Good day, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Cenovus Energy's Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2021 Results. As a reminder, today's call is being recorded. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Following the presentation, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. You can join the queue at any time by pressing star one. Members of the investment community will have the opportunity to ask questions first. At the conclusion of that session, members of the media may then ask questions. Please be advised that this conference call may not be recorded or rebroadcast without the express consent of Cenovus Energy. I would now like to turn the conference call over to Ms. Sherry Wendt, Vice President, Investor Relations. Please go ahead, Ms. Wendt. Thank you, operator, and welcome everyone to Cenovus's 2021 Fourth Quarter and Year-End Results Conference Call. I'll refer you to the advisories located at the end of today's news release. These describe the forward-looking information, non-GAAP measures and oil and gas terms referred to today, and outline the risk factors and assumptions relevant to this discussion. Additional information is available in Cenovus's annual MD&A and our most recent AIF and Form 40-F. All figures are presented in Canadian dollars and before royalties, unless otherwise stated. Alex Pourbaix, our President and Chief Executive Officer, will provide brief comments, and then we'll take your questions. We ask that you please hold off on any detailed modeling questions today and instead follow up on those directly with our investor relations team after the call. If you could please keep to one question with a maximum of one follow-up, you can rejoin the queue for any other questions. Alex, please go ahead. Thanks, Sherry, and good morning, everybody. Before we get to our operating and financial results, I thought I would update you on our ongoing response to COVID-19. We're closely monitoring the Omicron variant and maintaining safe and reliable operations at all of our field sites. I'd say over the last two years, we've learned a lot about how to maintain the health and safety of our people and communities and to ensure business continuity. We have robust protocols in place and adjust them as needed. The pandemic underscores for me how foundational safety is to the way we operate and how focused we must be on continuous improvement in our performance. Meanwhile, the natural disasters in British Columbia this year presented an example of how our teams work together to not only ensure business continuity, but also meet the needs of the local community. It was a challenging year for British Columbia, with widespread forest fires followed by severe flooding, which caused significant interruption to the supply of refined products to impacted areas. In both situations, our teams worked tirelessly to keep this product supply moving safely and our sites in impacted areas operational, where it was safe to do so, in order to continue meeting the needs of the communities and customers we serve. I think this really reflects the way we do business at Cenovus, including how seriously we take our role in the local communities where we operate. As we complete our first year as a combined company, we have harmonized our safety programs and are continuing to roll out our Cenovus Operations Integrity Management System, outlining how we manage health, safety, operational, integrity, and environmental risk. Despite the challenges related to the integration and COVID-19, we have had solid overall health and safety performance in 2021. The year was not without recordable injuries, though, and this further underscores how focused we must be on continuous improvement in our top-tier safety journey. Above all, our focus is doing everything possible to make sure everyone goes home safe every day. Turning now to our fourth quarter and annual results. Our first year as a combined company has been a really good one for Cenovus. We accomplished everything we set out to do in 2021 and more. That's not to say that there weren't a few bumps along the way, but when I look what we've accomplished overall this year, I really wanna commend our employees and leadership team on a job very well done. I'll start with the upstream segment. We continued to deliver very strong upstream operating performance. Our total production was 825,000 BOE per day in the fourth quarter, an increase of 20,000 BOE per day over the third quarter. Despite experiencing some extremely cold weather in Alberta and Saskatchewan in December, the production increase was led by record quarterly average production rates at our three largest oil sands assets, Foster Creek, Christina Lake, and the Lloydminster Thermals. Foster Creek production for the fourth quarter was nearly 212,000 barrels per day, an increase of about 25,000 barrels per day over the third quarter. We spoke on our last quarterly call and at our Investor Day about the performance of the new well pads at the west arm of the reservoir, and