Thank you for standing by. This is the conference operator. Welcome to the Obsidian Energy's 2023 guidance conference call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode, and the conference is being recorded. Should you need assistance during the conference call, you may signal an operator by pressing star then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to Susan Soprovich, Investor Relations. Ple ase go ah ead. Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone, thanks for joining us. My name is Susan Soprovich, I'm the Investor Relations Analyst at Obsidian Energy. This morning, we will be discussing our 2023 capital budget and 2022 reserves report. With me this morning speaking on the call are Stephen Loukas, Interim President and Chief Executive Officer, Gary Sykes, Senior Vice President, Commercial and Development, Jay McGilvary, Senior Director of Development, and Rick Schiller, Senior Director and Controller. The rest of the leadership team is also in attendance. Before I call to turn over to Steve, I'd like to point out that we will refer to forward-looking information in connection with Obsidian Energy and the subject matter of today's call. By its nature, this information contains forecasts, assumptions, and expectations about future outcomes. Remind you it is subject to the risks and uncertainties affecting every business, including ours. Please refer to our public disclosure filings available on both the SEDAR and EDGAR systems for a full discussion of significant factors and risks that could affect Obsidian Energy or could affect future outcomes for Obsidian Energy. Go ahead, Steve. Thank you, Susan. Good morning, everyone. We will try to go through the presentation in an expedited manner to ensure that we have ample time for Q&A. Turning your attention to page three, I'll quickly go over our investment highlights. One, we have low decline. We have a low decline oil-weighted asset base with significant underlying reserves. We are the largest acreage holder in the Cardium, with significant positions in both Willesden Green and the Pembina areas. In Peace River, we have high-quality cold flow, heavy oil production from the Bluesky, and we have upside emerging from the Clearwater. We are slated to generate strong free cash flow of approximately CAD 105 million, assuming $80 WTI and CAD 3 AECO, which would reduce our total net debt to approximately CAD 215 million and net debt to FFO to approximately half a turn, assuming we were to use all of that free cash flow to pay down debt. I am pleased to announce that the board has authorized a return of capital with an initial NCIB, which is subject to maintaining CAD 65 million of liquidity and complying with current credit facilities. We'll talk a bit more about that later in the presentation during the Q&A session. Lastly, on the ESG front, we're committed to strong ESG practices, including minimizing the environmental impact that we leave. Turning your attention to page 4, I'll quickly go over our corporate overview. In 2022, we had average production of approximately 30,700 BOEs a day, which resulted in year-over-year production growth of approximately 25%. Our production mix is currently approximately 65% oil and liquids. Based off of the strength of a very good reserve report last year, our 2P reserves have now grown to approximately 181 million BOEs, which resulted in very strong growth. Our RLI on a 2P basis is approximately 13 years, PDP decline of approximately 24%, and given our strong taxable position, we will not be a cash taxpayer for the foreseeable future. Current enterprise value is approximately CAD 1 billion, and net debt on a Q3 annualized basis is approximately 0.8 of a turn. Shifting to page 5, just to talk about our strategy. You know, we continue to focus on investing in our Cardium asset and really driving and recycling that free cash flow to invest in our Peace River asset, where we believe we have significant running room and the ability to both grow production and reserves. We're focused on increasing scale through managing our cost structure and we're really focused on doing that via our production adds. We continue to target net debt of CAD 225 million, notwithstanding that the board has authorized an NCIB to take advantage of what they believe to be a share price that is a material discount to our intrinsic value. All that will result in driving per share growth via combination of asset development, debt reduction, as well as the share buyback. Turning your attention to page six and what our focus is for 2023. You know, the board has authorized a development plan that earmarks CAD 240 million to our base core business, while at the same time also allocating CAD 25 billion for exploration and appraisal drilling in Peace River. The CAD 240 million of core business development results in approximately 7% growth at the midpoint. We've forecasted minimal volumes for the CAD 25 million of exploratory/appraisal spend, but we think it's extremely important that we further delineate the 500 sections of land that we own in Peace River. During the first half, we've utilized 5 rigs. At the onset of the year, we're currently down to 4 rigs and we'll be reducing from there. We have all of our services contracted for the first half of 2023 to ensure that we manage our cost pressures and inflation. You know, we're doing our best to manage what, you know, has clearly been an inflationary environment. As I previously alluded to, at our forecasted, Commodity prices will result in that results in CAD 105 million of free cash flow as part of the NCIB, and we'll continue to allocate between both the NCIB as well as further debt reduction contingent on candidly where our shares trade. We are focused on expanding our debt capital to enhance our liquidity to allow us to start the buyback sooner rather than later, and we will address that further during the Q&A session. We're currently in the application process with the TSX for their approval on the share buyback. We will disclose it once we've secured approval. With that, I will turn over to Gary Sykes, who will walk you through our 2023 guidance. Hey, good morning, everyone. Just building on Steve's opening remarks, slide 7 presents our formal guidance ranges for 2023. To reiterate, we landed on this particular construct as an optimal way to