Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Michelle, and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the MEG Energy 2023 Q1 Results Conference Call. All lines have been placed on mute to prevent any background noise. After the speaker's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press star, then the number one on your telephone keypad. If you would like to withdraw your question, please press star followed by the number two. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Derek Evans, CEO. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, Michelle. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us to review MEG Energy's 2023 Q1 operating and financial results. With me on the call this morning are Ryan Kubik, our Chief Financial Officer, Darlene Gates, our Chief Operating Officer, and Lyle Yuzdepski, our General Counsel and Corporate Secretary. I'd like to remind our listeners that this call contains forward-looking information. Please refer to the advisories in our disclosure documents filed on SEDAR and on our website. I'll keep my remarks brief today and refer listeners to yesterday's press release, along with the MD&A and financial results that you can find on SEDAR. Our top priority at MEG is our focus on health, safety, and the environment that ensures nobody gets hurt, eliminates serious incidents, and delivers operational excellence. I'm extremely proud of the safety, operating, and financial performance delivered by our team. Their focus on safety, plant reliability, steam utilization, and ongoing well optimization have all contributed to a strong operational quarter. Our operations team have begun our scheduled turnaround at the Christina Lake facility. Our priority is to maintain safe and reliable operations throughout the turnaround. Before I turn the call over to Darlene and Ryan to share details of our results, I'd like to briefly touch on some of the first quarter highlights. Bitumen production rose 6% to approximately 107,000 barrels per day at an industry-leading steam-oil ratio of 2.25, with an operating cost structure that was positively impacted by low natural gas and higher power prices. These strong operational results enabled our ongoing commitment to debt reduction. We continued to execute on our debt repayment strategy, repaying approximately CAD 117 million, with net debt declining to approximately $1 billion or approximately CAD 1.4 billion at the end of the first quarter. Approximately 50% of 2023 free cash flow is being allocated to debt reduction, with the remainder being applied to share buybacks. Once we achieve the $600 million debt repayment target, MEG will return 100% of free cash flow to our shareholders. I'll now ask Darlene Gates, our COO, to speak to our operating results and ask Ryan Kubik, our CFO, to talk to our financial results. Before I open the call to questions, I'll provide an update on the Pathways Alliance's efforts this year. Darlene, over to you. Thanks, Derek. Good morning, everyone. In the first quarter, MEG maintained its position as a leader in innovative and responsible energy development. The continued strong operational performance I will highlight today is underpinned by a commitment at all levels of our organization to ensure we take care of the safety of our employees, contractors, and the communities in which we operate. In the first quarter, we executed a high level of activity while achieving one of our lowest quarterly total recordable incident rates in the past several years. At 0.24 incidents per 200,000 work hours. Our first quarter production averaged 107,000 barrels per day, a 6% increase over the same period. This production was delivered from Christina Lake at a top-tier steam-oil ratio of 2.25. Since exiting 2022 at record production rates, we've gained valuable knowledge surrounding water treatment optimization associated with the higher throughput rates at the facility. Our team's continuous improvement mindset has been instrumental in proactively managing this. Total operating expenses comprised of non-energy and energy costs of CAD 6.13 per barrel for the first quarter. This is a 31% reduction from the same period last year. In the quarter, we continued to realize substantial benefits from our cogeneration facilities, which helped reduce energy operating costs net of power revenue of CAD 1.36 per barrel. Non-energy costs remained essentially flat from the same period a year ago at CAD 4.77 per barrel. That's in line with our full year guidance of CAD 4.75- CAD 5.05 per barrel. As Derek mentioned, executing a safe and effective turnaround is a top operational priority for us in our second quarter. This year's turnaround will be focused on our phase one and two facilities and is expected to have a full year production impact of 6,000 barrels per day. This translates into a second quarter volumes outlook of approximately 84,000 barrels-88,000 barrels per day. Our teams recently completed safe ramp down of the facilities and have begun conducting scheduled maintenance focused on maintaining regulatory compliance and delivering