Good morning. We would like to Welcome Everyone to the Canadian Natural Resources Limited 2022 Budget Conference Call. Presentation slides for this conference call are available to view with the webcast and in PDF format at cnrl.com. 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, January 11, 2022 at 9 A.M. Mountain Time. I would now like to turn the meeting over to your host for today's call, Corey Bieber, Executive Advisor. Please go ahead, Mr. Bieber. Thank you, operator, and good morning, everyone, and Welcome to Canadian Natural's 2022 Budget Conference Call. To facilitate today's call, you'll find a copy of our presentation slides on our website, along with our announced 2022 budget. As noted in mid-December, release of the 2022 budget was deferred to today to properly incorporate the impacts and synergies of the Storm Resources acquisition, which closed on December 17, 2021. Before we kick off, I'd like to remind you of our forward-looking statements and our reporting disclosures. Of note in our reporting disclosures is that everything will be in Canadian dollars unless otherwise stated, and as well, we report our reserves in production before royalties. I would also suggest you review our comments on non-GAAP disclosures. The theme you should come away with today is that Canadian Natural is a different kind of oil and gas company. Our asset base is unique among our peer group, underpinned by long life, low decline assets, and complemented by our conventional assets that allow significant flexibility, all of which can generate significant free cash flow. Beyond our robust asset base, there is a corporate strategy that focuses on generating real returns for shareholders and a driven management team and corporate culture that focuses on being effective and efficient. With all of the economic volatility and disruption experienced by the industry the last few years, Canadian Natural has outperformed peers and clearly demonstrated its robustness, sustainability, and the strength of its business plan. For 2022 and beyond, we'll demonstrate why we are one of the few companies capable of delivering meaningful economic growth, increasing returns to shareholders, and managing debt in a responsible manner. For today's call, Tim McKay, our President, will first recap our strategy, competitive advantages, and commitment to ESG goals. He'll then provide greater detail to our 2022 capital budget and operational outlook. Mark Stainthorpe, our Chief Financial Officer, will then provide an update on our 2022 financial outlook as well as our strong financial position. Tim will then provide a summary prior to opening for questions. With that, I'll turn it over to you, Tim. Thank you, Corey. Good morning, everyone. Canadian Natural has a proven effective strategy, and as a result, sustainable free cash flow through all the commodity cycles, ensuring we can deliver to our shareholders. Canadian Natural strategy includes flexible and effective capital allocation and our ability to be nimble to capture opportunities. Our strategy is simply to optimize capital allocation to maximize value for our shareholders, while ensuring we are maintaining a strong balance sheet. We have a defined growth and value enhancement plan for every product and basin we operate in. This is driven by our effective and efficient operations, our area of knowledge, ownership, and operation of infrastructure. We have a history of capital discipline, operational excellence, and we have robust, long life, low decline assets and low maintenance capital relative to our... Most of our peers, and ability to grow production, all of which results in more long-term value for our shareholders. Opportunistic acquisitions have always been a part of our strategy. However, we have no gaps in our portfolio, and acquisitions need to make sense and add long-term value. We have a culture of continuous improvement, leveraging technology and innovation throughout the company, which gives us leading environmental, social, and governance results. It is for these reasons Canadian Natural has a leading free cash flow profile. I'll now talk to the advantage of our assets. Slide seven. Canadian Natural assets are unique in that we have low maintenance capital and low operating costs. Volatile pricing has little impact on our NPV, as we have a low break-even, large reserves, making our free cash flow robust and sustainable. We can grow our production cost-effectively during periods of price certainty. During low price periods, we can manage capital spending, and it has little impact on the company's production. In a low-price year, due to the short reserve life of unconventional producers, they will sell a substantial portion of their reserves at low prices. Unlike oil sands, a small percentage of our long-life reserves are produced in low price years. Slide eight. For example, in 2020, low price cycle, WTI averaged approximately CAD 39 per barrel. With our low operating costs and maintenance capital, ability to manage capital spending, we generated leading free cash flow. We had 6% production growth, maintained our debt levels, and increased our dividend 13%, while many of our peers cut their dividends. Clearly, a Canadian Natural advantage versus