meet multiple objectives. Namely, continued production growth, dedicating increased funding to accelerate the appraisal of our land base at Peace River, continuing to strengthen the balance sheet in the form of continued debt pay down, and looking to return capital to our shareholders. Just making our way through the table, starting with production, we anticipate a range of 32,000-33,500 BOE a day with a commensurate capital expenditure program of CAD 260 million-CAD 270 million. Again, as Steve mentioned, approximately CAD 25 million of this is earmarked for that accelerated appraisal activity in the Peace River area. Decommissioning expenditures are estimated between CAD 26 million and CAD 28 million, in line with new regulatory spend targets. Net operating expenses between CAD 13.50 and CAD 14.40 per BOE, and commensurate general and administrative charges of CAD 60- CAD 170 per BOE. If we look to the financial forecast associated with the midpoint of our guidance and using a WTI price of $80 US and CAD 3 for AECO, we anticipate generating an FFO of just under CAD 400 million this year, with a free cash flow of CAD 105 million. Net debt prior to the end of the year, we're seeing as being just over CAD 200 million, with an associated net debt to FFO of 0.5x at the end of the year. All this prior to the NCIB that Steve mentioned, of course. The bottom part of that chart gives you some sensitivities to various different commodity prices, I'll leave you to look at that in due course. Let me move to slide 8, give you an update on the reserves. The first line gives you our year-end 2022 volumes, which have increased to 76.2 million barrels of oil equivalent on a PDP basis, through to just over 180 million barrels of oil equivalent on a 2P basis. Associated with these new volumes, you can see the comment to the right that references the significant increase in value year on year in our book, 49% on a 1P or total proved basis and over 50% on a 2P or proved plus probable basis. In addition, on the next line, you can see our reserve replacement ratios, again, very strong on both PDP and 1P basis, and really exceptional on a 2P basis, almost 400%. What I would say is that's as the team this year, we simply set out to align our capital expenditure plans with the quality of our land holdings such that our FDC is now appropriately sized, at CAD 1.25 billion over the next 5-year period. The key takeaway from this slide is a very strong year with respect to our year-end 2022 reserves. Let me move to slide 9 and build on that reserve story as a link to what we see as part of the current value proposition at Obsidian. The table on the left shows you a breakdown of our volumes by product type, the colored bars at the bottom of the table show you the value at NPV 10 of our book in different reserve categories against the 70, 80, and 90 dollar US WTI price. If we translate those values to a net asset value per share on the right-hand side, we can see that at, say, the middle case of 80 dollars US, we have a PDP per share value of approximately $14 versus where we're trading today, notionally around $8.70-$8.80. In summary, our strong reserve book and values really do underpin our value proposition in our asset base. Let me move to slide 10, and I'd like to pivot to an overview of our 2023 development program before I pass it over to Jay, who's our Senior Director of Development and will walk you through our area plans in detail. There's 3 points I'd like to make on this slide. Firstly, you know, as Steve mentioned, we are presently drilling in all 3 of our asset areas and plan to deliver some 25 wells prior to break up across that asset base. Second point I'd make is we do have a second half drilling program planned. However, we do have significant flexibility in our inventory to modify that plan in response to any changes we see in the commodity price environment, and we'll continue to refine our H2 plans through the early part of this year. The last point I'd make is, look, we also have an active appraisal and delineation program planned at our Peace River asset base, as we've discussed, in both the Bluesky and the Clearwater formations. In addition to that, we're planning for up to 4 incremental oil sands exploration wells. The strategic intent here is to accelerate the future inventory in the asset and de facto increase the future optionality in development planning at a portfolio level. Again, another important year in our Peace River asset coming up. With that, I will pass it over to Jay to go over the details of our development program on slide 11. Thank you, Gary. As Gary said, I'm Jay McGilvary, Senior Director of Development of Obsidian Energy, and it's my pleasure to provide you all with a more in-depth look at our asset base and our 2023 development and exploration plans. Gary provided you with a comprehensive update on our year-end 2022 reserve results. Our ability to grow our reserves year after year is tied directly to the incredible Cardium asset at the heart of our company. Those of you who know Obsidian Energy or our basin in general understand that the Cardium is a top-tier asset. We continue to expand our reservoir modeling throughout the reservoir, seeking new opportunities not just with the drill bit, but also ways to optimize our infrastructure and existing well inventory. We have a slide at the appendix regarding our optimization program, which added approximately 800 BOE a day last year, and with opportunities already available to us in our portfolio. We're off to another fast start in this area in 2023. However, as Gary Sykes alluded to, the Obsidian value is now far greater than just the Cardium, and our diverse asset base is a competitive advantage for the company. In 2021, we averaged production of about 20,000 BOE a day from the Cardium, 3,100 from Peace River, and just about 800 from the Viking. Today, we've grown all those assets to 23,000, 6,700, and 1,400 a day respectively. We've seen growth across our entire asset base. We've also utilized some of the multi-zone potential available to us in both the Devonian and Mannville within the Cardium and the opportunities that underlie and overlie this asset. We were extremely busy in Q2 2022 with a significant number of wells to come on throughout the process and coming on production in the upcoming weeks. We had