these pads continued to deliver some of the highest rates we've ever seen at Cenovus. Production guidance for Foster in 2022 is in the range of 185,000-205,000 barrels per day, which includes the impact of a planned turnaround in the year. Production at Christina averaged 251,000 barrels per day in the quarter, reflecting additional production volumes from redevelopment and re-drill wells that we spoke to you about at our Investor Day. Production guidance for Christina in 2022 is in the range of 230,000-250,000 barrels per day, which also includes the impact of a planned turnaround later this year. At the Lloyd Thermals, we continue to see the benefits of applying Cenovus' operating techniques. These assets delivered an average of nearly 100,000 barrels per day in the quarter. Our realized pricing across the Oil Sands segment reflected the volatility in WTI and WCS prices that we saw between October and November. Results also reflected higher condensate pricing and our normal additional seasonal blending requirements for diluent in the winter months. In addition, an increase in natural gas prices contributed to higher Oil Sands operating costs quarter-over-quarter to about CAD 11.76 per barrel. Turning to Conventional, as a result of higher commodity prices and reliable operations, the Conventional business delivered nearly CAD 260 million of operating margin in the fourth quarter. Production was about 5% lower than the third quarter due to asset sales, but unit operating costs still held relatively flat with the third quarter. Our offshore operations continue to be a strong contributor to our business, delivering operating margin of over CAD 400 million in the quarter and contributing over CAD 1.4 billion of operating margin in 2021. Asia-Pac operations continued performing well with daily production of over 62,000 BOE per day in the fourth quarter, which was slightly above the previous quarter. However, we saw increased realized prices and netbacks. We continue to see strong gas demand in Asia, and as we said at Investor Day, we continue to explore with our partners opportunities to add additional value there. In Indonesia, a production sharing contract was signed for the Limau region in East Java, and in December, we drilled a development well in the MBH field, which was completed in January. In the Atlantic, lower production volumes reflected some turnaround activity in the region, but we were able to capture a higher netback overall as the business realized the benefit of strong Brent pricing. Moving to the downstream business. In the U.S. manufacturing segment, refinery utilization averaged 72% in the quarter. This reflects the impacts of a planned turnaround at the Lima Refinery. The Lima turnaround was a major one in every five-year event involving planned outages at the crude unit and the cat cracker units with a total cost of around $145 million. Following the turnaround, we encountered some challenges with secondary processing units, which impacted run rates beyond the initial six to eight -week plan timeline, extending through December and into January. Due to the reduced rates, turnaround-related expenses and repairs associated with the outage, unit operating costs for U.S. manufacturing in the fourth quarter increased to $16.88 per barrel. We also expect throughput and operating expenses in the first quarter to be modestly impacted due to the continued reduced throughputs in January. The repairs at Lima are now complete, and I'm pleased to report that operations are back to normal. The operations team is confident that this was a one-time issue and has been resolved. In the Canadian manufacturing segment, we continue to see very steady and reliable operating performance at the Lloyd Upgrader and Asphalt Refinery, with an average utilization of 98% in the fourth quarter. This finished out a strong performance year for the Lloyd complex with 96% average utilization for the full year. Fourth quarter utilization and unit refining margins in this segment were similar to the third quarter, generating an operating margin of CAD 131 million, reflecting the strong reliability of these assets as well as capture of wider price differentials at the upgrader. For those of you who joined us at Investor Day in December, you know we've announced ambitious targets for our five environmental, social, and governance focus areas. These are all available on our website. However, I wanted to remind you of a couple this morning. We are committed to spending at least CAD 1.2 billion with Indigenous businesses between 2019 and year-end 2025. Working with Indigenous business partners has always been an important part of our approach to supporting Indigenous reconciliation. As part of our efforts to address climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, we have set a target to reduce our absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions by 35% by 2035 from 2019 levels. We are also maintaining our ambition of net zero emissions from our operations by 2050, which includes our work with the Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero initiative. Turning now to our financial results. In the fourth quarter, we generated cash flow from operating activities of nearly CAD 2.2 billion, adjusted funds flow close to CAD 2 billion, and free funds flow of more than CAD 1.1 billion. Capital spending was CAD 835 million in the quarter, which placed us well within our guidance range for the full year. We recorded a CAD 1.9 billion impairment in the U.S. manufacturing segment this quarter. The impairment related to the carrying value of our assets in U.S. refining and changes in current independently derived commodity price outlooks. Specifically around crack spreads, RINs, and the WCS differential. We also booked a reversal of prior impairments in Q4 related to our conventional business. This does not reflect any change in the way we think about the downstream business. We continue to see long-term value in our integrated model and the reduced cash flow volatility that comes with a more diverse portfolio of upstream and downstream assets. On the corporate side, we saw an increase in our general and administrative expenses in the fourth quarter, which impacted adjusted funds flow. This mainly related to a non-cash accrual for a synergy incentive plan that was implemented at the time of the Husky transaction. This one-time incentive program was clearly very, very effective in motivating our employees to pursue those synergies for our shareholders. We generated CAD 7.2 billion in adjusted funds flow and free funds flow of nearly CAD 4.7 billion in 2021, with total capital for the year coming in at about CAD 2.6 billion. These results really speak to the free funds flow generating ability of the company, especially when you consider that free funds flow reflected one-time costs associated with the Husky transaction and capital for the Superior Refinery rebuild on which we're still collecting related insurance proceeds in 2022. This financial performance, including asset sale proceeds received in the fourth quarter, enabled us to reduce our net debt by another CAD 1.4 billion over the quarter, closing 2021 with net debt below CAD 9.6 billion. That's a reduction of CAD 3.5 billion since January 1, 2021. In the fourth quarter, we also announced the sale of Wembley assets in the conventional business, the Tucker Oil Sands project, and the disposition of two-thirds of our retail stations. The three transactions together represent additional proceeds of nearly CAD 1.5 billion. Tucker closed in January, and Wembley is also expected to close in Q1. Retail is still expected to close in mid-2022. I'll also take this opportunity to provide an update on our NCIB program, which we announced in the fourth quarter and began executing in November. As of February 7, we have repurchased approximately 26 million shares at a weighted average price of CAD 16.31 per share. Looking back over the past year, we have created a better and more resilient Cenovus. We've delivered on everything we've set out to do, including successful integration of the Husky business, delivering over and above our targets for upstream operations, Canadian downstream, transaction synergies, asset sales, net debt reduction, and increasing shareholder returns. Now, assuming commodity prices continue to hold, we will rapidly hit our net debt target of CAD 8 billion, implying we could be looking at even more free funds flow to allocate in 2022. I assure you, we will continue the capital discipline you've come to expect from us. And above all, opportunities for adding value for our shareholders and increasing shareholder returns will be top of mind for this management team. With that, we're happy to take your questions. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, you can join the queue to ask a question by pressing star one. We will now begin the question-and-answer session and go to the first caller. We'll take our first question from Greg Pardy with RBC Capital Markets. Thanks. Good morning. Thanks for the rundown. Alex, so maybe just to extend from what you'd said on, you know, that was really my first question is you're gonna be sub-CAD 8 billion, looks like. It doesn't sound like there's a lot of appetite for increasing organic investment in the ground and so forth. Can you just shed any light as to the options maybe that you'd have from a shareholder return perspective? Would those be highest priority right now in terms of, you know, things on your to-do list? Yeah, no, thanks for the question, Greg. I mean, you know, I think what we said, and you'll recall at our Investor Day, I think we made very, very clearly that as we delevered the balance sheet, we were going to increasingly look at allocating cash to returning to our shareholders. You've seen that. We got off, I think, to a quite a decent start with our NCIB. You've seen us double the dividend. Here we are, you know, rapidly heading towards and below CAD 8 billion in net debt. I think what I would say is, we are very, very focused on the importance and the urgency of returning