybe moving to natural gas. Conoco, you're in a unique position among your E&P peers in that you've got a lot of scale, and also the location of your resource base, especially what you have in the Permian with your really strong marketing and takeaway position there.

[Jeanine Wai, Senior Research Analyst at Barclays]

Maybe can you discuss how your view of Conoco's role in both the U.S. natural gas market and on a global scale, how that's really changed over the past six months or so? Perhaps any color you might have on your opportunity set as it relates to that would be really interesting. Thank you.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Thanks, Jeanine. I guess, long term, you know, today we're about 30% of our portfolio is natural gas. If you look at our global position, a lot of that here domestically in the US and then globally with our LNG exposure.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

We're pretty big fans of LNG. We think the Asian market and the European market, obviously, as a result of this invasion of Ukraine has bolstered sort of the international gas side of it, which is why you see us doing things like, you know, competing for another train in Qatar and why we we preempted on our APLNG interest in Australia. We understand LNG, and we'd like to get into that full value chain of that LNG. Here domestically in the US, we have a large gas position as well.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

The beauty of our cost of supply model is it's a bit indifferent to gas and oil, but we are asking ourselves, has there been a disconnect on the gas side? What should we be interested in?

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Certainly, LNG from the U.S. to Europe or other places is something of interest as long as we can be in that full value chain. We're not necessarily interested in just being in the liquefaction tolling business, but if we can get exposed to that full value chain, that's something that we would be interested in looking at, given the nature of the gas business that's out there today.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Neil Mehta from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

[Neil Mehta, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

Good morning, team. The first question is around the capital guidance moving from $7.2 to $7.7.

[Neil Mehta, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

I think this was well telegraphed, and certainly we're in an inflationary environment.

[Neil Mehta, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

Would love your perspective on the components of some of those moving pieces. As we get an early thought into 2023 and normalized spending levels, how much of this does carry forward?

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Yeah. Neil, I think what Bill tried to describe in the call transcript a little bit was, you know, we've upped our capital from $7.2 to $7.8, and roughly half of that is extra activity that's ongoing across our lower 48 by other operators. These are good opportunities that are low-cost supply, very competitive in the portfolio, and we certainly don't want to be drilled out of any opportunities.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

We are funding those kinds of opportunities as we go along. The other half is inflation-driven. I would take you back to, you know, we set our budget at the end of last year in December.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

We talked about it in our q4 call where, you know, our view of the world at the time was, you know, coming out of the pandemic. We thought we were seeing some elevated inflation rates primarily in the Permian, but the rest of the portfolio, we didn't see as much impact. We were thinking in the order of mid-single-digit% kind of inflation rates across the whole global portfolio.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

We also thought at the time that that would abate itself in the last half of the year as supply chains got renormalized coming out of the COVID pandemic.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Certainly after the Ukrainian invasion, we're seeing now inflationary forces across the entire global portfolio with certain hotspots clearly still in the Permian and on certain categories of spend like, you know, labor and rigs, steel, pipes, chemicals, and some of the key categories of spend that our industry, you know, relies upon. I guess whether it mitigates as we go into 2023 is really a question of, you know, when does all this turmoil that's going on around the world start to re-normalize and get back a little bit.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

At this point in time, it's hard to say that that's going to re-normalize anytime soon. I think it's here with us for a while. I don't think it's transitory and we're going to have to deal with it.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

The last thing I would say is we could have chose to cut scope. We could have cut our operated scope in order to try to manage to a number. Given the current macro environment, that didn't make sense to us. That's why we have raised our capital guidance for the year to $7.8 billion.

[Neil Mehta, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

Makes a lot of sense, Ryan. That's the follow-up. It's on Russia and the Ukraine war. How does this structurally change the way that you think about the company and the oil and gas industry?

[Neil Mehta, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs]

There are a couple components to that question. Does it make it more likely that the market is going to be more accepting of sanctioning of long lead time projects, whether in Alaska or elsewhere? Does this change where you ultimately want toinvest?

[Tim Leach, Advisor to the CEO at ConocoPhillips]

How can you talk real time about what you're seeing in terms of Russia volumes as you guys follow the oil macro really closely and how you see that playing out in the back half of the year, recognizing you don't have frontline operations, but you follow the situation very closely?