five rigs running throughout January, as Steve alluded to, and we're busy across the board. On slides 12 and 13, we go into more depth on both our Willesden Green and Pembina assets. Willesden Green in particular, we've been in continuous development since 2017, with only a brief stoppage in 2020 to account for low commodity prices. We returned in the second half of 2022 to posting some of the top-tier Cardium results and analyst reports, as alluded to in some of our previous press releases. We continue to focus our drilling campaign in the area in half 1 2023, but also add incremental production through the field, the bottlenecking of our infrastructure. We see significant value in the already existing wells and plan to invest in terms of increasing total production in the field without necessarily having to put the drill bit to work. In both Willesden Green and Pembina on slide 13, we plan to bring on an additional four wells in the next few weeks, inclusive of the nine that carried over from our 2022 program across all of our assets. About 24 months ago, on slide 13, we returned to development of our Cardium program in Pembina. It's complementary to the Willesden Green development program in that typical production rates are higher in Willesden Green, but Pembina presents very strong reserves and a rough equivalent in economic value. We're also finding additional opportunities in our asset base not explicitly mentioned in our well count through both waterflood investment and that optimization potential. Not in our well count in the 2023 program is the significant non-op position, where we see at least 12 wells to be drilled with both integrated waterflood opportunities on some of the unit wells where we have a significant working interest. Those are all incremental to the value that Gary Sykes presented on the total well count. Moving on to slide 14, Steve and Gary Sykes both strongly alluded to this, new to our program is a more significant investment in Peace River. While I use those words somewhat interchangeably, know that we are balancing our development program in the core areas where the reservoir is well-established with what we see as significant incremental opportunity, both stepping out short in small distances and broadly across the entire asset base for additional opportunities in Peace River. For the first time in many years, we have as much activity in Peace River as we do in the Cardium, and a development program that we're excited to lean into. We have 4 Bluesky wells currently being tied into permanent facilities in progress right now and completion's underway on the first Walrus exploration well, visible on slide 14. On slide 14, you can see the core developm ent areas. We also have wells to the west of Harmon Valley Main and two wells, one currently drilling Walrus and one going under, being tied in in North Walrus, that will add significant reserve value should they prove to be successful. We're very excited about the initial geological results we've seen from these and are expediting the on-production dates on all those wells as quickly as possible. All of this, we are running a full-scale Bluesky and development exploration program in parallel with the overlying Clearwater. On slide 16, we highlight the potential of the Clearwater across our asset base. The Obsidian Clearwater exploration continues in the area with two main focus areas currently with wells drilled, Dawson and Seal. We currently have wells on production in both strike areas and plan to follow up with additional drilling in 2023. While we've disclosed some of the initial results in the Seal well, where we saw initial promising rates and high-quality oil better than the underlying Bluesky, we are still in the appraisal process on both of these wells. In my view, we are ahead of the industry pace right now across the region with multiple license ready locations across our asset that will allow us to quickly scale not just to our results, but also what our competitors are doing as additional drill rigs enter the area. In parallel, we have scaled up a senior technical team with established Clearwater expertise to rise to this challenge. It is early days in understanding the broader Clearwater across Peace River, but Obsidian has leveraged our competitive infrastructure and production base in the area to ensure we are positioned to be successful. In December, we released those initial early results from the Seal well, and we plan to follow up with further updates in the near future. Finally, on slide 17 is a slide I'm excited to present, our Viking development. A couple years ago, this was an asset that sat in the appendix of our presentation. We saw an opportunity in 2022 to leverage off-cycle drilling opportunities before breakup commenced in the other areas of the basin and step in with the drilling rig where demand for cost pressures weren't quite as significant. We drilled 8 wells in the area, and one of those was inclusive of the step-out well on the 422 pad, the 527 well. We have a slide that goes into details on that in the appendix, but needless to say, we're very excited by the results of that step-out well. They change the overall economic thesis of the area. Now Viking represents a shorter cycle economic investment with returns on par with the rest of our asset base. We plan to step in aggressively where we're drilling 11 wells immediately in Q1 of this year. We'll make a significant contribution to AA, the company, and also, if able to follow up on those results of that promising 5 and 27 well, a meaningful impact in terms of future development in the assets going forward as well. With that takes it to the conclusion of my. I'll pass it over to Rick Schiller to go into the next slides. Yeah. Thanks, Jay. Moving on to a quick update on our ESG efforts. We wanted to point out that recently, this past December, we published our first ESG report. The report outlines key information around our commitment to ESG practices across our organization and communities. It also outlines our key accomplishments and initiatives that we've been focused on over the past few years. There's obviously a lot of information in this report, please visit our website for a copy if you wanna take a read. We're currently in the preliminary stages of compiling our 2022 data, once we have this gathered, we'll