more value to our shareholders. You know, we're in, you know, frankly, we're delevering at a pace probably quicker than anyone here even thought about. We have a little bit of work to do as a management team, as a board, but I think that our shareholders can expect that in fairly short order, we will be coming back to our shareholders with an updated plan on how we're gonna continue to return and increase our returns to shareholders. I think I'd say just bear with us. We're very alive to the issue. We just need to do a little bit of work to come back with a plan that we can announce to our shareholders. Okay, thanks for that. Really, just the second question is probably more for Jon, but, you know, what should we expect from your U.S. refining ops? I'm not thinking so much about cash flow generation, but just perhaps, you know, utilization or steps taken to improve reliability or performance or what have you. Anywhere you wanna go in that would be fine. No. Thanks, Greg. I'll make a few comments and then I'll let Keith chime in. You know, the first comment I would make is US refining is absolutely core to our strategy of the company. You know, during the quarter, we did execute a 45-day turnaround at Lima. The actual execution of the turnaround was quite good. The total cost, as Alex mentioned, was about $145 million. We did struggle with the Isocracker and the reformer coming out of that turnaround, but that Lima refinery is now up to, you know, normal rates of operation. We expect it to run through 2022 at normal rates of operation. What we have seen in the past is utilization has been lower than historic due to, you know, largely commercial reasons. As the cracks continue to justify, we'll continue to take those rates of utilization up. I would mention, we do have another major turnaround in 2022 at Toledo, and that'll be executed by our partner at BP. Going forward, you should expect to, I think, see more historic rates of utilization and availability as we get into a more robust crack market. I don't know, Keith, if there's anything else you wanna add to that. No, I think you got it. You know, the Limau turnaround is a once in five-year type of event and that's now behind us and the refinery's back online. You know, I think just, Greg, in the quarter, obviously saw some seasonal weakness in cracks, you know, net cracks of RINs around $10. You know, obviously gasoline impacted a little bit with Omicron, but we're expecting kind of that to be transitory and really thinking that gasoline and diesel demand will be really strong through 2022. You know, even with the turnarounds Jon alluded to, we're expecting higher throughput in 2022 based on what we're seeing. Hey, Greg, it's Alex. I would agree with everything that Jon and Keith said. I might just put one kind of overarching comment on the U.S. downstream. As Jon said at the start, this is an absolutely core part of our business and our integrated strategy. I think that, you know, our investors should expect to see the exact kind of focus that we put on the thermal business in 2021 and the results we've delivered there. You know, Jon and Keith and Nori are putting that same collective effort into making sure that we deliver that same kind of performance out of the U.S. downstream business. It is an area of very significant focus for us in 2022. Understood. Thanks very much. No worries. We'll take our next question from Dennis Fong with CIBC. Hi, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. The first one here, actually both might be directed more at Jeff. As you noted there in your opening comments, Alex, you did take a CAD 1.9 billion impairment charge. Just kind of digging into the financials and not wanting this to be a kind of a modeling stock question. It looks like the discount rate changed in terms of some of your assumptions, but was hoping that we could get a little bit more detail and color around some of the changes in assumptions as well as the embedded RINs pricing that you are looking at going forward with respect to the impairment charge. Yeah, it's Jeff here. Thanks for the question. I mean, number one, I'll say this really reflects third-party price lines and, you know, where those currently sit, and that's really the driver. As you can see in the upstream, similar to what we're seeing in the downstream is it's really their reflection of the IQRE prices, so we had the reversal. Number one, it's a reflection of that, Dennis, and that really drives a lot of the valuation and changes is those third-party price lines, number one. Number two is the discount rates will vary and will adjust and look at different pieces depending on, you know, structures and of the investments in the refinery. We've moved that a little bit between the, you know, for the different investments, but really that's flexible in a range and can always change depending where the market is. Really it's a reflection of those third-party price lines, Dennis. Great. Thanks. The second question maybe follows a little bit along what Greg was asking there to