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Yeah, I think we all are, you know, trying to figure it all out. I think, you know, we've seen sort of an immediate 1 million barrels a day of Russian crude off the market. Our expectation at this juncture is we're expecting probably 2-3 million barrels a day of Russian crude. With all the conversations going on in Europe right now to stop both products and oil imports into Europe, we're expecting that 2-3 million barrels a day being taken off the market.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

That's going to be tough for the supply to ratchet up. We think about that's happening on the supply side. While on the demand side, there's a little bit of uncertainty with what's going on in China and another COVID.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Our view of the demand side is we'll probably average close to 100 million barrels a day this year, which is kind of that pre-pandemic demand level, but we see growth in demand coming. Now that could get slowed if another wave of COVID impacts the whole world. We don't see that as part of our base case, so we see demand continuing to grow over the next couple of years.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

It'll be tough if we take 2-3 million barrels a day of additional Russian supply off the market, it'll be tough for supply to keep up in the short and medium term. It does have an impact as we think about the need for medium and longer cycle projects, the need for a call on more U.S. growth, which I think is coming this year.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

We think probably 1 million barrels a day and something similar next year. I think it does kind of change the view angle on medium and longer cycle projects long term because of the underinvestment in the industry with the demand growth continuing and supply being challenged to keep up with that. What that means back for the company is, you know, we're spending a lot of time, you know, rethinking a longer term or medium and longer term macro, what the energy transition has in store and how quickly that might start to abate demand.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

I think the immediate manifestation is, you know, what is your view of mid-cycle pricing over the short, medium and longer term right now?

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

While I don't think that impacts our capital allocation scheme and our cost of supply methodology and how we think about allocating capital, it does maybe at the broader level when you think about how much you have available for distributions and then what channels should you be distributing that capital to. We have a three-tiered system, as you're aware of our ordinary, we like to ratably buy shares through the cycles, and then we introduced our third tier, the cash return VROC, to supplement that in these times when prices are well in excess of what we think a mid-cycle might be.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Phil Gresh from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.

[Phil Gresh, Senior Equity Research Analyst at J.P. Morgan]

Yes. Hi. My first question is just on the Permian. In the Q1, the quarter-over-quarter increase in production looked to have been below the amount of the acquired volumes from Shell.

[Phil Gresh, Senior Equity Research Analyst at J.P. Morgan]

I recognize you know there's quarter-to-quarter variability, but I was just wondering if you could talk about some of those moving pieces, but also, you know, more importantly, just how you're thinking about that cadence of activity for the rest of the year, given what you were talking about around non-op activity and other factors.

[Tim Leach, Advisor to the CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Yeah, Phil, this is Tim. I'll take that one. You know, we've been really pleased. Let me first say I'm really pleased with the way the team has integrated the Shell assets into our overall company and activity.

[Tim Leach, Advisor to the CEO at ConocoPhillips]

They've done a great job. It's been a safe combination, and we have just now begun bringing wells online with our vendors and our style of completion and things like that. If you look at the pace of activity in the Lower 48, we were going to bring on 500 completed wells throughout the year. I think we brought on 90 in the Q1.

[Tim Leach, Advisor to the CEO at ConocoPhillips]

You know, it's always been back-end loaded and, you know, building on a ramp of, you know, we closed the quarter with 22 drilling rigs in the Lower 48 and 8 frac spreads. We planned, when we rolled out our 10-year plan and guidance, you know, we were going to build that over the next 10 years, and we're still on track to deliver all that type of activity. That's the plan we're on.

[Tim Leach, Advisor to the CEO at ConocoPhillips]

That's what Ryan described as not cutting our capital back, but trying to run a steady ship and get the most efficiency out of it. If you look at the ramp in activity throughout the year, that's true across our asset base, especially true in the Permian.

[Tim Leach, Advisor to the CEO at ConocoPhillips]

You know, 500 completed wells brought on throughout the entire year, but 90 in the Q1, so it's going to build and be back-end loaded.

[Phil Gresh, Senior Equity Research Analyst at J.P. Morgan]

Question I think would be for Bill. Clearly, significant reductions in net debt in the Q1. You talked about the pay down of the gross debt and the targets you have there.

[Phil Gresh, Senior Equity Research Analyst at J.P. Morgan]

I'm curious how you think about the right levels of net debt or cash that you're holding, 'cause I think you also have, what, $2 billion-$3 billion of asset sales still coming here. It just seems like you even with the $10 billion return of capital, there's a lot of cash building up. Any additional color there?

