Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to today's conference call. PrairieSky Royalty Ltd announces their second quarter 2022 financial results. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Andrew Phillips, President and CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for dialing into the PrairieSky Royalty Q2 2022 Earnings Call. On the call from PrairieSky are Cam Proctor, COO, Pam Kazeil, CFO, and myself, Andrew Phillips. There are certain forward-looking information in my notes today, so I would ask investors to review the forward-looking statements qualifier in our press release in MD&A. Before turning the call over to Pam to walk through the financials, I will provide an operational update. PrairieSky achieved its third consecutive quarter of strong organic production growth, realizing the benefits of an 18.5 million acres royalty footprint across the Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin. Our investments in low F&D cost oil royalties and mineral title lands are the primary contributors to the strong volume growth.
Clearwater volumes reached a record 1,500 BOE /d of total royalty production and will continue to grow for the remainder of the year and in future periods. Viking oil volumes also grew approximately 10% over the quarter. We expect to have over 300 Viking wells drilled on our acreage this year. PrairieSky has over 10,000 Viking development wells that can be drilled over the next few decades on its fee title and royalty land base. On Monday, there were 206 rigs operating in the basin, compared to 150 rigs in the previous year on the same day. As a reminder, PrairieSky also saw volume growth in 2021 in a lower activity environment.
Our natural gas volumes increased as new liquids-rich wells came on production and solution gas associated with oil drilling contributed to growth. Natural gas revenue alone now covers the entire dividend. Activity was noted across the entire Western Canadian Sedimentary Basin, which has not been observed since 2014. Leasing activity remains strong, with 54 leasing arrangements entered into with over 45 different companies. This resulted in CAD 3.8 million of bonus consideration. Year to date, we have entered into 106 leasing arrangements versus 67 in the first half of 2021. The advancements in multilateral drilling techniques and better drilling fluid systems has structurally changed the value of PrairieSky's heavy oil royalty portfolio.
PrairieSky acquired the largest heavy oil fee title royalty portfolio in Canada through the acquisitions of Canadian Natural Resources royalties in 2015 and through the Heritage Royalty acquisition, which closed in December 2021. Thick heavy oil reservoirs with low recovery factors can be exploited using these drilling techniques pioneered in the Clearwater and will result in decades of new drilling activity for heavy oil on PrairieSky lands at no additional cost to our shareholders. Our unique fee title royalty model allows PrairieSky to capitalize on cyclicality and counter-cyclicality. In the lower cycles, we can use our strong balance sheet to execute on organic opportunities, and in the high commodity environments, we can lease our large undeveloped land base to qualified industry participants.
The PrairieSky royalty model provides high margins, inflation protection, and strong growth rates, which will lead to strong dividend growth in the coming years. From an ESG perspective, we have now published our most recent sustainability report, which can be found on our website. Since publishing the report, we have received an updated MSCI ESG ranking and achieved the highest possible rating of triple A. I will now turn the call over to Pam to walk through the financials.
Thank you, Andrew. Good morning, everyone. As Andrew mentioned, there is certain forward-looking information in the notes today, so I would remind investors to review the forward-looking statements qualifier in our press release in MD&A for Q2 2022. This was PrairieSky's third consecutive quarter of organic royalty production growth and a record quarter for oil production. Production growth and strong commodity pricing for oil, NGLs, and natural gas combined to generate record quarterly funds from operations of CAD 159.6 million or CAD 0.67 per common share, more than double Q2 of last year and 52% above Q1 2022. Royalty production totaled 25,992 BOE /d , which was 58% liquid and generated CAD 190.2 million in royalty production revenue, the highest quarter in our history.
PrairieSky's oil royalty production grew to 12,220 barrels per day in Q2, which was up over 1,000 barrels per day compared to Q1 and over 5,192 barrels per day over Q2 2021. Backing out all acquisitions, PrairieSky's oil royalty production grew organically 9% over the first quarter and 33% over Q2. PrairieSky anticipated the increase in royalty production given our active leasing program and the number of Spuds across our acreage in late 2021 and the first half of 2022. Oil royalty revenues grew to CAD 135.6 million in the quarter. Natural gas royalty volumes averaged 66 million a day, up 9% over both Q1 2022 and Q2 2021.
Volumes included 1.9 million a day from the acquisition closed in the quarter, as well as the return of 1 million a day of volumes that were shut in due to cold weather in Q1, with remaining incremental volumes from new wells on stream and workovers and recompletions. With strong AECO pricing, natural gas royalty revenue totaled CAD 36.8 million. NGL royalty volumes averaged 2,772 barrels per day, which was up 6% over both Q1 2022 and Q2 2021, and included 50 barrels a day of incremental production from the acquisition closed in the quarter and incremental volumes from new liquids-rich natural gas wells that came on production. NGL royalty revenue totaled CAD 17.8 million in Q2, driven by strong benchmark pricing.
