John K. Brannan
Analyst · FirstEnergy
Thank you, Brian, and good morning, everyone. Our fourth quarter was highlighted by steady production growth from Christina Lake Phase E, as it continued its ramp up. We are currently approaching gross nameplate capacity of 138,000 barrels per day. Our goal this year is to maintain steady overall performance, running at about 95% utilization of nameplate capacity. Our conventional liquids business, which now includes Pelican Lake, averaged just below 75,000 barrels per day during the fourth quarter. Our Conventional oil business provide stable cash flow to support our oil sands growth. In 2014, we have focused investments in the conventional areas that will best optimize free cash flow. Natural gas continues to be a financial asset that also funds oil sands development. In 2013, our natural gas business generated $410 million of free cash flow. We continue to make significant progress on our oil growth plans. Overall, the Foster Creek FGH expansions are progressing well. Phase F is 90% complete and is expected to come online in the third quarter. I would like to remind you that we typically build our SAGD projects in sets of 3 with the first phase containing the majority of the infrastructure required to support the remaining 2. Having Phase F nearing completion, substantially derisks Phases G and H, which are coming on production in 2015 and 2016 respectively. We are also progressing well with the Christina Lake Phase F and G expansions. Narrows Lake has met all of it's year-end targets for site construction, engineering and procurement. We also advanced pilots at our emerging projects during the quarter. Most notably, we successfully concluded our Telephone Lake pilot, demonstrating we could effectively dewater the reservoir. We are currently working with the regulator to receive approvals at both Telephone Lake and Grand Rapids, which were anticipated over the next few months. Our focus over the next few years will to be to develop our inventory of regulatory approved projects, one that can provide meaningful near-term value for our shareholders. Our upstream performance was complemented by another good quarter from our refining business. Both refineries operated at high utilization rates and had good overall operating performance during the quarter, despite weak seasonal product demand and lower market cracks. We generated $151 million of operating cash flow from our refining business during the fourth quarter in line with our guidance expectations. So far in 2014, we have benefited from the lower price crudes that we purchased in late 2013. From a market access perspective, we are pleased with the recent announcement related to the environmental impact assessment for Keystone XL. And we are looking forward to a timely decision. Cenovus has taken a portfolio approach to accessing global markets for our crude oil, which include 150,000 barrels per day of firm service to the U.S. Gulf Coast split evenly between Enbridge's expansion project and TransCanada's Keystone XL. Our rail strategy is also progressing. We transported our first unit train of oil in January and will be loading our second this month. We expect to exit 2014 with 30,000 barrels per day of rail capacity. Now turning back to Foster Creek. The deferral of maintenance in 2012 resulted in higher than usual well work in 2013 and negatively impacted both production levels and operating costs. Since early 2013, we have invested an increased well instrumentation, which allows for better monitoring and contributing -- and contributed to a significant reduction in unplanned well maintenance activities in the second half of 2013. We have also built in preventive maintenance for 2014, which is reflected in operating cost expectations for this year. As Brian mentioned, production levels have been consistent over the past few months averaging 110,000 barrels per day gross. We intend to maintain steady performance from Foster Creek Phases A to E throughout 2014. Our steam to oil ratio performance tracked higher than we planned in 2013. This reflects a coalescing of steam chambers that we discussed in our third quarter results. We have learned that better well conformance, which means distributing steam across the full length of the well pair will mitigate the effect that the natural formation of common steam chambers has on SOR. Our priority for all new wells of Foster Creek is to ensure we achieve a high level of well conformance. As a result, we have made a few changes to our startup operating procedures to improve SOR over the long term. First, we plan to steam new wells at Foster Creek for a longer period prior to initial production using steam circulation. We expect the long-term benefits of achieving well conformance will outweigh the costs of the additional steaming during start up. Next, we are investing in more instrumentation, which we believe supports better well performance. We intend to maintain our well instrumentation at about 95%, which will help us better manage steam and well maintenance, reducing liner plugging and improve overall well performance. Finally, we intend to accelerate the drilling of additional sustaining pads. Historically, our pads have been drilled just in time. But we believe accelerating some sustaining capital can provide more flexibility to reallocate steam to new areas and move pads to blow down faster. This will take some time but we believe it will help lower overall steam to oil ratios. We also invest in technology to improve SAGD performance. Innovations such as our Wedge Well technology will help lower steam to oil ratio by adding production with essentially no associated steam. This year, we expect to bring on over 40 new Wedge Wells at Foster Creek. Because of the ramp-up of Phase F, we expect to see some variability in steam to oil ratio levels. However, we believe that we can effectively manage Foster Creek at a 2.6 to 3.0 steam to oil ratio level on a full year basis in 2014. As in all SAGD projects, the initial months of a new phase requires steam circulation in the new wells in advance of production. Steam to oil ratios will be higher until the production ramps up. Our ability to reach ultimate production capacity of 125,000 barrels per day gross from these new phases will be based on lowering steam to oil ratios and de-bottlenecking the Phases A through H facilities. Overall, I share Brian's sentiment that we finished 2013 on a positive note despite some operational challenges throughout the year. The teams are working hard to maintain consistent and steady operations at Foster Creek and we are on our way to improving our performance throughout 2014. I will now pass the call to Ivor, to discuss our financial performance.