our peers. As we moved into 2021, Slide nine, WTI prices improved to approximately $68 US per barrel. With our low maintenance capital, operating costs, and a disciplined capital profile, we grew our production 6%. Quickly implemented our free cash flow policy as we were generating significant free cash flow and reduced our year-end debt to under CAD 15 billion. Returns to shareholders was significant. Dividend increased 38%. Share repurchases of CAD 1.6 billion. Canadian Natural advantages that are effective and efficient operations, high quality lands, and long life low decline assets delivers to our shareholders in all the cycles. Slide 10. Canadian Natural has a balanced and diverse product mix, with approximately 61% is high value crude oil, SCO, and NGL on a BOE basis, limiting our exposure to one product. For liquids production, approximately 78% is from long life, low decline assets, which are sustainable through volatile prices as they require less maintenance capital. As well, we have approximately 2 Bcf of natural gas production, or 26% of our BOE, which is well-positioned to capture more value. Canadian Natural's 1P reserves, slide 11, are one of the highest among our peers, showing the strength and depth of our assets with approximately a 30-year reserve life index, of which 61% represent long life, no decline SCO reserves that have a lower execution risk and no differential risk. Slide 12. As a result of our unique asset base, Canadian Natural corporate decline is low at approximately 10% and approximately 58% of our production being long life, low decline, or zero decline production, requiring less maintenance capital to maintain production. Slide 13. As you can see on this chart, we have one of the lowest maintenance capitals, giving us an advantage over many peers. Moving to slide 14. Our area knowledge, extensive operated known infrastructure, and teams that are driven to deliver top-tier effective, efficient operation give us margin growth opportunities. They are focused on production optimization, technology and innovation, as well as using our economies of scale to deliver effective and efficient operations. Slide 15. Canadian Natural takes a long-term view on ESG. We are continuously improving our performance each and every year. Our GHG intensity has decreased 18% and methane emissions reduced 28% from 2016 levels. We are one of the largest owners of carbon capture and storage. We have expertise in multiple projects in our portfolio, Horizon, Quest, and NWR. As well, in 2020, we achieved four of our environmental goals in GHG intensity, methane, fresh water intensity reductions in both thermal and oil sands mining. Moving to slide 16. Last year, we introduced new targets for our company as we worked to reduce our methane emissions by 50% by 2030 from our 2016 baseline, further reduce fresh water intensity by 40% in both thermal and oil sands mining operations by 2026 from our 2017 baseline. On slide 17, on a corporate basis since 2012, we have continued to drive our GHG intensity down an impressive 32%, equivalent to removing 1.9 million cars off the road annually. In a Rystad report, slide 18, a third party reviewed oil sands emissions and determined that for scope one emissions, Canadian Natural was 35% lower than our peer average. A good result for our company. However, we know we have to still continue to drive our CO2 intensity down. Canadian Natural is using state-of-the-art carbon reduction technologies and is a leader in carbon capture and sequestration in the oil and gas industry in the world. We have three major facilities capturing 2.7 million tons of CO2 per year, equivalent to taking 576,000 cars off the road annually. Slide 20, getting to net zero takes the ability to leverage technology, be innovative using Canadian ingenuity, as well as having defined actions today and in the mid and long term. Canadian Natural has a huge technology funnel that with just a few of these activities listed here as we progress our journey to net zero. Slide 21. In June of 2021, a group of Canadian oil sands producers representing 95% of the oil sands production formed the Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero. This initiative targets a number of pathways to reduce GHG emissions in the oil sands, with one of the main items being a CO2 trunk line connecting various facilities and sequestering CO2 in the Cold Lake area. This represents a huge opportunity to reduce emissions in the oil sands. Slide 22. Canadian Natural is ensuring we identify, assess, quantify, align ourselves, and then execute to reduce our environmental footprint. The Canadian Oil Sands is delivering industry-leading performance across the board, a significant factor in our long-term sustainability. If you look overall ESG performance in terms of investment priority, it is very clear that Canadian Natural, that Canada is a world leader and scores the highest in every category and should be an investment priority. I'll now talk to our 2022 budget. Slide 24. Canadian Natural has a long history of successfully balancing our four pillars of capital allocation with a focus on maximizing shareholder value. Our four pillars are balance sheet strength, returns to shareholders, resource value