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

Yeah, sure, Phil. I think that you can see it manifesting itself in the rebuild of our balance sheet with our cash growing to $7.5 billion. I think we're pretty happy right now with our pace in terms of debt reduction and how the program's set up. We've got our glide path set up for the next five years. I think you can look at just the natural maturities as we go through time.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

I think we've been pretty opportunistic in the market to set that up and are quite happy with where that's at. I think as you rightly noted, we continue to build up cash on the balance sheet. We're looking forward to some asset dispositions here later part of this year, and that's going to be going to generating cash.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Doug Leggate from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

[Doug Leggate, Managing Director at Bank of America]

Thanks. Good morning, everybody. May I first say, Tim, it sounds like we're going to hear a little less from you in the future, and whatever you do next, I just want to say good luck. It's been great getting to know you over the last 10 years. So with that, I have 2 questions, if I may. My first one is probably for Bill, and I just wondered if you could give us an update, Bill.

[Doug Leggate, Managing Director at Bank of America]

With all the changes, given the Shell acquisition and obviously Concho, what is your current deferred tax position in the U.S.? When do you expect to see full cash taxes there? My second question, if I may, is a big picture question for Ryan. Ryan, there's been 2 things came out, I guess, climate related recently.

[Doug Leggate, Managing Director at Bank of America]

One is the proposal from the SEC on climate disclosure, and the second is the API's suggestion of a carbon tax. I'm just wondering if you could offer Conoco's perspective on those issues, please. Thank you.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Great. Yeah, I'll let Bill talk about the cash tax, and then I can address the last part. I would say Tim's not leaving us, Doug. We look forward to his continued involvement in all the key decisions in the company, so. Let me turn it back to Bill first.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

Yeah, sure, Doug. Assuming that current pricing continues, we would expect to be moving into U.S. tax paying position this year with payments beginning quarterly starting this quarter, in the Q2. Of course, the amounts and timing are going to vary depending on pricing and other market conditions, but we do expect to return to a cash tax paying position this year and starting to make estimated payments in this quarter.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

With respect to your last part, Doug, certainly we're all kind of reviewing in quite a bit of detail what the current climate suggestions that have come out of the SEC and their rulemaking process.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

We'll be commenting on that as part of industry as well. They're a bit problematic. I mean, we've said all along we're supportive of doing everything a company can do on Scope 1 and Scope 2 reductions as a company. We came out with our ambition to be Paris-aligned and net-zero by 2050 with respect to the emissions that we produce as a company. All companies ought to have a Paris-aligned climate risk strategy in order to address that, to deal with the emissions they create.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

I guess the problematic piece has always been the Scope 3 because of the double counting, because of who's responsible for that. Should you hold a company like ConocoPhillips responsible for a consumer's decision to buy, you know, a pickup truck versus a Toyota Prius. I think those are things in the Scope 3 side of things that we think are problematic if you report them.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

They change, they're subject to double counting, and they have a lot of problems associated with how you might actually report against those. Certainly in an SEC sort of document that has to be included in your 10-Qs or your 10-Ks. It's we think quite problematic.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Which is why for quite a while as a company, we've been supportive of, if you want to impact the demand side of the equation, you need to do something like a carbon tax. We've been a part of API and a part of that decision process within our industry association to say, you know, that the best way to deal with this on the demand side is to have a carbon tax.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

We were a founding member of the Climate Leadership Council with, you know, the dividend to offset the regressive nature of a tax. You know, consumers can make choices and decisions around the kinds of services and goods that they supply and understand what the carbon impact of that might be.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

We understand that that's a political hill to climb, and it's tough, but it makes more sense to us than trying to regulate your way to a solution that the markets work and price carbon into the market. Which is why we've been supportive of that as a better way to deal with the energy transition.

[Doug Leggate, Managing Director at Bank of America]

You've been leaders on this topic, Ryan, so I appreciate the answers. Thank you.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Thanks, Doug.

[Operator]

Thank you. The next question comes from Paul Cheng from Scotiabank. Please go ahead.

[Paul Cheng, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Scotiabank]

Hey, guys. Good morning.

[Paul Cheng, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Scotiabank]

2 questions. I think it's actually really short. First one, I want to go back into the cash tax. Bill, from an accounting standpoint, do you estimate the full year cash tax rate and then apply throughout the year in each quarter until the full year estimate has been changed or each quarter that's being estimated? That's the first question.