improved performance. Despite continued pressure on short cycle labor availability and associated service rates, I believe we're well-positioned to deliver a productive and impactful turnaround. Turning to development. This quarter, we executed a robust winter drilling program. Preliminary results continue to validate quality of our long-term resource base. We also kicked off our 2023 infill and redevelopment drilling program, which pairs high-quality resource with proven innovative subsurface technologies. This supports our previously announced production guidance of 100,000 barrels - 105,000 barrels per day. Looking ahead, we're focused on continuing to maintain a strong safety and environmental performance record to consistently deliver sustainable value to our shareholders. With that, I'll hand it over to Ryan. Thanks, Darlene. MEG generated $274 million of adjusted funds flow, or $0.94 per share in the first quarter of 2023. The 6% production increase over the first quarter of 2022 was more than offset by a 49% decrease in our bitumen realization after net transportation and storage expense. As a result, cash operating netback declined to $34 per barrel from $70 per barrel in the first quarter of 2022. In 2023, we sold 56% of our AWB blend in the US Gulf Coast, generating a $2.25 per barrel premium relative to the Edmonton AWB index. In addition, operating expenses net of power revenue declined to CAD 6.13 per barrel, reflecting a 78% increase in our realized power price and lower natural gas prices compared to the first quarter of 2022. Crown royalties also declined to CAD 3.18 per barrel as a result of lower bitumen revenue. We had estimated that our Christina Lake project would reach royalty payout late in the first quarter. Advanced expenditure timing provided additional royalty shelter during the quarter and moved that timing into early Q2. After funding CAD 113 million of capital expenditures, MEG generated CAD 161 million of free cash flow for debt reduction and share buybacks in the first quarter of 2023. We repurchased $86 million of senior notes and ended the quarter with $1 billion of net debt. In addition, we bought $103 million, or 4.9 million MEG shares in the quarter at a weighted average price of $20.88. Thanks, and with that, I'm gonna hand it back to Derek. Thanks, Ryan, I apologize for the noise in the background. Seems to be lots of fire engines rolling around. Before we move into questions, I'd like to share an update on the Pathways Alliance. MEG, along with its Pathways Alliance peers, is progressing pre-work on the proposed foundational carbon capture and storage project, which will transport CO2 via pipeline from multiple oil sands facilities to be stored safely and permanently in the Cold Lake region of Alberta. Significant amount of work is underway with the Pathways Alliance as we also progress environmental assessments and early engineering work for the carbon capture and storage project and also advance other technologies. This quarter, the alliance made progress in engineering by awarding a contract to a global engineering firm to continue development plans for the 400 km CO2 transportation pipeline. Conversations with the provincial and federal governments about their role in partnering with us to advance decarbonization efforts continue to go well. On March 28th, the Canadian federal government announced measures in its 2023 budget to provide greater policy certainty to support and incentivize investment in clean technologies, including CCS projects that are critical to meeting Canada's emissions reduction goals. We continue to engage with federal and provincial governments in aligning how the Pathways Alliance can support Canada in reaching its climate commitments. As I bring my remarks to a close, I once again want to extend my thanks to our team for their commitment and perseverance. I'm proud of what we've been able to accomplish and confident in our future and our commitment to sustainable, innovative and responsible energy development. On behalf of MEG's board of directors and our management team, I wanna thank you for your continued support. With that, I'll turn the call back over to Michelle to begin the Q&A. Thank you, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now begin the question-and-answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please press star followed by one on your telephone keypad. If your question has been answered and you would like to withdraw from the queue, please press star followed by two. If you are using a speakerphone, please lift your handset before pressing any keys. One moment please for your first question. Your first question will come from Greg Pardy at RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Mr. Pardy, your line is open. Your next question will come from Menno Hulshof at TD Securities. Please go ahead. Thanks, good morning, everyone. I'll start with a question on growth. On the last call, Derek, I believe you talked about potentially growing production to 120,000 barrels per day over the next two to three years. Can you just elaborate on