growth, and opportunistic acquisitions. Our ability to generate significant and sustainable free cash flow ensures a strengthening balance sheet and sustainable returns to shareholders. We are prudent and disciplined in our allocation to resource development while maintaining flexibility to adjust when necessary. We have a strong track record of effective and efficient operations and low maintenance capital. Finally, opportunistic acquisitions have always been a part of our strategy, how we have no gaps in our portfolio, and as a result, any acquisition must add value to our shareholders. Balancing the four pillars with the focus on value creation maximizes long-term shareholder value. For 2022, we have a base capital of CAD 3.6 billion that is targeted to deliver approximately a 5% year-over-year BOE production growth for approximately 60,000 BOEs per day, with strong production volume growth in both the conventional natural gas and conventional liquids production. Additionally, we've allocated approximately CAD 700 million of capital for strategic growth, targeting future growth in thermal and oil sands area. In our oil sands, thermal, and mining, we're essentially flat year-over-year as there are two major oil sands mining turnarounds, which will impact the year by approximately 35,000 barrels a day. Slide 26. Our base capital for the conventional E&P is approximately CAD 1.88 billion, which consists of a balanced drilling program throughout 2022, which targets to continuously use the same rigs and ensure we can execute an effective and efficient drilling program. This program gives us strong capital efficiencies in heavy oil and light oil of approximately CAD 10,000 per BOED, and natural gas efficiencies of approximately CAD 6,000 per BOED, yielding 10%-12% growth in the conventional base business and an exit target of approximately 605,000 BOEs per day. Slide 27. In the thermal area, we target a capital of approximately CAD 725 million, of which more than half or CAD 385 million is targeted for strategic future growth activities at Primrose, Kirby, and Jackfish, which we target first oil in mid-2023. Once again, we target to use the same rates throughout 2022 and finish this program in the spring of 2023, ensuring we can execute these drilling programs cost effectively. Capital efficiencies of approximately CAD 10,000 per BOED for Primrose and for our SAGD pads in Kirby and Jackfish are approximately CAD 8,000 per BOE. As well, at Kirby North, we are progressing a commercial scale solvent SAGD pad with first injection in early 2024. On slide 28, in the oil sands mining, two plant turnarounds are targeted in 2022. At Horizon, a 32-day shutdown similar to previous years. At Scotford AOSP, a 65-day turnaround is targeted to start in March, as we're able to defer turnaround activity from 2021. This primarily impacts the second quarter, and for the year, the combined impact is approximately 35,000 barrels a day. In 2022, strategic growth capital of approximately CAD 350 million has been allocated primarily to Horizon for advancing the reliability enhancement project, which targets to extend the turnaround cycle from one per year to once every two years, adding more incremental high-margin barrels at Horizon. Slide 29. Our 2022 conventional drilling program consists of 54 natural gas wells, 161 heavy oil wells, primarily consisting of our successful multilateral wells and 29 light oil wells. For thermal, 102 wells will be drilled across Primrose, the two Kirbys and Jackfish, focused on ensuring a cost-effective program in all areas. Slide 30. As you've seen, we have a disciplined capital program of approximately CAD 3.6 billion in allocation for short-term projects, providing the highest return on capital. We've allocated approximately CAD 700 million for strategic future growth opportunities that comprise projects and add value and production in 2023 and beyond. This capital program budget provides for significant free cash flow, allowing for further strengthening of the balance sheet and continued sustainable returns to shareholders. We target to continue our effective and efficient operations in 2022 and maintain the cost efficiencies achieved in 2021, therefore maximizing economic returns, free cash flow, consistent with how Canadian Natural drives long-term share value. I will now turn it over to Mark for a review of financial strength. Thanks, Tim. Good morning, everyone, and happy new year. I'll now talk to our strong financial position, Canadian Natural's significant free cash flow generation, our increasing returns to shareholders, and targeted further debt reduction. I'll start on slide 32. It's important to recognize how our committed and dedicated teams with a strong track record of execution, along with the company's assets and strategy, have delivered a long-term track record for shareholder value and how they support a strong financial position. In 2021, we continued to deliver with significant net debt reduction to approximately CAD 14 billion outstanding at the end of the year, representing a CAD 7.3 billion reduction from 2021 opening net debt levels. We also implemented a free cash flow allocation policy that clearly demonstrates a commitment to increasing returns