[Paul Cheng, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Scotiabank]

The second question, I think it's for Tim. Also real quick, what is the Q1 weather impact on your production by region or by the different play? And also that what's the Q2. Weather impact in Bakken that we see so far? Thank you.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

Yeah, sure, Paul. For a U.S. cash tax-paying position, we estimate our annual taxes on a yearly basis, and then we pay quarterly on estimated taxes. As I indicated, we expect to start making those quarterly payments in the Q2 of this year.

[Tim Leach, Advisor to the CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Yeah, Paul, on the weather question, we had weather impact in all our major basins in the Q1. It was. I'm really proud of how the team responded to that. We got things back on fairly quickly. I would say the weather impact, while it affected almost all of our production, it was rather nominal, and we were able to overcome that.

[Tim Leach, Advisor to the CEO at ConocoPhillips]

As the second part of your question about up in the Bakken, I think you know, everybody's aware that it's probably the most severe winter in recorded history up in North Dakota, and we're still assessing the amount of time it's going to take to bring that back up to full production. I think the assessment's still going on there.

[Paul Cheng, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Scotiabank]

All right. Thank you.

[Nick Olds, EVP, Lower 48 and Global HSE at ConocoPhillips]

Hey, Paul, this is Nick Olds. To add on to what Tim was saying related to turnaround impacts for Q2 and Q3. Q2, we've got a fairly large turnaround activity both in Norway, non-operated and operated, as well as Surmont. That'll average about 35,000 barrels a day for Q2. Then we have less activity in Q3, that's focused on Alaska, Train 2, APLNG, and then Montney and Canada. That'll be 15,000 for Q3. 35,000 Q2, 15,000 for Q3.

[Paul Cheng, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Scotiabank]

That's great. Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from John Freeman from Raymond James.

[John Freeman, Senior Research Analyst at Raymond James]

First question, Ryan, when you were talking about, you know, just given everything that's happened in the, in the market, how you have to constantly kind of be, you know, evaluating the sort of the ten-year sort of macro and energy transition, demand impact, you know, your view on mid-cycle pricing. One of the things that you mentioned that I was hoping you'd maybe expand a little bit on, as you said, maybe it would possibly change the view of how you think about kind of short cycle versus long cycle production.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Yeah. John, I just tried to make the point that I think the transition is not going to be a cliff transition. It's going to be a drawn out one. The pace of that, the slope of that curve is pretty unknown.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

The way you react to that is have the lowest cost of supply barrels that you can supply, whatever that transition demand is going to look like, and make sure that they're giving, you know, an adequate and competitive return. I think we're well set up to go do that. The point I was making is that, you know, the

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

In all these scenarios, even some of the IEA scenarios that they look at, and we monitor 4 or 5 different scenarios internally to the company, most of those suggest that there's going to be a need for oil and gas long past 2050. We have to supply that sustainably. We have to supply that with a low GHG intensity going to net zero by 2050, but we also have to supply low cost of barrels.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

When you look at that, it's going to be around a long time. Sure, medium and longer cycle projects are going to be needed in this industry. We just have to assure ourselves that they're competitive on a cost of supply basis and that they have a competitive GHG intensity as well. Projects like Willow and Alaska fit that mode.

[Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO at ConocoPhillips]

They're well under a $40 cost of supply. They're less than 10 kilogram per barrel of CO2 intensity. They're, they fit well within what the world's going to need in order to ratably and reliably supply the energy to a growing world where energy demand is going to be increasing over time. We have to figure out how to do that more sustainably.

[John Freeman, Senior Research Analyst at Raymond James]

Thanks for that. My follow-up question for Tim and Jack, I know on the Shell assets, y'all stated in the past that the biggest opportunity there is the transitioning from the 1-mile to 2-mile laterals. You know, to accomplish that, it's going to require, you know, pouring up a lot of that acreage with some of the partners. Just kind of, you know, wanted an update sort of how that's progressing.

[John Freeman, Senior Research Analyst at Raymond James]

Then if all sort of goes according to plan, kind of what would be a reasonable, you know, amount of that acreage, you know, that could be done with 2-mile plus laterals?