begin with. The company's done a really good job in terms of managing term debt maturities, especially with the most recent redemption. Just in terms of what's called an optimal capital structure, how should we be thinking about that? Just given the amount of free cash flow that you're generating, how should we be thinking about the term debts and kind of the structure as well as the maturities that are going forward? Is there any ways that you can think about optimizing or improving the cost structure on that side? Yeah. It's Jeff again. Number one, you know, as Alex talked to us, we said we'd be balanced between CAD 10 billion and CAD 8 billion, and we've reflected that over the last, you know, quarter and into this year with the share buybacks, dividend, and then the make-wholes that you referred to. They were largely balanced. You know, I would expect us, generally, we've always talked about holding a cash floor of CAD 1 billion. I'd expect us to operate more between CAD 1 billion-CAD 2 billion. As we accumulate cash until we get to CAD 8 billion, we'll continue to balance shareholder returns and deleveraging. To your point, we'll look across the maturity profile. We did the make-wholes. You know, we wanna maximize our deleveraging, but we'll look up and down the curve and, you know, as we did in Q3 last year, if there's opportunities where we can see to optimize the cost in the term, we'll look at that and balance it all out. It really is market dependent. Great. Thank you for the color. Thanks, Dennis. We'll go to our next question from Phil Gresh with JPMorgan. Yes. Hi, good morning. First question, just as I'm thinking about the first quarter, some of your peers have talked about some working capital headwinds. I didn't know if there was any. I know you had some tailwinds in the fourth quarter. I didn't know if there are any things we should be thinking about there in a rising oil price environment. 'Cause absent that, it would seem like you could potentially hit that net debt target of CAD 8 billion in the first quarter. So just any thoughts you'd have on either of those comments. Hi, Phil. It's Jon speaking. You know, I think one of the things that we did a really good job of in Q4 is managing working capital, and you would have noticed there was about CAD 300 million working capital release. That being said, you know, one of the things that we did see in December, in particular, was some pretty weak pricing, both WTI as well as the WTI-WCS spread. We did take an opportunity to build some inventory and not sell in December, and some of those sales will be reflected in January and February of this year. We don't necessarily see any working capital impediments or headwinds going forward. We think it's something that, you know, I think we managed through Q4, and you'll see us continue to manage through Q1. We did put some barrels into Capline in Q4, and that's all reflected in the number. You know, overall, we did see that working capital release, and we are expecting to sell some of that production that we stored in Q4 in Q1. Got it. Anything on the broader, you know, view at these spot prices of the ability to be below the CAD 8 billion target by the end of 1Q? You're asking me to get pretty specific about when we're gonna get to CAD 8 billion. What I'll tell you, Phil, is our you know the thing that's gonna happen in Q1 is we are gonna get some proceeds from those two asset sales that Alex mentioned, both Wembley and Tucker, which is now closed, and those are material in nature. You know, we are rapidly moving towards CAD 8 billion. You know, I don't have an actual date as to when we're gonna get there, but we are rapidly converging on CAD 8 billion of net debt. Fair enough. Thank you. Just one follow-up. Obviously, ConocoPhillips was pretty clear on their earnings call that they intend to sell down their full stake by the end of the first quarter. Just in terms of managing that, is there anything Cenovus is thinking about, or is that more of a, you know, the shareholders, you know, would have to be buying the stock, and you just kinda buy it back in the open market? You know, any update there, and then hopefully it's in a review soon. Yeah. I mean, it's Alex, Phil. You know, I think first off, my observation is that our NCIB program I think has been a reasonably effective offset to Conoco's actions, selling down their block. You know, I mean, at this point, you guys have heard me say this so many times that you know it sounds pretty rote, but you know we're always happy to work with them. We haven't really found any opportunities to coordinate, and it's made a little bit difficult by the rules. You know, as long as the pricing works for us with our NCIB program, you know we think that that remains a pretty effective offset to their sell down. To your point, there's some comfort that it appears that it's gonna be coming to the end here pretty quickly. Right. Okay. Fair enough. Thank you. Yeah, no worries. We'll take our next question from Neil Mehta with Goldman Sachs. Good morning, team. I want