to shareholders and further balance sheet strength. In 2021, the dividend was increased twice, providing an advantage for driving long-term shareholder value. On slide 33, you can see how Canadian Natural delivers through the cycle. The sustainability of the free cash flow generation allows for leading increases to shareholder returns through a sustainable and increasing dividend, even in periods of lower commodity prices. This is a differentiating factor compared to global peers. Canadian Natural has delivered 22 years of consecutive dividend increases, representing a 20% compound annual growth rate since inception in 2001. Slide 34 is a 10-year compound growth rate of dividends against the global peer group, showing that Canadian Natural has delivered leading long-term sustainable dividend growth. The sustainability of our free cash flow is industry-leading, and so is the magnitude, as can be seen on slide 35. Canadian Natural has the highest forecasted free cash flow yield among global peers, an indicator of the strength of our long life, low decline assets, our effective and efficient operations, and low maintenance capital requirements. Moving to slide 36. Canadian Natural is focused on value creation over the long term, and we have been successful by balancing our four pillars, balance sheet strength, returns to shareholders, resource value growth, and although we have no gaps in our portfolio, capturing opportunistic acquisitions. With a significant targeted free cash flow generation in 2022, we will continue to apply disciplined balance across our pillars. Slide 37 shows our free cash flow allocation policy, as discussed at our Q3 earnings release in November 2021. Since achieving net debt levels in 2021 below CAD 15 billion, with the year-end 2021 forecast at approximately CAD 14 billion. In 2022, we will target to allocate 50% of free cash flow to share repurchases and 50% of free cash flow to the balance sheet, plus strategic growth slash acquisitions, all as defined in our free cash flow allocation policy. On slide 38, you see the significant impact of cash returns to shareholders as a result of the free cash flow policy and the current dividend. The graph shows that over a two-year period, the estimated returns to shareholder is over CAD 10 billion via dividend and share repurchases, representing 16% of the company's market cap, with further upside given strong commodity prices and continued effective and efficient operations. The ability to return cash to shareholders through share repurchases, the long life low decline nature of our assets with disciplined capital allocation, leads to an impressive per share production growth target in 2022, as seen on slide 39. This is another indication of the advantage of our assets with low decline, low maintenance capital, and the sustainable free cash flow generated through the cycle with a target 8% compound rate since 2019. Slide 40 further illustrates the sustainability of the increasing returns to shareholders with 22 years of consecutive dividend increases representing a 20% compound rate. The slide also shows the impressive incremental targeted returns through share repurchases in 2021 and 2022, given our free cash flow generation, with significant upside torque to commodity prices. The free cash flow allocation policy also ensures a continued focus on a strong financial position, as seen on slide 41, with 50% of free cash flow being allocated to the balance sheet. With debt, net debt below CAD 15 billion, a modest allocation to strategic growth capital opportunities in 2022. These estimates show our debt levels reaching below one times cash flow and approximately 25% debt to book capital. Very strong metrics that support strong investment-grade credit ratings. In summary, on slide 42, Canadian Natural's financial position is solid and is targeted to improve even further in 2022. We have a long track record of increasing shareholder returns, and that is targeted to continue in 2022. We have maximum financial flexibility with significant liquidity and a purposeful maturity schedule that optimizes financial management and allows for absolute debt repayment. We are in an envious position as a result of the nature of our long life, low decline assets with embedded low maintenance capital requirements, our effective and efficient operations, and a strong track record of execution. All factors that continue to differentiate us from our peers. These contribute to significant free cash flow generation that supports a disciplined balance between our four pillars, including increasing returns to shareholders and further financial strength, all with the goal of providing long-term shareholder value. With that, I'll turn it back to you, Tim, for some summary comments. Thank you, Mark. Slide 44. In 2022, we'll be disciplined with our capital, always ensuring we're adding long-term value for our shareholders. We're targeting a base capital of approximately CAD 3.6 billion. It is targeted to deliver approximately 5% production growth or 11% on a per share basis based on CAD 70 WTI, U.S. WTI. Additionally, we have allocated approximately CAD 700 million for strategic growth projects that will add production growth in 2023 and beyond. Canadian