There were 1,670 BOE /d of prior period adjustments in the quarter related to new wells on stream as a result of a very active first quarter of drilling, with an additional 232 BOE /d related to compliance activity. Overall, PPAs were 60% liquids. The compliance group recovered missed and incorrect royalties through forensic accounting, collecting CAD 1.6 million in the quarter. Compliance revenue since IPO now totals over CAD 70 million. There were 122 wells spud in Q2, which were 94% oil. The Viking was the most active play with 42 wells spud, followed by the Mannville with 19 heavy and light oil wells, and the Clearwater with 14 wells. Additional oil focused activity took place across the portfolio, including wells spud in the Cardium, Duvernay, Mississippian, and six wells at Lindbergh.
There were also seven natural gas wells spud, including wells in the Montney, Spirit River, and Mannville. Although activity in the quarter was moderated by seasonal breakup, the number of wells drilled was up 37% from 89 wells spud in Q2 2021. Other revenue included CAD 7.9 million and included CAD 2.9 million in lease rentals, CAD 1.2 million of other income, including CAD 900 thousand of potash revenue, and CAD 3.8 million of bonus consideration for entering into 54 new leases with 45 different counterparties. New leasing is a leading indicator of field activity, and we anticipate near-term drilling on many of these new leases. Given the level of leasing activity, we now expect other revenues in the range of CAD 25 million to CAD 30 million in 2022. This is up from our original estimate of CAD 20 million.
Compliance recoveries will be incremental to this amount. Cash administrative expenses totaled CAD 5.2 million or CAD 2.20 per BOE in Q2. We anticipate cash administrative expense to be well below CAD 3 per BOE for the full year. At June 30, 2022, PrairieSky's total outstanding dilutives were 0.6%. PrairieSky recorded a current tax expense of CAD 27 million in Q2 due to our record oil royalty production revenue. Entering the year, PrairieSky had CAD 1.75 billion of tax pools to offset future taxable income. In 2022, the first CAD 170 million of cash flow is tax-free, with the remainder taxed at our statutory tax rate of approximately 23.5%.
During the quarter, PrairieSky declared dividends of CAD 28.7 million or CAD 0.12 per share, with a resulting payout ratio of 18%. Excess funds from operations above the dividend and our CAD 15.6 million of acquisition was used to repay bank debt. Net debt at June 30 was CAD 453.9 million. PrairieSky has reduced net debt by 29% or CAD 181.1 million in the first six months of 2022. Since IPO, PrairieSky has generated CAD 1.9 billion in funds from operations and returned CAD 1.5 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. We will now turn it over to the moderator to proceed with the Q&A.
As a reminder, to ask a question, you'll need to press star one on your telephone. Again, that is star, then one to ask a question. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from Aaron Bilkoski with TD Securities.
Morning, everyone.
Morning, Aaron.
You guys talked about the Clearwater growing, I think it was 25% year to date to 1,500 BOE /d . I was curious if you could provide a bit more color about the other top plays that are driving the growth.
Sure. On the gas side, it was primarily liquids drilling in the kind of Ellerslie/ Glauconitic that created some of the growth on the ten percent growth on the gas portfolio, as well as associated gas from oil drilling. Then the Viking actually grew by ten percent as well. It's what was unique about this quarter, Aaron, is it was kind of broad-based growth. We saw growth in the Mississippian in Southeast Saskatchewan. We saw growth in Manitoba with all the way to the Alberta-BC border. Almost every place, just growth with the strong activity, both in terms of the drilling but also in the recompletion and reactivation activity.
Perfect. Thanks. Could I ask you guys another question?
Of course.
Is there an absolute debt level you'd like the, I guess, you'd like to reach before reinstating a buyback or revisiting the dividend?
Yeah, typically, we revisit the dividend annually in February, and you know, payout ratio is quite low right now. Again, I think you know, we effectively viewed the financing that we did by only financing it with one-third equity and two-thirds debt. We viewed it as pre-funding the buyback at CAD 13.40 effectively. You know, our goal is to pay the debt down. We believe having net cash or zero debt balance sheet is optionality in our business. We'd like to get it there, but we'd certainly, there's certainly lots of room for a dividend increase while still paying down a lot of debt in a short period of time.
Thanks, Andrew.
Thanks for your question, sir.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Matthew Weekes with iA Capital Markets.
Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Just trying to understand the production growth in the quarter a little bit in terms of the dynamic with the PPA volumes that came on. I'm just wondering how you know, often expect these volumes to sort of act going forward. Is there ever a reversal sort of that happens a little bit after that? Or is it really just due to the timing of sort of wells being brought on and compliance in the quarter? I was just wondering if you could share any sort of expectations going forward.
Yeah, certainly, Matt. The way that PPAs work is, in Q2, if there were new wells that were brought on, in March of the first quarter, for example, we don't have that information, so we're making an estimate for the production. What ends up happening is if new wells come on and they're, you know, producing more than we would've expected, we will incur a PPA adjustment to our production. When you're looking at Q2, what you need to do is back out the Q1 PPAs and add in the Q2 PPA, so you have a net amount that you're adjusting your production for. It is a rolling item, and we would expect to see PPAs in every quarter, just because we are estimating what production will be.
Yeah.
I'll just add that compliance activity, that can range, that can be +200 barrels as it was this quarter. But that will depend on what we collect during that period.
Yeah. Effectively, because two to three months are accruals, we're effectively taking all these new wells, and we'll have about 800 drilled this year on our lands. We'll take them and conservatively estimate them, that's what results in the positive PPAs. It's real production, it's just from the trailing quarter.
Okay, thanks. That makes sense. You talked about sort of part of it coming from, you know, estimating production and then maybe the production coming on from new wells tends to be, you know, a bit better than you think. Are you tending to see sort of, you know, better well results in your portfolio than you'd anticipated at this point in the year?
Yeah, we are actually. We're seeing quite a substantial improvement in Type Curves, and we take a pretty conservative approach even in our asset handbook that we put out once every two years. We use five-year trailing Type Curves. In these cases, we kinda use the lower end of the Type Curve. We've seen some very strong results across the basin, particularly in the Clearwater. IPs are significantly above where we anticipated them to be. We're also seeing technological advancements. Even in the Viking, we're seeing better IPs. It's pretty strong across the basin.
All right, that's helpful. Thank you. I'll turn the call back. Thanks.
Thanks for your question, Matthew.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Jamie Kubik with CIBC.
Good morning, everybody, and thanks for taking my question here. Maybe just a little bit on further on Aaron's question there on capital allocation. I'm curious if you can talk about what you're seeing on the M&A side of things right now. You know, has the opportunity set sort of thinned out a little bit with the improvement in operator balance sheets over the last couple quarters and year?
Yeah, it's definitely. I think expectations would be pretty high. I think the need for capital is pretty low right now just amongst the producer universe. They're generating a huge amount of cash, which is great for our business. You know, we're again, I kinda mentioned on the call, the one nice thing is in the downturns with our strong balance sheet, we can execute on this creative M&A and acquire high quality royalty packages, including the fee title package we acquired at the end of last year. In the really good times, we can just lease our big undeveloped land base to industry, and that's what we've been really active doing.
We were successful on one piece of M&A you probably saw in the quarter there. This was a royalty package we've been trying to buy for about eight years. It's in the Deep Basin. We think there's a lot of upside. It's mostly verticals in the Spirit River, et cetera, that could be horizontally drilled, and we think it will over time. It was again a quality royalty package that we knew about for a long time and had done a lot of work on. There are little ones like that, but I think for the most part, there's a little less out there right now.
Okay. Maybe a next question from me is just, you know, very strong Q2 production-wise. I know PrairieSky doesn't really provide guidance, but can you talk a little bit about how we should think about the second half of 2022, given how strong this update was and some of the rig activity that you're seeing currently? How does that set you up for the back half of this year?
Yeah, for sure. I think, you know, Q3 is obviously our breakup quarter because it's a trailing quarter, so it'll kind of represent the Q2 activity, which was only 112 spots. As is normal with all our previous eight quarters, you have lower PPAs and then there's people who can't haul oil, et cetera, during the road bans and breakups. That's typically your Q3. Activity right now in Q3 remains very strong, which should represent a very strong back half of the year. 206 rigs versus 150 last year. We grew last year with 150 running. We were seeing drilling on some of the most efficient plays on our lands as well.
I think it should be a strong back half of the year as well, without giving guidance, not sure exactly what that looks like, Jamie.
Okay, that's good. That's it for me. Thank you.
Thanks for your question.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question at this time, that is star then one. We're showing no further questions in queue at this time. I'd like to turn the call back to Andrew Phillips for closing remarks.
Thank you everyone for dialing into the PrairieSky Q2 2022 conference call. Please, feel free to call Pam or myself if you have any further questions. Have a great day.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.