John K. Brannan
Analyst · Paul Cheng with Barclays
Thank you, Brian, and good morning. During the second quarter, our integrated operations performed well. Steady production from oil sands and conventional were complemented by another good quarter from our refining assets. I would like to start by talking about the flooding in Alberta, which occurred in late June. The impact from the flooding to Cenovus' operations was very minor, and we estimate that we lost approximately 1,000 barrels a day for the quarter. The impact was limited to some temporary shut-ins in southern Alberta and a few interruptions at our oil sands assets. This quarter, at Christina Lake, we completed our first major plant turnaround during late May and early June. The turnaround included 11 days of full production outage, as well as a few days of ramp down and ramp up. This was slightly longer than planned, due to an expanded scope of work, but everything was completed safely as we tied in key components related to phase E and the C, D and E optimization project. The production impact of the turnaround was approximately 7,600 barrels net per day for the quarter, roughly 2,500 barrels per day more than we originally planned. Production has since ramped back up and we have been running over 100,000 barrels per day gross for the past few weeks. We expect production at Christina Lake to be in line with our full year guidance. Operating costs at Christina Lake averaged $16.83 per barrel during the second quarter, and largely reflect the impact of the planned turnaround. Lower production volumes versus Q1, combined with higher costs related to the turnaround, resulted in a higher per unit operating cost. Our full year operating cost expectations at Christina Lake are $12.80 to $13.60 per barrel. As Brian mentioned, we achieved another major milestone this quarter as we commissioned phase E on time and on budget. We delivered phases C, D and E with a capital efficiency of to $24,000 per flowing barrel. Our teams did a tremendous job of competing this project, and we will be working hard to ramp up to full production over the next 6 to 9 months. We are also well underway with phases F, and G at Christina Lake. Earlier this quarter, we announced a plan to optimize phases C, D and E at Christina Lake. This project will add 2 blowdown broilers that we expect will increase gross production capacity by about 22,000 barrels per day. We anticipate this optimization phase will be completed in 2015 and cost roughly $10,000 per flowing barrel. This is another example of Cenovus' demonstrated ability to advance oil sands development to build net asset value. Now turning to Foster Creek. Production was down slightly relative to the first quarter and averaged just over 55,000 barrels per day on a net basis or about 92% of production capacity. We anticipate steady second half volumes as we continued to reduce the backlog of workover activity required on some of our producing wells. Our updated guidance also reflects the rescheduled turnaround at Foster Creek, which will be completed in late September and into October. We expect it to result in a production outage of about 5,000 barrels per day for the third quarter and about 2,000 barrels per day in the fourth quarter. Operating costs at Foster Creek averaged $16.19 per barrel this quarter, which reflects increased workover activity and higher power costs. Power costs have gone up across our operations, but at Foster Creek, it was also impacted by our cogen units coming down for maintenance in the quarter. This increased our external power consumption and resulted in the higher costs. The cogen units have since been brought back online and are operating at 100%. Our full year operating cost guidance for Foster Creek is $14.90 to $15.90 per barrel. Construction on the expansion phases F, G and H at Foster Creek continues to progress very well. We are now just over 78% complete at Foster Creek phase F central plant and we are pleased that inflationary pressures have moderated over the past several months. At Pelican Lake, we continue to see incremental volumes associated with our infill drilling and polymer flood programs, although slower than we initially expected. Production averaged about 24,000 barrels per day during the second quarter, and we have revised our production guidance downward to reflect the more moderate ramp up. Our plan to grow Pelican Lake remains unchanged but the ultimate growth rate will be dictated by the level of funding that we choose to pursue. Now turning to the Conventional operations. Our teams continued to demonstrate success. So far this year, we have added approximately 3,200 barrels per day, most of which come from tight oil plays on fee lands in Alberta. Production gains in Southern Alberta were offset by a reduced volume from the Lower Shaunavon, which produced about 3,600 barrels per day for the quarter, reflecting natural declines prior to the asset sale. Overall, our conventional guidance remains unchanged and excludes lower Shaunavon volumes and Bakken assets that are still being marketed. In terms of overall capital expenditures, our updated guidance ranges reflect about $90 million lower spending at Pelican Lake. This is primarily related to the facility work and infill drilling that we have deferred, and roughly $50 million of incremental spending at Christina Lake related to acceleration of drilling activity and the phase F expansion. We have also allocated an additional $35 million to tight oil development in Southern Alberta based on recent successes. Overall, we aren't seeing significant changes in inflation and still forecast about a 3% to 5% increase across our operations on an annual basis. We continue to generate significant operating cash flow from our refining operations, highlighting the benefit of our overall integrated strategy. During the quarter, Wood River and Borger average 96% utilization, of which approximately 230,000 barrels per day were heavy crude, including 109,000 barrels per day of high-TAN crude. June utilization was lower than we planned, and was impacted by an unplanned outage related to the hydrocracker at Wood River that just resulted in some minor repairs. We believe Wood River and Borger are well-positioned to take advantage of what we expect to be a good refining market due to ongoing price volatility and pipeline congestion. In closing, Cenovus posted another solid quarter in terms of our operations. We continue to show predictable oil growth, bringing on our 10th phase of SAGD operations. Our team remained focused on safe and reliable execution of our plans for the second half of the year. I will now turn the call over to Ivor.