to spend some time on risk management. Maybe there's a question for Jon or Jeff, but just talk about your philosophy around inventory management and risk management and hedging. It was a big number in the fourth quarter. Is that something that, as we think about Q1 with oil prices having picked up, you would think would sequentially move higher? Just talk about the philosophy around that in general, and any quantification you can provide at the forward curve would be terrific, too. Sure. You know, what we have, Neil, are really two programs that are live within the company and both of them are short-term. What we've built in this company is an integrated oil producer where we are moving our barrels out of Western Canada and into our refining network in PADD 2 as well as to market more broadly through the pipeline access that we've got. That was always a core consideration, how we built our strategy. We didn't want to be in a world where we were forced to sell our barrels at a discount and hard to stay. Market access is something we've talked about at length over the last four years and something that we've achieved through time and more particularly with the Husky acquisition. If you think about this company, we carry typically around 45 million barrels of inventory through month end. What we will do is we will hedge around 40% of those barrels from month to month, so that if we have a precipitous decline in the WTI price, about 40% of that inventory is hedged out. In a rising price environment, you're gonna see those barrels, you know, they will become less valuable and will lose money. In a falling price environment, you get exactly the opposite effect. Net-net, over the term of the cycle, you would expect that to be revenue neutral through time. We've just gone through a period where we've had, you know, seven consecutive quarters of rising prices. That's program one. Program two is another program we run where we take our WCS exposure and we align the pricing windows between WTI and the WTI- WCS differential so that we don't have a pricing exposure where we set the differential at one month and then the WTI price in the following month. We bring those together, collapse them, and we do that on about 60% of our exposure. Again, because we're bringing the WTI price forward, in a rising price environment, that program will lose money. In a declining pricing environment, it will make money. Net-net over the cycle, it'll be revenue neutral or better. Those are the two things that we do. Jon, can you help The Street calibrate using the forward curve what those hedging impacts could look like as we think about 2022? Well, it depends on where the price of WTI goes through 2022. If you're in a world where you've got kind of flat pricing, it should be, you know, largely revenue neutral. Thanks, team. Thanks, Neil. We'll take our next question from Manav Gupta with Credit Suisse. Hey, guys. I know it might sound like a modeling question, but it's not actually a modeling question, so bear with me. Your Foster Creek in this quarter was at 212 and Christina at 251. Now, if you look at the annual guidance, you basically are breaching the upper end of guidance on both those. I think Christina is 250 upper end, Foster 205. When we think about 2022, should we model you now at least at the top end of it, if not over the top end, as it relates to these two assets? Manav, what a thoughtful and insightful question. I ask Norrie this all the time, and Norrie will give you a response. Hi, Manav. It's Norrie here. I would suggest, you know, we give you a range because there's ups and downs as we kinda go through. Our fourth quarter, we had very strong, safe performance. We weren't impacted by the weather. We continue to have a strong program of activity going forward. I would just guide there is a range, and you could, you know, use both ends of the range as we kinda go forward. We have turnarounds both at Foster Creek and Christina Lake this year. That's balanced with we have strong inventory, very low finding and development costs kinda going forward, and we'll continue to strive to maximize our production. Perfect. Second question, and m y memory is- Manav, sorry, it's Jon. Apologies. Yes, sir. Maybe I'll just remind you of two other things as well that Norrie has spoken to. We do have turnarounds in both Foster and Christina this year, and there will be, you know, reduced production during those turnarounds. We do intend to take Foster Creek down in the Q2 timeframe and Christina Lake in the Q3 timeframe. That will impact those production numbers. What we've given you in the guidance, I think is something that's representative of where we're gonna be. Perfect. My quick follow-up here is, I think at the time you did the deal for Foster Creek and Christina Lake with ConocoPhillips, the contingent payment had a timeline. I think it was five years from the time you did the deal. Can you help us understand at what point will the contingent payments stop, if they would, as it relates to these two assets? Manav, it's Alex. There