be updating the report and releasing a new version here in the coming months. Moving on to the next slide on the hedging front, our recent focus has been on the gas side due to current projected storage levels throughout 2023. As a result, we've been building our position here over the past month or so. It's important to note that our board recently approved an increase to our hedging limit for gas, specifically up to 80% of production during the summer of 2023 and up to 70% for next winter, so that's late 2023 and early 2024. Note that the hedges on this slide are based on January 27th, but we have actually added in 2 incremental gas hedges over the past 24 hours, an additional 10,000 GJ per day in March of 2023 at just over $3 per GJ and an additional 10,000 GJ per day from November 2023- March 2024 at $3.40 per GJ. Obviously, continue to monitor prices, look for opportunities to further build on our hedge book as we move forward. With that, I'll pass it back to Steve. Thank you, Rick. I'll turn your attention to page 20 and summarize as to why we believe an investment in Obsidian Energy is highly compelling. First, we have a very strong Cardium land position, which allows us to generate, you know, utilize our deep inventory to generate strong returns, which leads to robust free cash flow generation. We have a highly compelling position in Peace River with approximately 500 sections with established Bluesky production, owned infrastructure, and significant Clearwater potential that will drive further upside growth. We now have a board-authorized NCIB, which will be subject to maintaining the CAD 65 million of minimum liquidity that we previously discussed, as well as complying with current credit facility with the provisions of our current credit facilities. We trade at a significant discount, both in the way of reserve values as well as cash flow multiples when compared to our peers. We also have a significant tax pool position, which allows Obsidian Energy to be a non-cash taxpayer for at least the next six years at $100 WTI. Obviously, at current strip pricing, we would not be a cash taxpayer for, you know, considerably longer period than that. With that, you know, I'm pleased to open it up for Q&A. Thanks very much, Steve and the whole team. At this time, if you have any questions, you can put them in if you're on the webcast. If not, I will be fielding that and letting the team answer. The first question, we've got several shareholders who have asked this question, so we might as well go right ahead with that, is comment on as to why is it a share buyback versus a dividend, and what was the board's thought process in favoring a dividend versus a buyback? Sure. Thanks, Susan. I'll answer that question. The board ultimately looked at both forms of return of capital. You know, I think we had, as a management team, had been fairly consistent in regards to kind of what our preference would be in light of, you know, where our shares were trading. Historically, I'm not a big proponent of buybacks within the E&P space. Having said that, you know, as Gary outlined in his slides, where we spoke about our reserve value, we are simply trading a material discount to our PDP at $80. You know, we can buy our own reserves, you know, and capture that discount without taking any execution risk, which at this juncture is a lot more attractive than paying out a dividend. What I would say to you is it's not that the board is not open to paying a dividend once we close that valuation gap, but if we are successful in buying back a meaningful amount of our shares, we could, in theory, pay an even bigger dividend on the residual shares. I think that's the way to appropriately think about it. Great. Thank you very much. One question we have in terms of our guidance itself is a question from Amit about heavy oil differentials, what are we using in our guidance, as well as what is our commodity price outlook for 2023? Sure. Jay or Gary, do you want to handle the differential question, and I could outline our commodity price outlook? Sure, yeah. The simple answer is, in our modeling, we're using $22 U.S. per WCS differential. Steve, I'll pass it back to you on the outlook. Look, in the way of, you know, our commodity price outlook, you know, we have kind of our, you know, the price guidance which our budget is anchored off of, which is $80 WTI, and CAD 3 AECO. In regards to my own personal outlook, which is a bit different than, you know, kind of our, you know, what we've guided to. You know, I think oil probably averages high $80s, $90 the last nine months of the year. I still think you probably have some volatility to work through. Having said that, I think the, you know, mobility data coming out of China is very constructive as well as other anecdotals that you can look to. That combined with, you know, what I think will be fairly muted supply growth this year, and SPR release is largely behind us, I think sets up rather well for constructive pricing. You know, we're bearish gas just given, you know, what you've seen out of winter or, or the lack thereof. I could see, you know, kind of gas trading certainly sub $2.50, but, you know, kind of south of $2.00. I think that's part of the rationale as to why we have moved to hedge, you know, more of our gas exposure. We've actually added to our hedge position in gas yesterday, which is not outlined in the presentation. The presentation was as of January 27th. As to why Rick alluded to the board authorized, you know, kind of a higher hedge limit for both summer and winter gas, because we want to take some of that volatility out. Longer term, we're very constructive on gas pricing, but I think that, you know, storage is at levels where I think you could see some further volatility in the price. Great. Thanks, Steve. A question here from Donald in terms of wondering why we are not paying down debt instead of the share buyback. Sure, I'm happy to take that. I don't think we've said that we're not, you know, kind of, inclined to pay down, you know, incremental debt. I think the way to think about it is we're still on a journey to target, you know, net debt of CAD 225 million. Against that backdrop, we have shares trading at a material discount. What the board is effectively saying is, you know, we're gonna call a bit of an audible and buy back our shares