[Tim Leach, Advisor to the CEO at ConocoPhillips]

Yeah. Thank you, John. We're, you know, these trades and swaps are a core competency of the team, so we're continuing that. We've seen good opportunity there. It's starting to manifest itself in some longer lateral, both on the operated and the non-op, on the Shell assets, and I expect that to continue.

[Operator]

Thank you. Our next question comes from Leo Mariani from KeyBanc. Please go ahead.

[Leo Mariani, Senior Energy Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Guys, wanted to follow up a little bit on some of your comments around LNG here. Really what I'm just trying to get a sense of is, you know, do y'all at Conoco, through your kind of extensive, you know, global marketing footprint, think, you know, can the U.S. really do anything in the next couple years, say 2023 and 2024, to add any incremental LNG to export capacity at this point in time? Or are those adds more kinda mid-decade and beyond? Just trying to get a sense of, you know, whether or not there can be more material connectivity between, you know, Europe and Asia and the U.S. in the next few years.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

Yeah, sure, Leo. This is Bill. I think that if you look at LNG export capacity today, it's running a little over 12 BCF a day. The U.S. export terminals are running effectively at capacity or slightly above nameplate.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

I think that you've got several folks who are out in the market who are looking at taking FID, but there's a practical reality that once you take FID, it's several years to build these terminals. I think if you're looking at impact in terms of immediate term or mid-decade, I'd say it's closer towards mid-decade before you start seeing these new import or these new export facilities online.

[Leo Mariani, Senior Energy Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets]

Okay. That's helpful for sure. Just wanted to ask a brief question on your Canadian production, I guess primarily in the Montney here. As I'm kinda, you know, looking at your conventional non-oil sands volumes, looks like they've kinda been dropping, you know, for the last four quarters, you know, based on the data y'all provide. You know, do you expect those volumes to start growing at some point, maybe in the back half of the year or 2023? What can you kinda tell us about the trajectory of the Montney there?

[Nick Olds, EVP, Lower 48 and Global HSE at ConocoPhillips]

Yeah, Leo, this is Nick. One of the factors that we have to look back at is we took a fairly large capital pause, obviously, in 2020, and then we're in maintenance mode in 2021.

[Nick Olds, EVP, Lower 48 and Global HSE at ConocoPhillips]

We didn't have any rigs or frac crews. We've restarted that program earlier this year. We started fracking the wells. That's pad 4, and then we're also drilling pad 5 and pad 6.

[Nick Olds, EVP, Lower 48 and Global HSE at ConocoPhillips]

That drop that you're seeing over the last 4 quarters is really just lack of work that we're doing up in Montney. We've started back drilling both, like I said, pad 5, pad 6. We'll see some of that production come on stream in Q3 and Q4.

[Nick Olds, EVP, Lower 48 and Global HSE at ConocoPhillips]

Another thing, Leo, that we're doing is we're working on our CPF-2 facility expansion.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

That's where we're adding both gas handling, our condensate recovery, and then water handling. We're about 30% complete on that, and that's on schedule, and that'll come on stream in 2023 as well.

[Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO at ConocoPhillips]

The condensate recovery unit will allow us to really monetize on that Kelt acreage that we picked up a few years ago.

[Operator]

Thank you. We have reached the allotted time we have for questions.

[Operator]

I would now like to turn the call back to Mark Keener for final remarks.

[Mark Keener, VP of Investor Relations at ConocoPhillips]

Thank you, Hilda, and thanks to all who took part in today's call.

[Mark Keener, VP of Investor Relations at ConocoPhillips]

With that, I'll wrap it up with you, Hilda. Any closing comments? Thank you.

[Operator]

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, this concludes today's conference.

[Operator]

We thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Participants

Executives

• Bill Bullock, EVP and CFO
• Mark Keener, VP of Investor Relations
• Nick Olds, EVP, Lower 48 and Global HSE
• Ryan Lance, Chairman and CEO
• Tim Leach, Advisor to the CEO

Analysts

• Doug Leggate, Managing Director at Bank of America
• Jeanine Wai, Senior Research Analyst at Barclays
• John Freeman, Senior Research Analyst at Raymond James
• Leo Mariani, Senior Energy Analyst at KeyBanc Capital Markets
• Neil Mehta, Managing Director at Goldman Sachs
• Paul Cheng, Managing Director and Senior Equity Analyst at Scotiabank
• Phil Gresh, Senior Equity Research Analyst at J.P. Morgan