how you arrived at that target? Is it largely being driven by the 20,000 barrels per day increase to takeaway capacity that you're going to get through TMX, or do other factors come into play? When we think about capital efficiencies for that growth, how much of it can be delivered through lower capital efficiency opportunities like redrilling of existing pads versus higher cost options like new pads? Now I'll take a cut at that, and Darlene may want to step in with some details on redrills and the capital efficiencies associated with those. You know, our, the growth that I talk about, the small moderate growth of 2%- 3%, you know, going from 110,000- 120,000 is really predicated on two things. It's predicated on, well, it's really three. One, that our investors do not want us spending large amounts of capital, growing. These typically types of expenditures we're talking about are really debottlenecking expenditures inside of our facility, as well as short cycle redrills, and that sort of work that has very high capital, or very low capital sort of reinvestment of costs, very quick payout in a matter of months. I think the way that it's not being driven by our takeaway capacity in any way, shape, or form. It's nice to have that takeaway capacity. We see the biggest value of the takeaway capacity being that it's really gonna tighten up that WCS differential even tighter, as it pulls, you know, up to 600,000 barrels a day of product away from the U.S. Gulf Coast and puts it on the West Coast. Darlene, I don't know if you wanna talk a little bit about, capital reinvestment efficiencies. Yeah. Thanks, Menno, and thanks, Derek. I think Derek hit most of the main points, but a couple adds I would throw in there is, we have some pretty exciting new pad development, from our pad design that, the team is working on pretty hard that, we'll see come out in the next one to two years. That's gonna help us really drive that capital efficiency for the new pads. Derek really reinforced, you know, our program has a lot of exciting opportunity as we go and use the technology for the 4D seismic. That's helping us really optimize the existing pads, and that gets after those quick you know, redrills and infills that we're pursuing at this time. I'd also always wanna do another shout-out to the optimization team that does from the facilities and the workovers that our team is working on. Again, just keep dialing in the reservoir as we learn it to get more familiar with it. Looking to the future, our winter program, as I mentioned, looks pretty exciting to us. We've got a lot of great reservoir to go pursue. The surface side of it is really going after that capital efficiency cost opportunity. A lot of exciting work on the way, and I think will really help capture those capital efficiencies. Excellent. Thanks, Darlene and Derek, for that. Just, the second question relates to the 500,000 barrels per month of contracted dock space on the Gulf Coast. I guess my question is that the end game for dock space, or is there potential to expand that? I guess if we take it to a higher level, what are your midterm goals for growing export capacity? Now it's Derek. Look, 500,000 barrels a day is basically the, in the US Gulf Coast, about what you can put in an Aframax. You know, we have the capability of effectively loading an Aframax a month at the current time. That is not our ambition. We would love to be able to have a better, or clearer sight to increase volumes off the US Gulf Coast or across the dock. You should think about it as a starting point, not a endpoint, and that if it's going to grow, it should grow in, you know, sort of 500,000 barrel a day type of pieces. As we think about our export strategy, you know, I think it's long been a desire of Western Canadian producers to get their product, their heavy oil to the U.S. Gulf Coast. Now that everybody's successfully doing that, we've managed to move the pinch point in terms of pricing and move the pricing power away from Pad two down to Pad three. Our strategy is we should be working hard to find other buyers for that product to take that product away from the U.S. Gulf Coast and make sure that we're very much better balanced between supply and refiner demand in that area. You know, I don't wanna get into too much specifics, but you've heard us continue to talk about, you know, the big driver in the WCS differential coming in as tight as has been, incremental barrels moving across the dock and in this last quarter to China. You know, India has also been a big buyer of this product, and we expect that to continue. You should expect us to try and continue to move volumes in excess of what we've currently got dock space to do to those markets. Thanks, Derek. I'll turn it back. Thanks, Menno. Your next question will come from John Royall at J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. I just wanted to see if there was an update to the timing on reaching your net debt for, I think, year-end 2024 was the most recent. Your release from 1Q just says beyond 2023 at current oil prices. Is year-end next year still