while they're very cheap. I think part of the mistake management teams make and other boards make, and this isn't specific to energy, but as a long-term market participant, they typically buy their shares back at the worst possible time. They buy them back when everything's going great, and it's reflected in their equity price. Then, you know, once some volatility hits, you know, those share repurchases look expensive. I think that's really kind of what's driving the board's thought process. Great. Thanks. I have a follow-up, question from Chip. How aggressive does the company plan to be with the buyback? Is there a limit to the price that the company is willing to pay? Yeah, I mean, look, I would say a couple things. One, if there was a limit, I don't think we would tell the market that. That wouldn't be, you know, very smart of us. Two, so it's somewhat of a difficult question to answer because, you know, we don't have TSX approval. We are currently in the process of talking to both our syndicate banks as well as we have offers for other debt capital that would allow us to, you know, basically implement a buyback rather expeditiously, you know, sometime in the next five or six weeks. We'll see where our shares are trading at that point in time. If given an opportunity tomorrow, you know, kind of theoretically, like I think we'd be rather aggressive given the valuation disconnect. Great. Thank you. From Ryan, we have a question. When do you anticipate hitting CAD 65 million in liquidity to start the buybacks? Yeah, as I outlined, I mean, if we did it organically, it'd probably be sometime late 2Q, very early Q3, as we'll have to pay down the working capital that, you know, we've incurred as we've been executing on our, on our Q1 drill program. You know, we are, you know, I'll reiterate, in discussions with our syndicate as well as other lenders, you know, to potentially create some more liquidity. We have a significant amount of reserve value. Our current revolver is, you know, materially undersized relative to the reserves that underpin it. You know, we could and should have a line materially bigger than we do today. You know, it's simply a byproduct of the refinancing that we executed last year, where some banks wanted to exit given, you know, some of the history with this company. You know, we're executing. You know, reserve report was very strong, and I think there's appetite for some of our syndicate members to expand. If not them, there's plenty of others that, you know, see the reserve value. We're going through it as we speak. Great. Thank you very much. The other question is about adding additional blanks to increase revolver facility to CAD 250 million to increase liquidity. Are we looking in any discussions with banks on that from Mike? We're, as I outlined, we're having all sorts of different discussions, and that's certainly a plausible outcome. Great. Moving to a different topic, we've got a few questions about M&A in 2023 from Joseph and a few other from some from retail shareholders, is that in 2022, we were interested in M&A for our core Cardium area. What's your approach for M&A in 2023? How do you see acquisitions versus share buyback? There is even one question about discussing reopening talks with Bonterra. Yeah, listen, we're not gonna comment on individual companies. You know, I think the value of our shares are very, very attractive today, and, you know, that's clearly going to be something that we evaluate when we look at any potential M&A opportunity. Against that backdrop, I think it's fair to say that we look at everything. We've been on record multiple times as saying that we're not gonna enter a new area. Against that backdrop, we are going to evaluate any M&A opportunity against our own organic development, you know, program, as well as the ability to buy back our shares. You know, we've been disciplined to date, and I would anticipate giving the significant shareholdings that myself and some of the other directors have that we're not gonna lose that discipline. Great. We have a follow-up question from Roger. Are there any specific acquisitions the company is looking at? Understand that you said that we wouldn't comment on any particular one, but is the company looking at sales of assets that it considers non-core to pay down debt? Yeah. Once again, I'm not gonna comment on any potential scenario. I think it's just fair to say that this is a management team and board that will look at everything and anything when it comes to creating shareholder value. Great. Going back to a bit on the returns of capital, we have a question regarding oil trading, and if it trades above $80 WTI, how would you prioritize between incremental production growth and further returns of capital? Yeah, I think it's a difficult question to answer in the abstract. It's very much contingent on where our shares trade. You know, some of the potential delineation results that we see out of Peace River, you know, we'll evaluate it at the appropriate time. We're going to, you know, we're gonna be more skewed towards whatever we think can create the most value. Great. Now let's turn to operations. A question from Amit on the Bluesky wells from the 2022 program. The question is that they're just coming online, and the new wells in 2023 have the oil production growth of 1,000 barrels per day. Seems a bit low. Can you please explain? Sure. Absolutely. There's a variety of factors that weigh in on that. One, the extended spring breakup slowed our initial production rates across the board on a bunch of our assets this year, excluding the Viking. That weighs in. The other one is what we chose to do in the Bluesky. First of all, we had some challenges at the end of the first half, particularly on one pad that we weren't happy with those results. We pivoted modestly and returned primarily to the seal trend. The seal trend represented very low reservoir risk, but the methodology in which we drove those wells is quite a bit different. Those wells have fewer legs. They are in an area where we've already had production, and we go in and redevelop between the existing legs. The overall economic thesis is a little bit different in that we don't expect the same rates necessarily, but what we do see is overall economic return that's just as robust because we're able to utilize the existing