Natural is positioned to consistently deliver top-tier free cash flow. In summary, Canadian Natural has a proven effective strategy, and we are delivering in today's environment and will continue in the future. We have an inventory of economic growth pro-projects embedded in our vast conventional and unconventional assets, thermal pad adds that can leverage off existing facilities as well as enhancements to oil sands mining and upgrading sites. Canadian Natural's ability to deliver significant free cash flow is driven by our effective and efficient operations, a high quality assets that have low maintenance capital at approximately CAD 3.5 billion and significant reserves. Our culture of continuous improvement is unique among our peers as our teams are focused on delivering operational excellence across our asset base. We will continue to leverage technology and innovation and continue to reduce our environmental footprint. Few, if any, of our peers can be robust through all the cycles, show economic growth, have a sustainable growing dividend of 22 years, increasing returns to shareholders, and show debt reduction. Canadian Natural is truly robust through all the cycles. That concludes our presentation. I'll now open up the call for questions. At this time, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. Again, that's star one to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to compile the Q and A roster. Your first question comes from the line of Greg Pardy with RBC Capital Markets. Thanks. Good morning, great quick rundown. Maybe just a couple of quick ones for me. Tim, you mentioned that you plan to go to a turnaround every two years as opposed to every year at Horizon. I may have missed it, but when do you expect to be able to do that? Would that be in 2023 or later? Really, you'll see the impact of that in 2024. We're still doing some spending in 2023, but the real impact is 2024 and beyond. Okay, terrific. Maybe just a question for Mark is just around cash taxes. I think we've got CAD 2 billion, you know, dialed in, but just any thoughts around what your cash tax picture is gonna look like this year? Sure, Greg. You know what? Same answer. Depends a lot on your forecast of commodity prices and things like that. I expect the cash tax to be relatively flat year-over-year, 2021 to 2022. Okay, terrific. Thanks, guys. Thank you, Greg. Your next question comes from the line of Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs. Yeah, thanks. Thanks, guys. Good morning, and congrats on getting that leverage level lower here over the last couple of years, and it's allowed you to talk about capital returns. That's my first question, which is slide 37. I just want to clarify. When you're saying 50% of free cash flow after the dividend, and that's on base CapEx, is gonna go to share repurchase. When we think about M&A and bolt-on M&A that you might do, that is not going to influence the base case, your share repurchase program. That would be out of as a deleveraging profile. Is that a fair assessment? Hi, Neil. It's Mark. That is a fair assessment. That's right. The one on that slide 37, you can see on the left-hand side that that's less of the strategic growth capital and acquisition opportunity. Yes, you have it right. To that point, in around share repurchases, are there any restrictions in your ability to execute the buyback via NCIB? Do you see a potential where you're gonna need to tender for shares, or can you do it all through normal course? I don't see any issues at this point, all through normal course. Okay, very good. Then the follow-up is in the press release, you talk about longer-term capital, strategic growth capital spending and what that means for production really in 2024, 2025, which I know is a long way away. Can you just talk about the out years and that the production growth that you guys are talking about in the deck? Looks like there's some in thermal, in-situ production potentially being added, but give us a little more color on what those projects are and is that what the spend this year is really translating into in a couple of years. Yeah. The spending on the thermal side really rolls from this year into next year. It's a small three-rig program which we're doing sequentially throughout 2022, and they really wind up, the rigs are done in the spring of 2023. Through this program, it's very methodical, very well thought out in that we will do the drilling sequentially. If we decide that we wanna slow down the drilling activity, we can. The facilities and the completions of those wells will follow in behind it. Really that's all we have. That program ends in 2023. Really, no decisions have been made past 2023. What's the growth out there in 2024 and 2025? That 27,000 and the 62,000 is related to the production ramp up at Horizon through reliability project and then the thermal wells ramping up. Got it. Okay. Thanks. Thanks, Tim. Yeah, you're welcome. Your next question comes from Phil Gresh with JP Morgan. Yes, hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. First one, obviously, you highlighted the opportunities in thermal and oil sands. I was curious if you were thinking about any other organic opportunities more on the conventional