the right timeline to think about, or is there any update there? Yeah, you know. Hi, John, it's Ryan. I would say that, you know, with the narrowing differentials we've seen over the last little while, we've seen the free cash flow coming in a little bit higher than we had anticipated. That's allowing us to repay debt maybe a little bit sooner. It is into 2024 at current oil prices, maybe in the second half of 2024 at this point in time, relative to the end of 2024 previously. The longer we see narrower differentials, higher oil prices, it's gonna shift. Still, second half, 2024-ish. Okay, great. Thank you. Could you just talk a little bit about the drivers of the working capital headwind in Q1? I think it was about CAD 110 million. Do you expect any reversal in Q2 or in 2023 in general? A lot of that depends on the oil price. The biggest driver is our accounts receivable rising. This quarter, we did see an increase in AR around purchased product sales. Actually, we did see WTI go down relative to the first quarter of the prior period, or relative to the end of the year, I should say. We still saw our accounts receivable go up because we did sell some purchased product. That was the main driver. We did have some interest payments. That always impacts the first quarter as well. Those are probably the two big drivers. We could see it reverse if oil prices fall, I guess. I would say the best view is that we'll see it pretty stable at this point in time. Thank you very much. Your next question will come from Neil Mehta at Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Good morning, Derek and team. Thanks for taking the time. I guess the first question's around sustaining CapEx. It's tracking around CAD 400 million this year. How do you see that evolving over time and what are the puts and takes, right, ranging from inflation to volumes? Yeah, Neil, it's Derek. Thank you for that question. You know, it's one that we talk about often, both externally and internally. You hit on the biggest single unknown, which is inflation, and what is the impact. Over the last two years, you've seen that sustaining capital move up fairly aggressively to that CAD 400 million number as a result of, you know, over, I would say, or approximately 20% inflation. You know, we're in the process of and continuing to watch inflation this year. We're still seeing inflationary pressures on two fronts, on basically salaries. Wages are still a hot button moving anywhere in that 5%-7% in both the field and in the office side of the business. I'd also say the other aspect on this is availability of people. That cuts into your sustaining capital in two ways. One, it takes longer. If you can't find people, it takes longer to get the job done. And if you can't find experienced people, the effectiveness of, and the cost effectiveness and the safety and everything else that's associated with green hands or inexperienced people, adds to your cost structure and also adds to your safety risk. You know, it's too early for us to really be able to tell you what we think is going to happen in terms of inflation on that sustaining capital number, but that is the single biggest driver at this point in time. Thanks, Derek. The follow-up is on WCS and then TMX associated with that. You know, we've seen WCS tighten up a lot here. How much of this is, do you think, structural versus seasonal? There's an element to us that seems more structural in nature, especially given the OPEC cuts, but curious on your perspective on that. Then as it relates to TMX and the cost overruns, how should we think about any financial impact that would have on the shippers? Recognizing that's a moving target right now. Yeah. Yeah. Structural versus seasonal on WCS. You know, my thesis and our thesis at MEG has been that this is structural. This is largely been driven by, you know, increased loads across the dock. In at least in this year's, the biggest driver has been incremental loads going into China as they've come out of their COVID shutdowns. We don't see that dropping off, so we would say that that is a structural piece, and you should expect to see that continue. I would be remiss if I didn't say there is some seasonality associated with this, but it's at the margin, and I think quite small. I think, though, as you move, you roll the clock forward and you think about what's going on in that more macro picture with the Mexican refinery Dos Bocas, coming up at, you know, somewhere in the neighborhood of 340,000 barrels, TMX coming on in the fourth quarter or early in the first quarter next year, all of a sudden you're pulling another 1 million barrels away from that US Gulf Coast market. I would expect that you could see further structural tightening in that market, you know, as we drive forward. I think the outlook on WCS is, is quite positive. Be very supportive of our business going forward. But you will continue to see variations in that differential, which are, you know, sort of well understood from a seasonal perspective. On TMX, you know, I've got to... We are a shipper. We ship about 20,000 barrels