infrastructure, so the overall well cost is less. That's one factor in terms of why that's a little lower. The other is we chose to lean a little bit more heavily into temporary facilities on some of our pads. Temporary facilities have an advantage in that when you look at the overall economic thesis in Peace River, facilities make up about 50% of the total cost. There's a true stage gate once a well is drilled to test and make a hypothesis on whether we wanna make a significant investment further. Now universally, on the second half program, we've reached a conclusion that, yes, we do, but it does provide us a little bit of de-risking. Particularly, we talk about wells that are not in permanent facilities. Some of those wells have constrained peak rates. As a result, you can imagine that the permanent facilities provide a lot of incremental production value up in Peace River, particularly when you're trying to manage the harsh results of minus 40 degree winters and the ability to heat and transport that oil. Permanent facilities present a significant uptake in terms of what those wells are capable of doing. Right now, as we transfer into the second half of the year, we have four wells that we still expect to come on, our 6 and 4 pad and our 2 and 5 pad. One of those wells, the westernmost on 2 and 5, was run into temporary facilities. We de-risked that pad. In fact, we've gone back with the drilling rig subsequently based on those results and are drilling a third well off that pad as we speak. As a result, the overall peak rate was modestly delayed as we took that view towards risk. While the outcome has been good, it does represent a modest delay in terms of what we expect for peak rate. Actually, our 2022 Peace River program, we expect to hit peak production rates in very early Q2 2023 as a result, as those heavy oil wells clean up and then come on to full production. Yeah. Good. The only thing I would add to that from each benefit is, look, we've got a significant amount to Jay's point of production coming on in the Peace River area, and our next operational update will provide some additional details with respect to that. Great. Thanks, Gary and Jay. Well, let me just kinda add my two cents. Look, what I would say to you is that, you know, with the benefit of hindsight always being 20/20. You know, we probably kind of when we upwardly revised our guidance in the middle of last year, you know, somewhat priced it for perfection. That was really off the backs of, you know, we had three years where everything had gone, you know, kind of as well as could be on the development side, notwithstanding that we had to, you know, deal with the volatility that came out of 2020. I think what we're saying this year in our guide is, you know, we're stepping out into where we're gonna drill, you know, a bunch of offset wells kind of in the Viking. We're stepping out into some newer areas or areas that we haven't, you know, kind of drilled as, you know, in recent memory in Peace River. There's a bit more risk in the production forecast. If those wells, you know, come on strongly, then, you know, once you anticipate that, with a little bit of luck, you'll be at the height of the range. If they don't, then I think the range is kind of appropriate. I think that's kind of how to think about it from my seat. Thanks, Steve. Bit of a follow-up. Jay, you did talk about production and some of the impacts in the Peace River area. We've got several questions from Adam and about more detail, if you could provide more detail on production volumes and why they were not as high on the fourth quarter and pushed out into the first quarter of this year? I think that question probably covered that relatively comprehensively in terms of the temporary facilities, the delayed spring breakup that pushed a lot of activity down. You know, third point on that is we hit a really cold snap right at the end of December that was impactful to overall activity across all of our assets. Everyone was dealing with that equally. We had a slightly longer break during the holidays as a result. Some of our drilling rigs continued through, some sat down for a brief period to mitigate some of the cost exposures of that extreme cold. As a result, we have a significant amount of additional production coming on here in the weeks ahead of us. Great. Thank you very much. We've got a few questions, Jay, on the Clearwater, specifically if there's any noticeable difference geologically between the Seal Clearwater test and the Dawson, and also kind of an explanation why there's no flow rates as of yet? On the geological perspective, I'm not gonna reveal too much on that obviously, because we view that to be a bit of a competitive advantage. I will say that Dawson and Seal are similar sands of similar geological provenance, but different sands in that they're depositionally, stratigraphically not equivalent. One is higher, one is lower in the stratigraphic column. Each of them presents unique characteristics that we have to address, not just on the geological perspective, but also well placement, fluid type and stuff. There's a bit of a secret sauce that goes into it across the board that everyone in the area is building their own view on it, and we think we're modestly ahead of the curve in terms of our expectations on how to delineate that going forward. Great. Thank you. In regards to rates, I mean, we'll have more to say when we release Q4 in three weeks' time, approximately three weeks' time. Thank you. We've got a couple of questions regarding our hedging. Specifically, would we be open to hedging at $90 WTI? Would we do that? Because at $90, it nearly doubles compared to $80. This is from Ryan. Yeah. I think $90 is very much a constructive price or a very constructive price, hedging is a lot more attractive at that price. You know, I think it appropriately identifies our free cash flow kind of nearly doubles at that price. We're not oblivious to that. Great. Thank you. Question from Amit again. What is your best estimate of maintenance capital excluding ARO? You want me to take that, Steve? It's Rick. Yeah, I'll take that. I mean, I think- Okay. Go ahead, Rick. Well, yeah, simplistically, year-over-year, sustaining capital for us would be in that CAD 200 million range. That's assuming we're kind of in that 33,000 barrel a day range. Okay. What WTI price would lead you to revisit increasing CapEx, assuming no change in stock price? Yeah, I would say it's probably north of CAD 85. 