is a date circled on my calendar of May of this year, and I think that is when it rolls off. 17th. Nori has more granularity than me. May 17th. 17th at 12:00. Yeah. That's exactly five years, because May seventeenth was the closure date of these two assets back in 2017. Basically, post 2Q, you do not pay them, right? Is that the right way to think about it? Correct. Thank you. Thank you there for taking my questions. Thanks, Manav. Again, as a reminder, please press star one if you'd like to ask a question. Again, that is star one for question. Take our next question from Chris Varcoe with the Calgary Herald. Hi, it's a question for Alex. Alex, there's been a fair bit of talk about Trans Mountain pipeline expansion not taking place in 2022, but occurring sometime or at least being completed at some time in 2023, and with a substantially higher price tag. I guess what are you hearing and what kind of impact will it have upon Cenovus as a shipper on that expansion? Hey, Chris. Yeah, I mean, as I think a lot of people are aware, we're quite a significant shipper on TMX. As such, we're in regular contact with the owner and developer. I would say from our perspective, we're quite confident that nothing we're seeing really will make a significant difference, you know, for us as a shipper. You know, we expect that at any of the range of outcomes that we would model, that toll will still be an attractive toll for getting our production to market. Can you tell me how many barrels have you committed to the expansion? Geez, I'm not sure that's public, Chris. I think you could just go. We are one of the largest shippers on TMX, and it is a very meaningful volume. Just to follow up lastly, we've seen a rapid expansion in WCS prices in the last couple of weeks, and then obviously in oil prices. I'm curious how this is affecting your thoughts or changing your thoughts at all on capital spending in 2022. Does oil moving towards $100 a barrel or WCS being at $100 a barrel change your perspective at all? You know, Chris, I'm kind of old enough and bear enough scars that, you know, I guess when it comes to pricing, I'm always very cautious. You know, we anchor all of this company's development plans at the bottom of the cycle for oil and gas. We won't invest in a project that doesn't deliver an acceptable return at the bottom of the cycle, which, you know, for oil, we would describe as kind of 45 WTI. Although, you know, we're pleased to see these higher prices, it's just not something we can count on. Now, that being said, you know, we do have quite an active program both in the oil sands and in our conventional business. We're gonna be employing a lot of service, a lot of drilling and service rigs, a lot of contractors, just with our basic sustaining capital program. One final question, if I could, and that is, what is your understanding of where we're sitting with the tax credit from the federal government on carbon capture sequestration? Have you, I guess, got any response yet on whether EOR is gonna be included or not from the federal government? We have been consistently in discussions with the federal government, Chris. I mean, my goodness, now going on, you know, probably the better part of a year. I suspect that the next major milestone, you know, in this discussion is probably gonna come from the federal government with more details about what their plan on the Investment Tax Credit is going to be in the 2022 budget, which as I understand is likely gonna be announced in March or April. You know, obviously, at the end of the day, you know, a lot of that work is within the government's mandate. I would say we're working very collaboratively together, and we look forward to hearing from them. You know, we have had discussions about EOR, and I certainly, when I have the opportunity, like to remind the government that, you know, EOR right now is probably the most cost-effective way of sequestering CO2. At this point, we don't have any guidance as to whether they're gonna consider that. Thank you. Thanks, Chris. We will go to our next question from Nia Williams with Reuters. Hi there. You talked about looking to add value in Asia. Do you see there being more opportunity for investment there than in Canada at the moment? Hey, Nia, it's Alex. You know, look, we have a very good operation in Asia Pacific. We're quite happy with it. We have great partners, and you know, we have been able, you know, over time to continue to add development opportunities, and we continue to have those discussions. You know, it's relatively early days, but you know, I think it's a business that we see continued opportunities to make some modest investments in a pretty attractive basin. Okay, thanks. As a follow-up, do you expect to allocate any capital spending towards the Oil Sands Pathways to Net Zero this year? Sorry, you kind of broke up there for a sec. I didn't get the first part of that. Do you expect any major capital allocation to the Oil Sands Pathways initiative this year? You know, I think we're anticipating very significant, you