side, from a growth perspective, or if you'd say the main focus will be on thermal and oil sands? No, I think my personal opinion is we have a really nice balanced program. It's all about driving returns. This program, I feel very comfortable with it. You know, we're essentially keeping anywhere from 12 to 14 rigs going throughout the year, for not only the conventional but the thermal side. I look at it as it'll be more effective and cost efficient to just keep those same rigs moving throughout the whole year. That's what we're really trying to progress. It's not about trying to do too many activities and really inflate the price and lose efficiencies. Right. Okay. My follow-up, just to clarify in the prior questions with respect to the thermal growth, is any of that needed to offset the base declines, or do you see that as all truly incremental growth, relative to the 2022 all-in production guidance? Thank you. Yeah, for the thermal in oil sands, that is actually increase of above the 2022 base. That is truly incremental to the base production of 2022. Got it. Okay. Thank you. You're welcome. Your next question comes from Manav Gupta with Credit Suisse. Hey, guys. I just wanted to pick a little bit of your brain on the overall crude oil macro. We have IEA out there saying, you know, 2022 global oil markets could be oversupplied to the order of 1.5 or 2 million, something we don't agree with. You're obviously looking to grow your volumes and put in some growth capital. I'm assuming you also don't fully agree with their assessment that global oil markets will be oversupplied in the near term. If you could talk a little bit about the crude oil macro as you see folding out to the next couple of years, at least. Yeah, it's always difficult to say if it'll be oversupplied because obviously, it is a big hinge on the demand side that really, you know, works on the supply side, issues. You know, from a macro perspective, we believe there is in general an underinvestment in commodities in general, energy. You know, as such, they're in our mind pretty stable pricing. Now, what that pricing could be in 2022 and beyond is always difficult to say. You know, the way we've structured our program is we can slow down activities if we feel that it's not the right thing to do. It's always difficult to say because, you know, a big portion of it is, you know, what is the demand side, which is, you know, been quite volatile over the last few years. The latest numbers I've seen is that demand is pretty close to pre-COVID numbers. Hopefully that helps you. Absolutely. The second quick follow-up here is, you always have a very informative view on apportionments, differentials outlook. If you could talk a little bit about what you see possibly for the next six to 12 months on both apportionments and what you think both light and heavy Canadian differentials could look like. Thank you. Sure. On apportionment, I mean, it's really quite a fictional number in my mind, because there's, you know, many, you know, as we've talked about in the past, many factors going into that. If you look at it structurally, in November, we were close to 40 million barrels. Today, I believe we're down under 32 million barrels in storage in Alberta, and we've had apportionment. I look at it as being very favorable for egress. The differentials are in, I believe, around CAD 12- CAD 13, which is basically 16, you know, roughly 16%. I look at it as very favorable for the next 12 months, both on the egress side, and on the pricing side for differentials. Thank you for taking my questions. Thanks. Your next question comes from Dennis Fong with CIBC Capital Markets. Hi. Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. The first one is just related to Horizon as well as the advancing of the reliability enhancement projects. Can you describe a little bit of what that necessarily entails and how that potentially differs from some of the previous budgets mentioned, either debottlenecking or production optimization projects that you had outlined? Are they the same? Are they different? Or is it kind of a blend of the two? I know in a previous conversation you kind of outlined that that optimization was being reworked. I'm just wondering if, A, this is kind of that new plan with respect to Horizon. Yeah, that's exactly what it is, Dennis. Obviously, through the past couple of years, we've been continuing to work that opportunity to see what needs to be done, where we should be focusing our capital in terms of getting that increased reliability. It is actually a blend of what we've learned over the last few years and what the engineers have come up with as creative ideas to get that reliability up and get that incremental high margin barrel. Yeah, it's just, you know, there are continuous focus on what needs to happen to increase our reliability. That same work is also happening obviously here at AOSP. As you've seen, you know, our volumes have been creeping up over the last year or two as well. Great. Then just a quick follow-up on that item. You've obviously talked about the production, potential add, but can you maybe speak to maybe some of the high-level expectations around cost savings? Obviously, adding barrels to either of these two