85 or better. Sustained 85 or better. Great. Thank you. One question in regards what will be the free cash flow allocated to buybacks? Does the company feel pressure in the industry for greater return of capital? I mean, we're not gonna comment as regards to kind of the percentage of free cash flow that we'll allocate to buybacks because we just don't know where our shares are gonna trade when we're in the market. As it relates to do we feel pressure? I mean, no, we don't feel pressure. I mean, we, you know, we feel self-inflict pressure to kind of create the most value for shareholders. Above and beyond that, we've got a great business. We've got an enviable position in Peace River. I mean, we've got, you know, kind of a really strong base business in the way of the Cardium. We've optionality in the way of the Viking. I mean, on a relative basis, I don't feel pressure at all. Great. Thank you. A question comes in. Given the drop in crude over the last few months, do you expect service cost inflation to stop in the second half of 2023? So yeah- I mean, Go ahead. Yeah. Maybe I can comment, too. Look, obviously during 2022, we've really seen very significant cost pressure, not just across services, but on consumables as well. I think our view at this point in time is we really expect that to moderate as we look into 2023. You know, as we talked about at the start of the call, you know, all the services and consumables we need for this first part of the year were already tied up and secured. In terms of as we think about our 2022 program in the second half, we've got modest inflation built into our assumptions. certainly the overarching view is that we expect that to not replicate what we've seen in 2022, but some modest impact in the back half of the year. Jay, do you wanna add in to that? I guess the only other incremental challenge is with 250 rigs currently running in our basin as of this morning, that the scarcity of services and potential downtime associated with it is something that every company has to address, and it's gonna reward those who are the best at the execution side, and it's something that we're managing very carefully through our program this year. Yeah, I'll just add, I mean, the short answer is, look, we clearly expect them to moderate. You know, the longer answer is, if we're right on gas, I wouldn't be surprised if you see service costs marginally come down. Thank you. Regarding returns, a comment that returns look excellent. Why would you pare back capital? I think what we're telling you is that, you know, the board finds kind of the, you know, that they can buy back their shares on a risk-free basis to be more attractive than further growing production. Great. Thank you. Just that simple. It's math. Another question, follow-up question from Adam on Bluesky well cost versus Clearwater well. Is there an explanation as to why Bluesky is more despite only minor depth differences? Yeah. Primarily in terms of how we've forecasted that, we put more legs and more horizontal length as well into our Bluesky wells. We also have a slightly more robust surface footprint on the facility side. All of that is still being somewhat streamlined. Clearwater wells right now are not necessarily forecast to be tied into our gas gathering system. Bluesky wells within the heart of our field are. It's really just a sum total of some modest differences, both on the well design side and the facility perspective. Great. Thank you very much. Going on, we have a question from Jack. Does Obsidian ever plan to be debt free, or will it always carry some debt? I'll answer that. No, I mean, we'll always have some level of debt. I, you know, I think it's prudent to do so given the underpinning of reserve values here. Thank you. Here's a question to the logistics of the buyback program. How much time does the Toronto Stock Exchange usually take to give approval for your buyback? Mark, do you wanna go ahead? Normally, the typical application is through a Form 12, and it's about a 7-day process to kinda get it through. We'll obviously, once we have that, there's a formal press release that we have to release. The market will be well aware of when all that approval is completed. Thank you. A general question here from Mitt. Can you share your thoughts on well performance in the different areas? What was better versus worse? Where would you allocate your capital? Yeah, I can start with that. Look, I would say, specifically to the sort of second half program and the wells that are coming on right now, as Jay mentioned, we're kind of an active across all of our areas. I think the Cardium area has been very strong for us in this part, second part of the year. We're in a little bit of a purple patch with regards to some really strong results that we're very pleased with. You know, that's obviously front and center to us in terms of where that fits in our portfolio. It's very pleased to see that. I think, you know, Peace River we talked about. We've had some challenges there with regards to weather and delays tying some pieces in. Again, we leaned into that sale area. I think by and large, what you'll see as these volumes present themselves over the coming weeks here, that we've hit the ball right down the middle of the fairway with regards to Peace River. Clearwater, I think we've talked about that already. We're gonna have more to say with regards to our upcoming Q4 release. Viking is the last area that, again, really had 1 exceptional well last year in the western portion of the field. That's really opened up a significant inventory for us. We, you know, we've got a very active program drilling as we speak around there that really builds on that success. I'd say by and large, pleased overall with the results we're sharing, and looking forward to saying more about that in the next operational update. Great. Thanks, Gary. A follow-up from Mike on the Bluesky and Clearwater horizons. Are you working on drilling both Bluesky and Clearwater horizons from the same pad? Would it provide some cost and time savings? Yeah. We're certainly looking into it. That's the end game we'd love to get to, knowing that we can't control geological deposition, we have