know, capital investment, you know, over sort of the 8-10 years out in the future. I would anticipate most of the work we're doing right now would be around kind of feasibility studies, engineering, permitting, work on permitting. It is a relatively modest capital allocation for the next couple of years. Ramping up, particularly if we're successful with the federal government in that Investment Tax Credit for carbon capture and sequestration. As I'm sure you're aware, we have a foundational project which is building a carbon trunk line to a carbon sequestration facility, you know, in and around the Cold Lake area. You know that if the Investment Tax Credit were to come to pass, you know, you would see the partners certainly ramping up capital over that kind of 8-10 year period. Okay, thanks. Do you have a rough estimate at this point how much the project would cost? What sort of numbers are we talking about? You know, it really depends ultimately on a number of factors, but I think it's something you could think of kind of being in the scale of, you know, many single billions of dollars. Okay, thanks. Yeah, thank you. We'll take our next question from Janet McGurty with- Yes. Hi, thanks for taking my question. I actually have two of them for you. The first is about the future of your joint venture with Phillips 66 for the Wood River and Borger refineries. On their call, they had said that discussions had been floated about not having the joint venture anymore, and they said that their world has changed, talking about you. I was just wondering how your world has changed and what is the future of the joint venture for those two refiners? Then when I'm done, I have a second question. Sure. I mean, first off, I would say that, you know, that partnership with Phillips has been an excellent partnership. They are a great partner, and they've been a great operator of those assets. You know, I think what has changed is that, you know, our strategy and particularly with the conclusion of the Husky acquisition, I mean, we are really moving towards a strategy of being a fully integrated energy producer all the way from, you know, the production through to the refinery gate. You know, in a world like that, you can see a scenario where, you know, we definitely ultimately long-term view our strategy as being an operator of refineries. When we're involved in refineries that are great refineries, we would love to have 100% of it, all things being equal. You know, I don't think there's an urgency, you know, in any way to deal with that partnership. I think the comments from Phillips 66 would align with ours that over time, you know, people's company strategies change, and their goals change, and this might be a situation, you know, where we look to other alternatives. You know, there's no urgency, and we certainly don't have anything to announce. There's probably a lot of discussion to come on that. How would that work out though? Would you, because for example, like Wood River uses a lot of WCS, and I imagine that comes from you. I mean, how would that work out for you? I mean, would you take it? Would they take it? I mean, would you can keep some kind of supply arrangement going forward, or have you not thought that far? No, it's really hard to speculate. You know, it could be any of the above. We're really at a really sort of preliminary stage of having those discussions, so it's too early to comment. Do you have any timeline then around these discussions where you expect to reach a conclusion? No, I think these things kind of go at their own pace. You know, I honestly wish I could give you a little more detail, but it's gonna take a lot more discussions, you know, between the parties before we determine, you know, what the outcome is. It's gonna take- Gotcha -a bit of time. I understand. Now, here's my second question, and you said earlier in this comment that you put barrels into Capline in Q4. Can you give me any idea how much? Are you a committed shipper? Have you committed barrels? You know, how do you see this playing out for you and getting, I guess it'd be getting WCS to the Gulf, to Louisiana? How do you feel about that? Yeah, we are a committed Capline shipper, and we would look at that as part of, you know, as part of an integrated strategy to maximizing the value for our barrels. And obviously, you know, the Gulf Coast has generally been a pretty attractive market for the heavy barrels. It's just another route to market that we hope to maximize our netbacks. Oh, okay. Great. Listen, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. No worries. Thanks very much. That concludes today's question and answer session. Mr. Pourbaix, at this time, I'll turn the conference back to you for any additional or closing remarks. Well, thanks so much, operator, and thanks everybody once again, for your engagement with the company and your time today, and we'll let everyone get back to the rest of their day. Thanks again. Take care. This concludes today's call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.