facilities and extending the time between turnarounds has significant both capital as well as operating cost savings. Can you outline a little bit of your expectations around, some of these obviously growth, capital opportunities outside of obviously just the production ads, which are obviously, helpful to the economics of these projects? Sure. From a high level point of view, just on the oil sands mining, the highest risks you have is when you have to take your facility down and then bring it back up. That is always, from an operational point, always the issue. As you can appreciate, when you take things down, the equipment changes, you find things that break. As well, at the same time, when you bring it up, you also find issues with various components. The best and most operational efficient thing to do is keep the facilities running, keep them running smoothly and safely. From that perspective, I look at it as cost savings. If you look at it from a turnaround risk point of view, you know that these are very large turnarounds. Obviously, with a lot of people, and as you've seen, you know, last year with a lot of people on site, It's very difficult to be very effective and efficient every all the way through. We see cost savings on the turnarounds. Obviously, These incremental barrels are high margin because you're not, your operating fixed costs are the same every day. I just look at it as a really huge opportunity in terms of both on the capital side and on the operational side. Great. One last question, if you wouldn't mind indulging me, is just on the thermal in-situ side. I know in, again, in a previous presentation, I believe it was last year's budget, you talked about a potential capacity or a throughput capacity at Primrose Wolf Lake of close to 140,000 barrels a day. That's quite a significantly larger number than the numbers or the production levels that you're posting kind of in Q3 of 2021. I'm just curious as to how much of the long-term or mid to long-term growth in the thermal projects is being targeted towards Primrose, in terms of, I guess, the 49,000 barrel a day in 2025 strategic growth opportunity. Yeah, the Primrose is actually a small portion of this whole growth. Really at Primrose, it's really, you know, one pad, I believe. Really what we're working on there is actually that solvent enhancement program, so which we started here in October, and that is where we're focused. As you're aware, Primrose has higher GHG emissions relative to the SAG D. We're really focused on the solvent piece to reduce our GHG input there. Great. Thank you. Your next question comes from Menno Hulshof with TD Securities. Good morning, everyone. Just to follow up on Phil's question earlier, would you be able to better define the gas growth profile beyond 2022? Should we be thinking about low single digit growth for gas or something closer to a flat profile? How much of a consideration is basin egress for gas through first LNG exports, which I'm assuming would be in the 2025 time frame? You know, it's always very difficult to outguess the market ahead of that. You know, from just a macro perspective, we've always kind of said that, you know, between 0% and 5% growth on a BOE basis for the company. You know, whether it's gas or liquids, I mean, we're really focused on the value and the value that we can create at that time within the context of the market. You know, it's always difficult to say what gas prices are in the future. To me, it's you know, it still has to compete on a product basis with the oil side. You know, it's very difficult to speculate at this time. Okay. Thanks for that, Tim. Maybe I'll just follow up with a quick question on the current status of your operations here in Alberta. How much of an impact has the extreme cold had, and Omicron for that matter? I'm just asking because it looks like industry supply has come off a little of late. From a COVID piece, you know, we're, in my opinion, very well positioned. We're one of the few companies that came in with the mandatory vaccination in December for all our people and vendors. We've been operating very well. Obviously, you know, we have a very rigorous testing program for our sites. That part has been going very well. You know, with the extreme cold temperatures, like most industry, we have seen the impact on our natural gas side, primarily the mature areas where there are lower volumes with the freeze offs, but the teams are making progress on that. You know, with the warmer weather here coming in, I'm positive, you know, things will be back to normal here by, you know, within the week. Yeah, it has impacted the natural gas side, but primarily it's the low volume mature assets. Perfect. Thanks, Tim. That's it for me. Okay. Your next question comes from Harry Mateer with Barclays. Hi, good morning. Mark, I've got a follow-up question for you on slide 41. I guess first, is that targeted net debt reduction of CAD 8.5 Billion from end of 2020 to end of 2022? Really a target or is that really just the math you're running through your free cash flow calculation at CAD 70 being applied to the cash balance and the balance sheet? Related to that, I know you've got a CAD 1 billion maturity next month. Is the plan at this point