to work within the bounds of the hand that's dealt to us. To a large extent, don't underplay the fact that our extensive road and gas gathering infrastructure already weighs into the economics of the wells that we're drilling currently. Thank you very much. we've got a follow-up on the buyback, from a couple people. Jack is one of them. Can we get some more color on the buyback when it is approved, et cetera? When will we get it paid? How much capital is being allocated to it? Steve, do you wanna start that one off? Mark's already alluded to the fact that we're obligated to issue a press release once we have TSX approval. I'll just reiterate that we're currently in discussions with both our syndicate as well as other lenders in regards to paying incremental debt capacity that would allow us to implement the buyback as expeditiously as possible. I mean, above and beyond that, there's not much more we can say right now other than simply the board has authorized this because we are trading at a material discount to our reserve value, our NAV value, our own estimate of NAV value. You know, once we get into the market, we'll have more to say. Thank you. I've got 1 more question at the moment, from Amit. As to what strategies are you thinking about for increasing liquidity, is this getting another senior lender or is there something else? Well, it would all be senior. I mean, you know, I think it's fair to say that it's easiest if you can simply expand your revolver. I certainly think that's a plausible outcome. You know, there's other options that on a secured basis that are available to us. I mean, clearly, we have unsecured options available to us as well. We simply don't need to go that route. Great. Thank you, Steve. At this time, we've still got 7 minutes left in the call. There are no other questions showing up. I don't know if you wanna give people a chance to add any last questions on the webcast, or if you want? Yeah. Let's just pause for 30 seconds. If there's any final questions, we'll be happy to address them. If not, you know, we'll conclude the call. Great. Ending the Amit. Steve, I'd say that nothing else is coming up at this time. Sorry, we do have one comment and one question. One comment. "Thanks, Steve and team, for addressing all these questions." Thank you, Ryan. Jeff wants to know, will we get more color on the NCIB after the approval? I think the answer is- The answer is yes. Yeah. Yeah. If there's no other questions, we'd like to. No, I've got one. I've got two more now. They're all coming in all quick now. Nicholas has a follow-up. Last June, you estimated your 2022 production was 37-38. Now it's been lowered. CapEx is the same. Why the lowered production estimate? Yeah. I mean, I'm happy to initially address that, and Gary and Jay can add their thoughts. I mean, number one, we reduced our 2022 production guidance during, you know, Q3 of last year. You know, that clearly had implications in regards to 2023 as well. I mean, if we wanted to hit 37,000-38,000, we could. It would just take more capital. With all that having been said, you know, when we basically disclosed or when we outlined our preliminary forecast in June of last year for 2023, it was just that. It was just a forecast, and it was at a time when commodity prices were higher, differentials were tighter, service costs were lower. It's just not prudent at this juncture to follow through on that preliminary forecast in the way of a formal 2023 budget. Additionally, we have our shares trading, you know, kind of significantly cheaper than they were in June of 2023. You know, we've obviously demonstrated the ability to materially grow our reserves, as well as reenter other areas such as the Viking, where we had not drilled for a number of years. The end result of all that is a budget that yields lower production. I think when it's all said and done, contingent on how aggressive we potentially are or aren't on the buyback, your per share metrics probably aren't gonna look that different. In the meantime, we will save some of our inventory for a higher price environment and, at the same time, also send the service CEOs a message that there's a limit to how much inflation we're willing to bear. I wanna make sure that that message does not get lost in translation. Hopefully, some of my peers will join me because at the end of the day, we're indifferent. We'll cut our capital even further, and we'll go buy production cheaper if that makes sense to do. I think, we're at the upper bound as to what we're willing to accept in the way of service cost inflation. You know, kind of that's how we've landed on the budget that we ultimately landed on. The other point I want to make is the board and management felt it was important that there was a component of exploratory slash appraisal capital in the budget to better delineate our Peace River position. I think we've sized that at a level where we can make some, you know, kind of meaningful progress, but at the same time, not allocate a disproportionate amount of the budget in that direction. If the results are, that we see are encouraging, then, you know, as I outlined earlier in the call, you know, that would potentially be an area where if price, commodity prices are conducive, we would allocate some more capital to in the second half of the year. I mean, we have 500 sections in Peace River. We have a very, very, very strong position. We're only producing, just to contextualize, the 6,500 or 6,700 BOEs that we currently produce out of Peace River out of maybe 35 sections. Now, all 500 sections are not going to be prospective for Bluesky or, and/or Clearwater, but I can guarantee when it's all said and done, we'll be producing a lot more than from 35 sections. It's important that, you know, we embark on delineating, better delineating that position. That's kinda where, why, and how we've landed where we've landed versus what we had forecasted on a preliminary basis 7 months ago. Thank you, Steve. I think at this point, we are running out of time for the conference call, so feel free to close it up, and then we will try and answer any other questions that come on in on the investor relations email individually. Thanks to all for their time. This concludes today's conference call. You may disconnect your lines. Thank you for participating, and have a pleasant day.