a day, or we will be shipping 20,000 barrels a day of Dilbit. It's still too early for us to be able to talk to with any degree of certainty, what the impact of those cost overruns will be. We are precluded from providing information by virtue of an NDA that we have signed. I really can't elaborate or talk about in great detail about this other than to say, you know, this is an important piece of infrastructure for the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. It provides another 600,000 barrels a day of egress. Especially when you think that our major market is the U.S. Gulf Coast, and it's pulling that 600,000 barrels a day away from there and is going to impact the WCS differential, we believe positively on our whole business. You know, talking about a toll on a specific part of that line, probably wouldn't do it justice in terms of the economic value that it's going to bring to the table for us. Derek, to follow up on this, I don't know if you can comment on it, but our understanding of TMX is while there was a cost overrun, it's still tracking on schedule from a timing perspective. Is that fair? Yes. That's the, that's our understanding as well. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thanks, Neil. Your next question comes from Jesus Sanchez at Castañar. Please go ahead. Hi. Thank you for taking my question. A couple of questions for Ryan. In the reconciliation from funds from operation to adjusted funds flow, we have CAD 87 million in realized equity price risk management gain, which is double from last quarter. Maybe you can give some explanation about this account. Thank you. The second question will be about the return of shareholders. We have spent CAD 170 million in debt repayment, but our net debt is flat, CAD 1,389 million, flat from last quarter. Also the repurchases. We have spent CAD 100 million in repurchases, but only the share account is decreased by half of the CAD 5 million that we have repurchased, which accounts only for CAD 50 million. There's CAD 50 million there, CAD 170 million over there in debt repayments. Maybe you can give us some color about that. Sure. Write them down, remind me if I don't have answers. The first one was on the CAD 87 million of equity price risk management. That was the equity risk management hedge that was put in place to manage the risk around the LTI that was issued back in 2020 at a relatively low price in the CAD 1.57 range. We did a good piece of business there, brought in about CAD 120 million to the company by hedging that LTI position. It did settle in the period. The 2020 LTI settled during the period, the CAD 87 million that you're seeing there is the realized gain from that position. We have recognized for our accounting purposes about CAD 78 million of that at the end of the year. It went from unrealized CAD 78 million to realized CAD 87 million and CAD 9 million moved during the quarter. You're just seeing the impact of a shift to realized from unrealized, if that makes sense. Yeah. You had a question on net debt, why it only fell, why it didn't fall maybe as much as you would've anticipated. The reason for that is the earlier question on working capital build. We did generate $160 million of free cash flow during the period. We had $200 million of cash available to repay debt and buy back shares. With that $160 million of free cash flow, a portion of that is sitting in accounts receivable and wasn't actually collected as cash. Cash failed to buy back stock and the debt during the period. A portion of the free cash flow that we generated is sitting in accounts receivable, yet to be collected. That's the impact you're seeing there. Net debt did fall. It just didn't fall as much as you might have expected because the cash balance fell to help us buy back that CAD 103 million of stock and about CAD 117 million of debt. That was your second question on working capital build. The last question was on the number of shares. We bought back 4.9 million shares during the period, but the actual share balance didn't fall that much. The reason for that is we actually issued some LTI during the period. We did have an offsetting issue of stock. Not all the LTI is cash based. Some of it is share based and was issued in shares during the period. Thank you for this breakdown. Thank you very much to Ryan. You're welcome. Ladies and gentlemen, once again, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one now. There are no further questions on the phone line, I will turn the conference back to Derek Evans for any closing remarks. Thank you, Michelle, and thank you to everybody that joined us this morning for our Q1 results conference call. We're excited about what we're able to achieve this last year and look forward to updating you on our operational performance and return of capital program when we release our Q2 results in July. Hope everybody has a great day, and thank you again for joining us. Ladies and gentlemen, this does conclude your conference c all for this morning. We would like to thank you all for participating and ask you to please disconnect your lines.