in time just to pay that down and then have additional capacity to reissue later if you need it? Or would you expect to refinance that since you are below your net debt target? Yeah. Good morning, Harry. Thanks. Yes. That's an estimate. That's running the math that kind of goes through the CAD 70 case to get to those levels. So it's just an estimate, not a target. As far as the CAD 1 billion maturity in February, right now, the plan would be that we have the free cash flow to handle it. As you know, we you know continually look at our maturity profile and manage it properly. Right now the plan would be free cash flow. Okay, great. Thanks very much. Your next question comes from the line of Doug Leggate with Bank of America. Hello, this is David Fernandez calling in for Doug today. Thank you guys for the incremental disclosure. I had a couple of questions, if I can start off just on the volume outlook. It appears that for 2022 volumes, headline volumes are kind of in line with 4Q 2021 if you adjust for the downtime and you adjust for the acquisition of Storm, which would then imply that maintenance CapEx would be closer to that CAD 3.6 billion number. Clearly, there's like timing going on, and obviously the downtime has, you know, costs associated with it. But can you generally speak to how your breakeven is trending? I think last year you had talked about CAD 30-CAD 31 WTI. Yeah. Hi, David, this is Mark. I think the ultimate question there was just around breakeven price, and you're right, the CAD 30-CAD 31. Remember that's a maintenance capital and dividend breakeven, so it covers our dividend. Our dividend has obviously increased year-over-year 38% as we mentioned. That breakeven is slightly higher but still in that neighborhood. Okay. There's nothing to read into kind of like the volume outlook for 2022 in terms of potentially creeping maintenance CapEx? Like that maintenance CapEx number is still relatively around that CAD 3 billion number? Nope. The maintenance CapEx is CAD 3.5 billion. Obviously we're a larger company, and we've accounted for some cost inflation. Obviously steel, labor, they have escalated since you know a year ago. So we've accounted for those two factors. Okay. Excellent. My last question, just kind of in terms of like the long-term capital structure, can you speak to how you plan on managing between deleveraging and allocating, capital to growth, like longer term now that you're past kind of like that CAD 15 billion debt target? I guess my question is just kind of on why not take debt lower, sooner, as opposed to spending on growth. Is there like a target, you know, capital, you know, long-term capital structure that you have in mind, that kind of constrains or frames kind of, how you think about the deleveraging pace? Yeah. I think the best way to think about it is you look at the balanced approach, right? The ability to sort of be able to do all the pillars we talk about where we have production growth, but at the same time, increasing returns to shareholder and driving debt down further. You can kind of think of it as a balanced approach going forward. We think that's the best way to generate long-term shareholder value. Right now, that free cash flow allocation policy, as you know, has that 50/50 allocation to share repurchase and debt repayment. That's the balance there that's driving you know improvements in both of those. Got it. Awesome. Thank you guys very much for the time. I really appreciate it. Thank you, David. Thank you. Your final question comes from Roger Read with Wells Fargo. Yeah. Thanks. Good morning. Question just on how to treat royalties within the oil sands operations. Granted prices have finally gotten a little more reasonable, which I'm sure is part of the effect on royalties. But it's been a long time since we've seen prices at these levels, and when I look back historically, royalties have been lower than what we saw in either the second or the third quarter. I was just curious, what's the right way to think about what's affecting the royalties as a percentage of sales and how we should think about that, you know, call it a cost, that drag on performance in oil sands as we go forward? Is it tied to price or is it tied to a cost recovery factor or to something else as we think about, you know, using the strip or using our own price decks as to what the impact could be? Yeah. Hey, Roger, it's Mark. For the specifics around the modeling, I'll defer to IR. You're right. There's a pre and post payout scenarios within the oil sands, so you have a payout period. The one change for Canadian Natural 2022 is Horizon is paying out, currently forecasted somewhere in Q2. Yes, you do have the impacts of pre versus post payout that impacts your modeling. I'll defer to IR to get into the specifics with you. Okay. Yeah, I appreciate that. Thank you. At this time, we'll turn the conference to the speakers for any closing remarks. Yes. Thank you, operator. That wraps up our conference call for today, and I would like to thank those of you who joined us on the webcast. As always, if you do have any questions, please don't hesitate to give our teams a call. Thank you and have a great day. Thank you for participating. You may disconnect at this time.